All-season motor all-terrain vehicle

Before proceeding to describe the snowmobile “Turtle-2”, I’ll tell you about the history of its creation. This happened thanks to an all-terrain vehicle — a predecessor with the same name, only with the index “1”.

That one was a two-wheeled machine on low-pressure pneumatic tires with a D-8 engine with a power of 1.2 hp.

The pneumatic tires were made from UAZ-452 car inner tubes with a fabric casing. The rear (driving) pneumatic tire had eight transverse banding rings made of rubberized tape 3 mm thick. The wheels of the pneumatic tires (or more commonly — rims) were assembled from two aluminum bathtub basins, fastened to each other at the bottoms using eight M6 bolts.

The all-terrain vehicle’s frame is duplex. But such a design is caused not so much by ensuring strength, but by the width of the pneumatic tires and their forks, as well as the simplicity of manufacture.

The all-terrain vehicle “Turtle-1” was created in the bicycle-motorcycle club of the local youth technical station (YTS) in one of the winter-spring seasons in the mid-1990s. And already in the summer, the machine went with the guys on a trip along the Tobol River, carrying two boys. At the final point of the trip, all the guys rode on “Turtle-1”, and not just once. And soon all the grass in the valley and on the surrounding hills was flattened by the pneumatic tires — so the guys rested, and the machine worked.

At the beginning of the new school year, in anticipation of winter, the “YTS members” proposed to convert the all-terrain vehicle into a snowmobile and developed reconstruction drawings.

In the autumn period, during the club’s classes, “Turtle-1” changed its appearance, purpose, and index in the name.

The snowmobile is so simple that you just want to call it a snow scooter.

The driving pneumatic tire for the snowmobile was used from the all-terrain vehicle almost without change. Only a longitudinal banding strip was added to it, and the transverse ones were replaced with thicker ones, like the longitudinal one — also from 5-mm conveyor belt with protruding mounting bolts.

Only the front part of the frame was modified — here the fork of the steering pneumatic tire gave way to a crossmember with bushings for the steering ski steering knuckles.

To improve operating conditions, the engine was equipped with forced air cooling, driven from the clutch drive gear shaft.

Part of the frame in front of the engine is covered with plywood, forming a foot platform. The seat with backrest is quite long, and a passenger can also fit on it.

By the way, the frame and transmission allow installing a Sh-50 motor and even one from a “Minsk” motorcycle instead of the D-8 engine on the snowmobile.

The snowmobile’s transmission is chain-driven, two-stage with an intermediate shaft. Chains and sprockets are from different mopeds, but with the same pitch t = 15.875 mm.

For three winters in a row, the snowmobile “Turtle-2” “ate” gasoline and in gratitude gave rides to kids, both “YTS” and others.

Unfortunately, the machine itself and its drawings have not been preserved, so the description gives its approximate dimensions. But for craftsmen who want to create a similar snowmobile themselves, I think they are not particularly needed. For them, the layout of the units and the structural diagram of the machine itself are much more important, which are quite clear from the given drawings.

«Modelist-Konstruktor» No. 2’2007, A. MATVEYCHUK