Clearwater Models: February 2022

ЗиЛ Завод имени Лихачева Д-470/ Д-204. Шнекороторный снегоочиститель на базе ЗИЛ-157

The ZiL D-470 was based on the ZiL-157 chassis and made into an airfield snowblower in 1958. With both engines running it could go nearly 80 km/hr, and had a mass of some 8.8 tonnes over a length of 8 m. It remained in production until 1986 at the Sewdormasch factory in Severodvinsk. A thousand were built in the first eight years alone. Later versions (the D-204) had their main gasoline engine removed and simply took all tractive power from the large (armour) tank engine in the rear housing. The final production version could clear up to 720 tonnes of snow per hour. The Soviets informally called this snowblower the Лось 'Moose'.

My wife very kindly bought the AVD kit as my christmas present. It arrived from St Peterburg Russia just in time. The only parts which were not up to standard were the rotary blades which needed a lot of body work to get rid of the seams. Base plastic is black, so everyhing is spray painted using body gloss orange and then snowblower matte red (Tamiya acrylics), along with blacks and greys and interior green. The decals look okay, and stick down nicely, but I was shocked to find out that all the decal images are printed on a single sheet of clear, so each has to be labouriously cut out and trimmed.

The axels and pins and the cabin itself are metal. All other parts are plastic. There is a single PE part for the security mesh screen on the rear window. There are a lot of (extra) clear parts for lights which do not go anywhere on this truck.

It is marked as an USSR airfield/airport snowblower from the 1960s. Imagine fleets of these moving through the darkness of a Soviet winter clearing runways and roads.

This Russian kit has much to recommend it (it is very unique), and much to hate (poor plastic, useless instructions, and a single uncut sheet with all decals printed on). But it has been a wonderful and fun build of something we Canadians can really appreciate - moving vast quantities of snow. In the dark of last night I watched a modern version of this technology clearing the massive snow piles from my road. Fascinating!

The build was fun but a bit of a nightmare (sort of Stalinist pleasure/pain) as the kit instructions are about as bad as can be. At least it has a lot of metal pins for securing the blower rig. After I photographed it I realized I had forgotten to add the snow, so the first five images were added later.