Urals! Crazy Russian motorcycles with sidecars. And, sometimes, a source of some crazy failures that just leave you scratching your head.
(Comments from Blogger)
2019-10-08 by Val
Nice writeup. I haven’t had that failure, but my dad’s '75 VW bus has the same pushrod OHV setup (as most 1950-70s cars had). The issue in that car was the threat of valve seats overheating and dropping into the head. I think that only happened once (I-5 grapevine to vacation in San Diego). Unfortunately, you have to pull the engine, unlike on a motorbike.
Do you have any opinions electric motorcycles? I’m currently a cyclist, ebike and not, but I used to ride a suzuki gs500. I told myself if I get back into motorbikes, it’ll be battery powered. They’re still pretty expensive, even used, and there aren’t any PHEV motorcycles 
2019-10-08 by Russell Graves
They’re staggeringly expensive for what you get, and the range is horrible at any sort of speed. If you are buying a dedicated commuter bike and don’t care about cost, I suppose one might make sense, but that’s about it. You can’t take them for any sort of long ride without spending hours and hours charging. They’re getting better, but they’re still just short ranged local bikes, as far as I’m concerned.
If you’re going to build your own, use an old CB750 frame or something, and you could probably cram in a lot of battery. I wouldn’t mind an electric Ural to use for runs into town and back (40-50 miles round trip at 55mph would cover my needs, though I’d need some extra range for headwinds), but that’s a long term project.
2019-10-09 by Unknown
What do you think of these 40v 96 cell A123 lipo packs from Canadian busses that are ~$80 a pack shipped in sets of 3 on ebay. At least that’s the offer I put in and was accepted. I repowered an Ezgo golf cart with 4 of them
2019-10-09 by Russell Graves
I have no idea what you’re talking about with those battery packs, so I have no opinion. Link or keywords to search for?
2019-10-10 by Unknown
Auction is named “3 used 40V (36V) block of 96 Cells 3,2v LiFePO4 26650 battery rechargeable 12s8p”
2019-10-10 by Aaron
Interesting Unknown. I did a bit of searching, found some info on them.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/3-used-40V-36V-block-of-96-Cells-3-2v-LiFePO4-26650-battery-rechargeable-12s8p/283350084967?hash=item41f8fb2d67:g:4WoAAOSw~ZJbg~~B
A forum poster here seems to imply not to bother, if you’re going to take them apart for cells. And seems to imply the “BMS” isn’t really much of a BMS, doesn’t control charging/discharging. https://secondlifestorage.com/showthread.php?tid=5451
I’m hesitatingly interested, although not sure I’d use these without some kind of real balancing BMS. I think I’d rather buy something from https://greentecauto.com/product-category/repurposed-batteries I can trust with their testing and find a BMS that can handle up to 50a discharge.