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Gaz69 the Jeepski


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Just to get the pact under way, I owned this Jeepski for around 3 years... then I got married and moved... to a house where, if I wanted to use the garage, the roof had to come off For the eagle eyed amongst you that is a rover V8 in the load bed, I was toying with the idea of a transplant but decided it would be a shame to do that to such a nice vehicle.

 

 

I have to say it was a very useful vehicle, I used it to carry equipment around my nature reserve, it never got stuck in areas where ford rangers and navaras fear to tread

.

Shown above doing light easy work, there never seemed to be a camera around when it was chucking it down with rain.

 

Regards rog8811

roof off03.jpg

roof off04.jpg

gaz07.jpg

gaz04.jpg

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though I hear engine wise they are a bit unreliable

 

This one had the side valve engine, it always ran when I needed to use it. I have only driven this one and "fast" it isn't, not sure if it is typical of the breed.

I used to take it to work occassionaly, a 60mile round trip, the only time it let me down was when the dynamo failed, luckily I had a spare battery on board which got me home..

 

I had to rebuild the starter motor and the dynamo, that was about it.

Switch gear is poor, before I set off I would flick the indicators on and off a dozen times or so to be sure they would work when I needed them,

 

Regards rog8811

Edited by rog8811
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Nice original Gaz you have there. It still has the sidelights and the "warthog" tow hooks on it. The ex-NVA ones miss those features.

 

The Gaz are very off-road capable and a lot more comfortable on bad roads than a Land Rover due to their soft suspension.

 

The Gaz factory in Gorki was founded by Ford in the 1930's.

 

Here is mine:

 

 

mygaz.JPG

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Nice original Gaz you have there. It still has the sidelights and the "warthog" tow hooks on it. The ex-NVA ones miss those features.

 

The Gaz are very off-road capable and a lot more comfortable on bad roads than a Land Rover due to their soft suspension.

 

The Gaz factory in Gorki was founded by Ford in the 1930's.

 

Here is mine:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]22414[/ATTACH]

 

The red star on the "original" is really a no-no! From my observations on the transit Autobahn to Berlin, Soviet "B" and civilianised vehicles had a white circle with a miniscule red star and "CA" (cyrillic SA) on the doors. Love the NVA version.

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The NVA did a rewire on the Gaz69 but unfortunately no diagram seems to be available. They put in a lot more fuses than it would have had originally.

 

My Gaz does not retain the original side-valve engine but has a S-21 OHV engine out of a Polish Zuk van. It is pretty much a bolt in replacement and it has 10bhp more than the sv engine.

 

The Gaz69 was only manufactured at the Gorki factory for a couple of years. It then moved to Uljanovsk. This explains why most of the Gaz69's have "Uaz" on the front and not "Gaz".

Edited by Eastblock
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  • 2 weeks later...

Looks good, is that a new canvas I see? I think they must use vegetable dye on them, in three years I saw mine go from that colour to light brown... even though it spent a lot of time under cover.

 

Regards rog8811

gaz02..jpg

Edited by rog8811
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yes and they are made of tissue paper, mine fell apart on the trip from poland...needs a new one completely so will try to get one from the czech republic when i go over...trouble is mines a 4 door too and these have to be done individually to each vehicle so i can not order one off the shelf...

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My canvas is indeed a new old stock one, but I don't think it is of the same make as yours, as probably the shade of green is distorted on the photograph. As many other details tell (and indeed my uniform :-D) my vehicle is in East German finish and the canvas is a DDR product. I think there were different cloths used in the DDR for these canvases, and some have a laminated shiny finish, which I strongly suspect to be the "self'destructing-material" we DDR collectors dread, but I have never seen one up close. Mine is different. I have noticed that in Germany, the Gaz69s retain the DDR canvases even when the entire vehicle is converted/restored to Soviet colours. Occasionally DDR canvases appear on Ebay.de and they fetch SERIOUS money. I once had a chat with the guys of Trapper Industries and they say that an original Russian canvas has a life span of a couple of years at most, regardless of treatment, but that DDR ones were better.

This is not to say that it is all hunky-dory :cry: as the canvas of a four door vehicle is really difficult beast to fit...

