Just perfect! An 18 years old, battle-scarred dump truck, parked between two immaculate showstoppers. Dump trucks don’t have it easy, you know. They’re always carrying very heavy loads, under less than ideal road conditions. If there is a paved road at all.
Ginaf stands for Van Ginkel’s Automobielfabrieken and is a manufacturer of all kinds of special vehicles. For their heavy, street-legal on-/off-road trucks, the company relies on DAF components, most noticeably the cabs, engines, and drive axles.
The X refers to the DAF CF-series cab, whereas the letter S indicates that the truck has a steering rearmost axle. The number 4241 goes like this: four axles in total, two of them are drive axles, and the vehicle’s GVWR is 41 tonnes (90,390 lbs).
The 460 DIN-hp, 12.9 liter DAF turbodiesel meets the Euro 5 emission standards of yore. No further mention of the ZF 16-speed, synchronized manual transmission.
As per usual, the dump bed is equipped with solid covers. The truck’s registered payload capacity is 25 tonnes (55,115 lbs).
To put things into perspective, when fully loaded, the Ginaf weighs more than a trans-European combination vehicle in full swing (either a straight truck with a trailer or a tractor with a semi-trailer).
Two heavy-duty DAF planetary drive axles form the rear tandem. Ginaf increased the axle spacing and replaced the lower torque rods of the rearmost axle by hydraulic cylinders that push or pull, resulting in a counter-steering drive axle at the rear.
Ginaf’s speed-dependent, electronically controlled steering system -called EVS- was introduced in 1991. The advantages of the conversion are four tonnes extra gross weight rating and improved maneuverability.
In the foreground, the hydraulic cylinder on the truck’s right side.
And the left hydraulic cylinder.
Conventional, parabolic leaf springs on the straight front axles. Pictured above is the second axle.
Another specialty, the drive axles come with Ginaf’s HPVS, hydro-pneumatic suspension. First used in 1986. The suspension can also level out the truck, dumping a load of soil can be very tricky when such a heavy vehicle is standing on an uneven or unstable surface.
All these features, offered by one of the big truck makers? Just forget it.
The diesel tank capacity slightly reduced after this happened.
At the party, the Aldenzee Brothers mingled with some high-class guests….
….but I guess a fine glass of wine is still not their cuppa. Dutch standard language this ain’t, it says ‘troubles / have a few’. Cheers!
It’s interesting to me that a premiere manufacturer of very-heavy-duty vehicles both on- and off- road comes from The Netherlands, a place that one thinks of as being very….flat.
I guess the analogy in the U.S. is Florida, which has a lot of usage for AWD trucks because of the sandy soil, even though it is also very …. flat.
The lesson being is that a hill doesn’t have to be very high for it to be an obstacle if one has no traction.
A planetary tandem with a computer-controlled steering rear axle suspended by the equivalent of a super-heavy-duty Citroen-like system is … wild!
I guess Ginaf used to be controlled by a Chinese company but now its Dutch-owned again – congratulations and thanks for this article!
Setting soft soil apart, the key point here is essentially weight. A street-legal, straight 8×4 truck rated at 41 tonnes GVW (the latest even 43 tonnes) is sheer unthinkable in other countries.
That’s exactly the reason why such trucks are not offered by the Big Seven. There’s simply not enough market for them. They are all Dutch aftermarket conversions, done by Ginaf (DAF), Terberg Techniek (Volvo), Veldhuizen Wagenbouw (all brands) and WVT (Wierda Voertuig Techniek, MAN).
Have a look here for mucho examples:
https://veldhuizen.nl/voertuig-type/truck-modificaties/
Once you vehicle exceeds 50 Tonne here the road traffic people are quite particular about where you go some bridges on secondary roads are only 46Tonne rated.
As I understand it, rather than being a conventional steer-drive axle, a drive axle is used and the entire axle pivots for the (I imagine slight amount) counter-steering feature. Are double-cardan or constant-velocity joints used for the connection at the differential? Otherwise one might expect non-constant RPM’s at the input to the diff.
Yes, the whole rearmost drive axle pivots.
Here’s a 2003 brochure, in Dutch, but there are plenty of HPVS and EVS images and pictures:
https://www.ginaf.nl/pdf/drukwerk/vindingrijk%20in%20voertuigbouw/ginaf_voertuigbouw%202003.pdf
Very interesting rear steering and suspension setup Johannes – thanks for posting.
Nice, Ive driven a few DAF 8 wheelers that this began as, the steering rear axle is a nice idea, never had that on a rigid chassis here that I drove, tippers just use the original chassis.
The latest, rigid factory ‘8 wheelers’ are rated at 39 tonnes gross weight at best (those with 2 drive axles, that is), in which case 10 tonnes front steering axles are required.
Yet the conversion jobs by Ginaf and others still lead to a 4 tonnes GVWR bonus (so 43 tonnes GVWR for the truck), plus all the advantages that come with the counter-steering rearmost drive axle.
It’s interesting that hydropneumatic still exists for such extreme usage – and for military vehicles.
Cars seem to have switched to more vulnerable and inferior air bags. I think only McLaren uses it for anti-roll suspension.
The hydraulic RWS is imaGINAtiFe too! I do miss the electromechanical system on my 5G Prelude.
I got one new somewhere back in 1992 or so. Mine was a 3335, so a 6×6, with both the EVS and the HPVS systems. That truck was an absolute beast in rough terrain, we had some really large projects, our company being owned by one of the biggest dredging companies in the world. The trucks were regularly used as dumpers, and we would spend months driving off-road only with tire pressure reduced, never leaving the sand. Boring maybe, but for a group of guys between 20 and 30 years old, those projects were big playgrounds, and the sport was to see who could get deeper and further in the fresh sand with a full load. Being off-road ment no regulations or weight restrictions, so we normally would be at least 50 tons heavy, loaded with wet sand. Fun times, were the HPVS system was a real live saver to have, compared with others who did drive normal dumptrucks.
Playing in the sand box with a 1/1 scale toy truck, that must have been great! In those days, Ginaf and Terberg were the Kings Off The Road. And the first Ginaf 10×8, back in the eighties, was quite a revelation.