ditas.r52.ru — the site of the Nizhny Novgorod auto center "DITAS," which handled repair and diagnostics of fuel equipment for automotive and tractor engines. As the home page stated, the auto center "has for more than ten years been the official representative of Russian automobile plants for the production of fuel equipment for automotive and tractor engines in Nizhny Novgorod"[2]. The address given on the site was: Nizhny Novgorod, Kuzbasskaya Street, building 1[2]. The first snapshot of the home page in the web archive is dated May 1, 2003[1], and the last snapshot with site content is dated October 17, 2013[3].

What the site looked like

The site was arranged as a compact business card for a service enterprise. The menu led to the sections "About the Company," "Service," "Spare Parts," and "Contacts," and under "Service" separate pages were listed by type of work: "Repair of Common Rail systems," "Repair of fuel pumps and injectors," "Repair of electronically controlled injectors," "Diagnostics and repair of Steyr," "Engine diagnostics and repair," "Ultrasonic cleaning of gasoline injectors"[2]. Visitors were offered a general price list for goods and services as a downloadable ZIP archive[2].

The contact block was placed right on the home page: under the caption "phone / fax" were listed the numbers 8-908-747-1-777, 274-85-63, 274-85-80, 276-17-23, and 276-18-58, alongside the email address ditas@r52.ru on the same r52.ru domain[2]. The saved page text retained a fragment of a visit-counter script: it substituted the address of the open page and the referring source and set a cookie goon=1[2]. At the bottom of the page the text menu was duplicated, followed by a line reading "Design and hosting"[2].

What the auto center offered

The list of services on the home page described a business oriented simultaneously toward domestic and imported vehicles: maintenance and repair of domestic "Euro-3" fuel systems; maintenance and repair of high-pressure fuel pumps of "Common Rail" systems made by BOSCH, LUCAS, ZEXEL, and DENSO; repair of electronically controlled injectors (VOLVO FH12, SCANIA, IVECO); diagnostics, maintenance, and repair of unit injectors for the GAZ-560 engine and "Steyr"; computer diagnostics and overhaul of injector engines of domestic and imported manufacture; ultrasonic cleaning of gasoline (injector) nozzles of all engine types[2]. The site named the repair of fuel equipment for domestic automotive and tractor machinery and the supply of spare parts for its maintenance as one of its main areas of activity[2].

A separate "Developments" block stated that the auto center's engineering team took part in introducing new fuel equipment models at factories: GAZ — mastering the "Steyr" equipment for the GAZ-560 engine and adapting BOSCH's "Common Rail" systems; the Kama Automobile Plant (KamAZ) — the "377" equipment; the Zavolzhye Motor Plant — the injector line (ZMZ-409 engine) and the diesel line (ZMZ-514 engine); the Yaroslavl Motor Plant — "Euro-3" equipment[2]. The site also reported having its own distribution network in Nizhny Novgorod, the Nizhny Novgorod region, Chuvashia, and Mordovia, giving a phone number in Chuvashia — (8352) 22-66-42 — and in Mordovia — (8342) 75-29-23[2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site occupied a subdomain in the r52.ru zone; it entered our materials through the nn.ru directory's category listing, where it was listed as "Auto Center 'DITAS'" and had no numeric rating shown. In our surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru counter, the domain does not appear, so its traffic and standing in the overall ranking of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet cannot be judged from our materials (on the collection methodology, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating). The domain is also absent from the surviving results table of the popular vote of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day — in the snapshot from late 2004[5].

How it closed

The snapshot from April 3, 2013, preserved the site in full — with the company description, the list of services, the developments block, and contacts[2]. In the snapshot from October 17, 2013, only the header, menu, and contact block remained of the page — the content section was no longer captured[3]. By May 2, 2015, the site's address served a service error page with the single line "Whoops. Error. 404."[4]; according to our archival data, requests to this address later redirected to 404.r52.ru. Thus, based on the surviving snapshots, the site can be traced from May 2003[1] to October 2013[3], and by May 2015 it was no longer at its address[4]. The fate of the auto center itself as a business cannot be traced from the surviving materials: only the trace of its site is available.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — First saved snapshot of the home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2013 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, October 2013 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Error page in place of the site, 2015 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 snapshot (archive)