Backforum.jpg

it is SOOOO tight that every single time that the frame is put up or taken down the entire back must be loose. That means that I cannot do as it was originally intended and nail the canvas to the sides, but I need instead a way of undoing and re-doing it fast. I used turn-buckle fittings. I also added an extra strip of material to gain precious centimetres and strengthen the fabric. Four turn-buckle on the side and one round the corner at the back. This way I can take the canvas up or down on my own. Before it could only be done with four men with three hands each... as the front would never fit properly on the windscreen frame, given how tight the canvas is.

Edited by iannima
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I have published these photographs before on another forum, but there the interest is not so much historical. I have noticed a couple of people who obviously are also members there, so I do apologise to them for the repetition. Perhaps others on this forum will find these of interest :cheesy:

besides having obtained a new section of the forum dedicated to Warsaw Pact vehicles, it is only appropriate to beef it up with new posts, and what better way to start than with the beloved Gaz 69? :-D

 

In East German service the two basic photographs reproduced in all manuals are these:

2 door (obviously intended for radio too given the aerials):

post-89-1160557569.jpg

4 doors (one of only two photographs available... :cry: )

post-89-1160516425.jpg

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This is rather old. It has surfaced in a batch of old photographs dating back to the first Berlin Wall in 1961.

Gaz69VP.jpg

Probably taken somewhere in Berlin. The VP on the numberplate stands for Volkspolizei (=People's Police) as the border guards at the time were still technically a police force (Deutsche Grenzpolizei)

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This one I have scanned from one of the many coffee table books of photographs that the DDR produced to celebrate its armed forces and their fraternal comrades:

Gazparade.jpg

It probably shows a parade after(or before) one of the joint exercises which the Warsaw Pact routinely did for propaganda purposes more than for anything else. The Soviets are in the vehicle first on the left. The Poles at the extreme right. The second vehicle from the left I presume to be the Czechoslovak but I have doubts as neither the uniforms nor the flag are that clearly identifiable.

The East Germans are obviously to the left of the "Czechs". Notice how they are actually riding in a 2 door Gaz unlike all the others. The NVA had very few Gaz 69A like mine. The records show only 95 held in 1991 as opposed to over 700 2 doors. So presumably on this occasion they found themselves short of one of the 95 like mine, and they had to match the others...

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The Gaz was also used by the paratroopers but these are very special ones...

14js-a9.jpg

...as they belong to one branch of the Stasi guards regiment.

Notice the NOTEK blackout light on the fender. Very much a feature carried over from Wehrmacht vehicles. The later headlight covers that clip open, which we probably all know, are part of the Nachtmarschanlage 74 (=night convoy arrangement) introduced in 1974 and implemented over a number of years.

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Gaz69AMotorwechsel.jpg

 

It obviously is an engine change in the field, but it is important to me as it is practically the ONLY other photograph (aside from the manuals' one at the top) of a Gaz69 A in NVA service. It can only be identified as a 4 door one by the bolt with which the canvas is attached to the top of the windscreen.

 

The truck is obviously a URAL with a crane

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This really should not count as being in East German service any more, although the officer IS East German. It comes from some photographs acquired by a fellow collector of uniforms from the family of the officer. He probably was observing a Soviet exercise. It is of interest that he is wearing the much rarer 1960s field uniform for officers with subdued insignia. These uniforms are VERY rare and fetch some money on Ebay... :shock: The German heritage (Reichswehr and Wehrmacht) of the uniform is obvious.

 

gr123.jpg

 

The vehicles I think are Soviet. A white stripe is visible on the canvas of the 2 door one. It was used as a recognition device during exercises where all vehicles of one particular side would be marked with a white stripe across. I have seen footage of the Soviets convoys sent to suppress the Prague Spring in 1968 sporting such markings.

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This I guess is Soviet... but have no idea where... Afghanistan is one possibility but the Paratroopers (VDV) were the ones chiefly involved in the protracted Soviet engagement in Afghanistan and the VDV tended to have all the latest equipment which in this case would mean UAZ 469s rather than Gaz.

 

gaz-1-1.jpg

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