Good News and Bad News

The Bad:

It’s always something with a Ural, and Smutyanka is no different.

We had her up and running for two weeks, and we thought that the source of our problems was a dead battery.  As it turns out, we were half-correct.  We did indeed have a dead battery, but what we didn’t realize is that we also have an electrical short somewhere in the bike that is leeching power from the battery even when the ignition is off.

Yesterday we had some friends over, and we were going to take them out for a spin around the parking lot, but she wouldn’t turn over.  Not even a hopeful “put put”.  We tried to bump start her twice, once in 1st gear, once in 2nd.  No dice.  We checked the battery with our voltmeter and…it’s dead.  4 volts.  Considering that this was a brand new, dry cell battery, the only explanation for this is that something in the electronics is causing a parasitic drain on the battery.

The electronics on a Ural are relatively primative, but they’re also a rats nest.  The folks on the forum seem pretty sure we should be able to find the source and fix it ourselves, but it’s going to be annoying as it’s going to be a lot of trial and error.  At least by the time we’re done we’ll know a lot more about Smutyanka’s electrical system!

The Good:

For a certain period in Ural history, many of the bikes were fitted with a 35amp alternator with a terrible reputation for dismantling themselves while in use.  The Ural community has nicknamed these alternators the “Russian Grenade”, because when they go, they tend to drop pieces into the engine, thus also destroying the engine.  While some of these alternators end up being fine, most do fall apart, and so owners with those alternators tend to try and replace them with something better.  For the mechanically inclined among you, here’s an example of the inside of the “Russian Grenade” alternators, post-explosion: Example 1 (Part 2), Example 2

Smutyanka is unfortunately from the period that had these installed, and we were concerned about this.  She has very low milage, so we figured that we had awhile before we would have to start thinking about replacing the alternator with something less likely to destroy the engine.

However, as a side effect of posting about our battery problems, it seems that folks think that we are one of the lucky ones that have a bike without a Russian Grenade alternator!  The general consensus seems to be that we have the 14amp alternator that is lower power but is much more stable and reliable.  I need to take a more detailed shot for the folks in the forum so they can be sure, but from looking at this shot, they seem to think we’ve dodged that bullet:

Thankfully Marc has two days off in a row this week, so hopefully we can get some work done on her in that time.  She also needs new air intake hoses (which we have), and we will probably do some general maintenance on her while we have her in pieces anyway.  My helmet should be arriving this week and I hope that maybe by next week we will have her up and running again.