When Ken (the other Ural owner) came over, we also realized that one of our spark plugs was fouled (he gave us one of his spares), and that there was approximately a QUART of water in the transmission (which came squirting out of a hole when we started her).  We drained the transmission fluid (which looked like a latte – see photo) and the water (which literally gushed out) and replaced the transmission fluid (Ural motors actually use motor oil in the transmission.  Weird.).  Once we realized that the battery was not being charged by the alternator, we disconnected the headlight at Ken’s recommendation, as it’s the biggest draw of power other than the engine.  So long as we keep checking the battery level, we can drive her as she is (sans regulator and thus sans recharging) until the battery dies, which is about 100 miles on a Ural.  We’re keeping our spare battery in the sidecar trunk just in case. 

Water/transmission fluid draining from the engine.

Looks like a latte, doesn’t it?

The flanges (black seal on the left of the carburetor) have dry rot and will need replacing soon, or the engine will run too lean.

So, we have now ordered a new regulator, a new horn (the old one has rusted solid), some new air intake hoses (the ones we purchased were the wrong size), a new kill switch (since the old one fell off), some spare spark plugs, and some new flanges for the carburetors (the old ones have dry rot).  Amusingly enough, the Ural community is so tight-knit that the primary spare parts dealer (Holopaw Paul of Holopaw Corvette) works primarily on the honor system!  You tell him what you need, he sends it, and if it works, then you pay him.  If it doesn’t, you send it back, and he’ll send you something else that might work.  It’s kind of hilarious, but also awesome, as that way you don’t waste money on something that doesn’t work for your bike!  This sort of community-based attitude that Ural owners seem to collectively have is one of the things that really drew me to Urals.  Then again, I shouldn’t be surprised by the collectivism considering that it’s a community based around communist motorcycles!

We took Smutyanka out for her first real road driving yesterday.  Even though the regulator is kaput, we can still drive her based on the charge the battery already has, so we drove her around the neighborhood.  Though I have driven standard/manual vehicles all my life, Marc has relatively little experience with them, and our neighborhood is very hilly, so it was something of a trial by fire for him.  We drove over to his parents’ house, and we drove to the local family-owned grocery store to pick up some beer.  We also both just sort of drove randomly around the neighborhood for practice.  I really need to work on my arm strength – you really have to muscle that bike around, and I have a hard time with sharp turns.  Unlike a regular motorcycle, you can’t lean a sidecar bike, so you have to steer it, and unlike a car, you have to work against the fact that the sidecar wheel doesn’t turn with the front wheel (imagine turning your car if only your left front wheel turned and the other three were all in a fixed, straight position – not easy).  I did very well with shifting and clutch-work though, so that was good, and I only ran over one curb with the sidecar (it’s difficult to tell quite where the edge of the sidecar is, if you’re not used to it).  Marc did pretty well with his driving – he still has trouble knowing what gear to be in, and he has trouble kicking the shifters hard enough, but in general he did quite well for someone with very little clutch experience.  I think that our abilities could be summed up as that he’s better at steering the bike, and I’m better at driving it.

We did stall out the bike once, though, when we were trying to drive off from a stoplight that was on a hill.  We both jumped off the bike and pushed it over to the side of the road quickly, which I’m sure was quite an amusing sight for the folks behind us in the lane.  It was very reminiscent of a “Chinese fire drill”.  Unfortunately, because she doesn’t have an electronic ignition, when we stall out we have to push her to the side, because it takes at least 5 seconds to get her properly back into neutral and then started with the kick starter.  But, at least it’s amusing to watch.

I took a short video while we were driving through the neighborhood.  You can see what the view is like from the sidecar, and I also took a couple seconds of video of the scary, exposed shaft drive, for those of you who are mechanically inclined.  It’s very weird to sit in the sidecar, because you’re pretty low to the road, and you’re far enough away from the driver that you can’t hear a word either of you says.  Marc and I had to work out a hand signal system for me to let him know what gear he should be in, because shouting does nothing.  Anyway, here you go:

