Zetor Crystal

[kevanos]

Renze, where were the Zetor Crystal tractors built? Czechoslovakia or Poland? (I know Crystal is Polish...)

Thanks in advance!

[eppie]

Zetor Crystal 8011 and 8045 were designed and built in Brno, Czechoslovakia.
Some Ursus engineers were interned in Brno from 1964 to 1968 because Ursus (and its incorporated companies) would build the rear axle, as well as the power steering.
The front axle was built at Universal Traktors in Brasov, Rumania. This axle however, was also a Zetor design because the kingpin bearings and wheel stubs were identical to the smaller front axle which Zetor used under the UR1 range.
The clutch housing, oil pump and PTO compartment were also machined in Brno, but the main transmission was built by Povaszke Strojarne in Slovakia.

In the late 70's because of international agreements, the arms production should be decreased. Because of this, the communist central office ordered that Zetor transferred the heavy engine production from Brno to ZTS Tees in Martin, Slovakia, in 1976 or 1978, because these folks had no more T-72 tanks to build under license from the Russians. In 1981 the whole production of the UR2 range was transferred to ZTS in Martin.

After the fall of the communism in central Europe, ZTS died an agonising death because they hadnt updated the, at the time of introduction, state of the art tractor range for allmost 30 years.
HTC holding, the current owner of Zetor, bought Povaszke Strojarne transmissions in the early 90's but shut it down later.
Since 1985 another company in Poland started to supply Ursus with the components that used to come from Czechoslovakia.
When Ursus was struck by the same fate as ZTS and was bleeding to death because of lack of funds and collapsing markets, this company started to assemble their own tractors from their own parts production, together with UTB built front axles, and Martin Diesel engines. (the engine division of ZTS Tees was split off to become Martin Diesel)
Because of the well known surname Crystal for this range of tractors, they chose Crystal as their trade name.

The only tractor Ursus ever developed, were never produced. They licensed the IHC Titan on teh 1920's, after WW2 the Germans gave them Lanz Bulldog blueprints as war damage payment, then the C-325, C-328 and C-330 were direct copies of the Zetor 25A, the C-4011 was a Zetor 4011 as well as its successors, the smaller series in the late 80's were MF licenses and the big ones were developed by Zetor.
ZTS was also a licensee, they built T-72 tanks from Russian drawings, excavators and loaders from Hanomag and Poclain licenses, so it was really not surprising that these two companies with absolutely no development experience, couldnt keep this range of tractors up with the competition.

[Farmer from Finland]

Here was marketed Ursus from Poland and Zetor from Chech.
Technically Zetor 8045 and Ursus 385 were same(as example),only difference was colour and assembly place...

[eppie]

Oct 6, 2010 20:21:29 GMT 1 Farmer from Finland said:

Here was marketed Ursus from Poland and Zetor from Chech.
Technically Zetor 8045 and Ursus 385 were same(as example),only difference was colour and assembly place...

...and the cab doors: Zetor had the hinges on the front side, Ursus had the hinges on the back side of the doors..