In faraway Italy, there is such a heavy truck brand that few people know: it is called Astra, belongs to the Iveco Group, which specializes in building trucks for heavy duty and extreme environments for the Iveco Group. Its official Chinese name is Astra, and all kinds of heavy-duty off-road chassis products are made by Astra.
The protagonist of our article today is an EH/W-TC 200 TAURUS heavy-duty wreckout vehicle modified by Amper, Austria. The car is built on the Astra HD9 8854 8x8 chassis and was recently delivered to the Kuwait Fire Department. This wrecker is equipped with almost all optional configurations, and its unique composition is a feast for the eyes. Next, please follow us to experience it!
The above picture shows this wreck truck taken at the port. The vehicle uses a low-top cab without a sleeper. Because the vehicle has a high ground clearance, if a high-top cab is used, the height limit requirement of 4 meters cannot be met. Moreover, the vehicle's demand for sleeper rest is not significant, so a short cab is used, leaving more space for top-mounted space.
on the front face, the big Astra logo shines above the front mask. Even so, you can still see that the overall frame of the vehicle is no different from that of the Iveco Trakker. After all, Astra is a subsidiary of Iveco, and the cab, axle , engine, transmission and other components all come from Iveco. Astra's job is to strengthen them so that they can adapt to high-intensity use. In order to highlight the brand characteristics, the front mask of the vehicle was replaced with Astra's own style. Whether it looks good or not depends on your opinion. Above the right side of the bullpen, there is a forward searchlight fixed to enhance the lighting effect.
The roof of the vehicle is equipped with bar-shaped warning lights and two LED searchlights, and a stainless steel frame is added to play a protective role.
The vehicle uses steel bumpers and embedded headlights and fog lamps. On the left and right of the headlights, there are also blasting lights and LED searchlights protected by red protective nets, plus the main headlight protection net, which is very complete. An additional steel bullpen is installed on the front bumper, and a circle of red and white striped warning signs are surrounded by a circle of red and white stripes to protect the front face of the vehicle.
The blasting flash light and searchlight protected by the red protection net searchlight
bumper is equipped with a hydraulic winch at the front of the bumper , with a pulling force of 10 tons. Below the winch , there are two vertical rubber strips , which play the role of a low-end barrier shovel, and are used to push the obstacles in the front of the vehicle.
on the cab door, paste the vehicle's model logo. The model of this Astra chassis is HD9 8854, which means the vehicle adopts an 8x8 drive configuration, equipped with a 540-hp Iveco Cursor 13 engine, and the maximum torque of reaches 2350 Nm. The gearbox configuration has not been announced, but referring to Astra's official information, the HD9 model can be selected as the ZF Ecosplit manual transmission, the ZF AS-Tronic automatic transmission and the Allison HD 4700 series transmission. ZF gearbox can also be used with WSK series torque converters, the first choice for large-piece cars.
The vehicle uses an Iveco axle, and Iveco's steel seal can also be seen on the bridge shell. In addition to the Iveco axle, the HD9 model also has a heavy axle from Kessler, Germany.
There is a small window below the side window of the cab to enhance the visual performance. The upper area is after the cab. The rear baffle is equipped with hydraulic oil tank , oil radiator and other equipment. The overall design of the
top is very compact, and Amp perfectly combines his experience in wrecker manufacturing with the Astra off-road chassis. The wreck-clearing vehicle arm structure has been specially designed. With the support of hydraulic system , the support arm connection can be unlocked and twisted up and down to meet the needs of rescue vehicles under off-road road conditions. In order to better utilize the vehicle's space, Amp has designed multiple storage compartments on the side of the vehicle, with LED lighting on the storage compartment doors to enhance work safety in dark light conditions.Amp said: The rescue tools installed inside the storage compartment adopt RFID technology, which can clearly see the status of each tool on the management system to avoid loss.
The front legs of the vehicle are installed above the second shaft. The rear parking hoe can achieve stable parking and facilitate the work of the crane installed in the middle of the vehicle body. Two winches with ten tons of tension are installed on the crane. These two winches are arranged at the end of the boom, which has the effect of counterweight.
vehicles were ordered by the Kuwait Fire Department, and the words and logo of Kuwait fire force are on the boom and on the equipment cabin behind the cab. Since the vehicle will be used mainly in the desert, the vehicle is equipped with large-size ultra-wide off-road tires to disperse the pressure. In addition, the vehicle is also equipped with an automatic charging and deflation system to quickly adjust the tire pressure. In addition, the vehicle is equipped with enhanced frames, dual-stage air filters and other configurations provided by Astra, which are more suitable for the use of sand and dust in desert areas. The vehicle is built with stainless steel to enhance its resistance to fabrication. This is the requirement of Kuwait customers, after all, they don’t care about how lightweight the vehicle is. The more resistant the manufacturing, the better.
Read more about the central charging and deflation system, its gas path is exposed, and the risk of damage is high. Now the industry has a hidden charging and deflation pipeline design, such as an integrated design of toothelli, which is worth referring to. The rear axle adopts multi-leaf spring suspension, and the load-bearing capacity cannot be underestimated.
The rear of the vehicle is designed with the vehicle's support arm. When the support arm is spread, it extends under the tire of the rescued vehicle. Fix the tire above and lifts it up, and the rescued vehicle can be towed away directly. The support arm is designed with stainless steel and has super high strength. To assist in the rescue work, the vehicle designed two hydraulic winches at the rear of the vehicle. One unit is 20 tons and the other unit is 35 tons, providing outstanding rescue capabilities.
rich configuration is the feature of the vehicle, which can be seen from the lighting configuration. The taillights and flash lights are installed in the red protection network, and the rear work lights and lighting lights are also installed. In addition, multiple pedals (above the work light and above the tail light) are designed at the rear of the car, and they are frosted and anti-slip surfaces. There is also the same design on the right side of
. In addition to the red car body, those black areas are the anti-slip frosted surfaces.
The vehicle hoe is installed below and uses hydraulic lifting to pierce into the ground, which can stabilize the vehicle. Strong hydraulic design allows it to drill through hard roads such as asphalt.
traction pin , hook, sling and other components of the vehicle are all customized by Amp and have extremely high strength. In order to store these spreaders, Amp has designed multiple stainless steel storage boxes with rolling doors and to improve work efficiency.
The rear of the car is full of views, rich lighting, neat warning stripes, and pleasing mechanical arrangement. Which man doesn’t like it after seeing it?
The above picture shows a vehicle that performs center of gravity measurement and cumulative test on the Amp test bench. This test is also a necessary test for vehicles manufactured by Amp when leaving the factory. This test can help engineers improve vehicle structure to reduce the center of gravity and enhance vehicle mobility. At the same time, this test will also affect the data calibration of the on-board electronic system.
Amp officially released the official makeup photo of the car on its official Facebook on September 5, but in mid-August, a blogger photographed the wreck truck in the port of Bremen, Germany. After counting, the vehicle should have arrived in Kuwait and delivered to the local department for use. For the unique configuration of vehicles, the desert is the world where it is fun. For more future news, let us look forward to it together! Thank you for reading this article! I also want to see more interesting and informative commercial vehicle content, don’t forget to follow us!
Text and pictures: heseaotter