The other bit of good news is more like…potential good news.  As I wrote earlier today, something has been mysteriously draining our battery.  Thanks to a very helpful BMW & Ural mechanic on Soviet Steeds (who, indeed, has told us to call him in the future – for free – if there are any problems, since he has the same model and year we do), we may have found the problem without ever having to touch a wire:  there’s a hidden kill switch underneath the seat that you’re supposed to turn off each time you turn off the engine for more than an hour or two.  The mechanic we bought the bike from didn’t know about it, and so neither did we, and it has been on this entire time!  The general consensus seems to be that this is our problem, rather than a parasitic short on one of the wires.  I really hope that’s the case, because then it’s just user error rather than a mechanical problem.  Thankfully, it’s a pretty simple thing to check for, apparently, so we’ll be installing a newly-charged battery tomorrow (our spare) and we’ll go from there.

I hope that when we install the new (charged) battery and do the recommended tests, that the problem is indeed the switch, because if we wait much longer in the year to start riding, most of our riding is going to look like this:

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.

When she was delivered last Tuesday, she started up fine in the morning.  But, when we tried to start her that evening, it was just a lot of fruitless kicking, and she wouldn’t turn over.  We checked Soviet Steeds, and most folks said that it was likely a spark plug problem.  We wanted to see if it was possible to get the bike to run at all, and we bump started her by pushing her up the hill in our parking lot, then rolling her down it with me aboard, working the clutch.  It worked, and the next 2-3 times we tried to start her, she worked.

Then, things started to go downhill.  She would start on the first or second kick, but then once she was turned off, she wouldn’t start again.  We were stumped, though the Soviet Steeds folks said that it was likely something very simple that was the problem.  At this point, Smut’ka was only starting up for me, which frustrated Marc.  Ironically, it was his epiphany that helped us figure out what might be wrong.

He was riding Smut’ka around the parking lot, and since it was night, we noticed that the headlight and turn signals were getting dimmer and dimmer, and eventually they turned off altogether.  Then, 3 minutes later, the bike died and wouldn’t start again, no matter how many times we kicked the starter.  After a lot of frustrating attempts to bump start the bike again, we gave up and went back inside.

Friday morning, Marc realized that the dimming headlights pointed to an electrical problem, likely a battery problem.  Some inquiries into the forums yielded similar responses.  We checked the battery with a voltmeter and the already low numbers were decreasing before our eyes.  So, we removed the battery and took it to Crossroads Cycles to have it charged.  We sat at the shop for an hour while the battery charged (while we waited, Marc poked around in the tobacco shop next door and I scrutinized the original BMW R-71 they’re working on in the shop), and the mechanic there was not optimistic about the battery.  Most batteries charge in 45 minutes or less, and by the time we left, we had been there almost half an hour longer, and it was still going.  Thankfully, the guys at that shop are awesome (and get props for actually knowing about Urals), and agreed to let the battery just continue charging, so we went home.  The guys called back yesterday to say that the battery did eventually charge and has shown no signs of degrading, but we felt it was best to buy a new battery anyway and keep that one as a backup.

Today we went down to Batteries Plus and picked up a new battery (dry cell this time since wet cell batteries don’t do well with the vibration of a motorcycle), and after a little bit of frustration surrounding the fact that the engineers who designed this bike seemed to forget that people have fingers (there is so little room around the battery terminals it isn’t even funny), we got it installed.  Sure enough, it starts up pretty reliably now.  Sometimes on the first kick, sometimes on the 15th, but for a Ural, that’s pretty much normal behavior.  Ironically, Smut’ka now seems like like Marc better than me, as she is now starting for him more often than me.

We’re hoping that the dead battery was the source of our starting problems, and that we can have at least a couple decent rides before something else goes wrong.  We need a new air intake tube on the left side, which we will have to order online, but thankfully we can install it ourselves as it’s just pressure fitted with the metal equivalent of zip ties.  The current tube works, but is very tenuously attached (though even when un-attached, it still vaguely makes a seal), and since a gunky engine is way more trouble than replacing a rubber hose, we’ll be doing that sooner rather than later.

The next step is to buy helmets.  Marc isn’t sure what he wants yet, but I’m looking at the Nolan Trilogy.  It is modular and thus can be worn as a full face helmet for riding in traffic, etc, or you can wear it as a 3/4 helmet if you’re just puttering around the countryside.  It seems like the best of several worlds, really.  I’ll be writing more about helmets later.