Goes the extra mile with ease.

"Configuring the Unimog was a major project," says Andreas Angenstein of the Unimog general distributor Ahlborn, which had received the order from the city of Magdeburg. "Ideally, the new vehicle should cover three areas of operation at once, each of which previously required individual vehicles," explains the regional manager, who was involved from the start. "We sat down with the bodybuilders at the round table and tried to find the best possible solutions for the civil engineering department's requirements."

The challenge of tailoring the Unimog to fit took almost a year. As varied as the tasks of the civil engineering department are, the Unimog should ideally be equally versatile: in addition to cleaning the tunnel walls in Magdeburg, numerous tasks arise around the bridges and their access roads on the banks of the Elbe. Also to be taken into account were material transport to and from construction sites during maintenance and restoration work and when dredging riverbanks or ditches.

With the new Unimog U 527, only one base vehicle now needs to be maintained, refuelled and stored, but it does the work of three. It has 270 hp and a long wheelbase of 3,900 mm. In the design phase, the aim was to combine the various applications so that all the bodies could fit on the Unimog using a single system – not an easy task: "Some manufacturers use the drive from their own vehicle hydraulics for this, another uses the engine power take-off and yet another makes use of the power-take-off transmission of the Unimog, which can deliver up to 160 kW," explains Andreas Lein, Head of Application Technology at Ahlborn. "Hiab suggested using the familiar twist-lock system. No sooner said than done."

For bridge maintenance and repair, for example, an elevating work platform from the Danish manufacturer Versalift can be mounted via the twist-lock system. This elevating work platform has a maximum working height of 18.5 m and a lateral reach of up to 11 m. civil engineering office employees can carry out their work within a slewing range of up to 420°. In addition, the basket itself can rotate 85° in both directions. The work basket can carry up to 230 kg and comfortably accommodates two people for working. The entire system is driven by the Unimog's on-board hydraulic system via the second hydraulic circuit. Thanks to an equipment box with roller shutters and an internal Sortimo system, tools and carried materials can be stored securely.

In addition to the Versalift elevating work platform, a crane and a flatbed from bodybuilder Hiab are also accommodated on the Unimog U 527's Twistlock system. The flatbed is used for transporting materials and construction waste to and from sites, while Hiab's crane serves as a loading aid and, with its integrated winch, also provides additional support at hard-to-reach locations. Also useful is the option to fit a two-shell grapple to the crane to perform small excavation tasks. In this way, the Unimog incidentally replaces another construction vehicle.

Speaking of construction sites – the Magdeburg City Tunnel will be completed in 2022 and, together with the two existing tunnels, will fall under the responsibility of the civil engineering office. Here too the new Unimog will take on its third major field of operation: cleaning tunnel walls. For this purpose, Mulag's MFK 500-T tunnel washing unit will be mounted on the Unimog. This includes a 5,000-liter water tank plus a high-pressure pump, a detergent system, and a 30-m high-pressure hand spray gun.

"In order to be able to give the civil engineering department staff optimal instruction, the city even closed a tunnel one evening specifically," reports Andreas Lein. Ahlborn attached particular importance to the comprehensive briefing of the civil engineering department staff who would be driving the Unimog. "We took three days just for the Unimog as the base vehicle, and one and a half days for each of the attachments," says Andreas Angenstein. There is still an active exchange to this day: "The civil engineering department reported back that the Unimog is even more versatile than planned. It is now also used to remove graffiti and to clean the noise barriers, which was originally not envisaged in the concept."

It is no surprise that the all-rounder so thoroughly lives up to its name as a universal motor device. But it is always an extremely positive experience for everyone who works with it.