I haven’t written much about the Urals lately (other than the petcock changes), mostly because there hasn’t been terribly much to write about. They’ve just been boring, more-or-less reliable transportation, as long as you don’t mind the occasional cylinder head or final drive replacement. But recently, I’ve done a few more things on the “old” Ural (a 2005, and my daily driver), so I thought I’d write them up some more recent notes. Hopefully you find them interesting, or, perhaps, even useful!
I’m breaking this post up into (at least…) five parts, because it has blowing past my nearly 11k word epic on lead acid batteries and I am trying not to do that sort of epic post quite as often lately. This week is some general Uraling notes. I’ll follow this up with several more posts on electrical gremlins, lighting upgrades, and a range of mechanical work. Some of this is deferred maintenance I finally got around to, some is upgrades, and some is just general “life with a Ural.”
Notes on Ural Ownership and Personality
I’ve owned what is generally regarded as “one of the most distinctive and least reliable motorcycles of the past many decades” for over 8 years now, and have put some reasonable number of kilometers on, since this is my primary personal vehicle. Older vehicles have quirks. Urals have quirks. The combination… is unique. I’ve learned some of the “personality” from my particular Ural (a 2005 Gear Up) who came with the name Sasha. We have an understanding. Don’t leave me too terribly inconveniently stranded, and I won’t complain about the parts bill. I greatly appreciate that the cylinder head issues didn’t actually keep the bike from running. The one “catastrophic failure” I’ve had (the final drive decided it had a few too many teeth on the ring gear and set about resolving this issue) was close enough to a friend’s place that I could limp the bike there (clank… clank…. clank…) and bum a ride home with the final drive in pieces in a bucket. As it turns out, the easiest answer was a newer final drive, versus trying to convert my Russian-seal final drive into something modern (my final drive was right on the boundary between “Russian seals” and “Modern metric seals” - but on the wrong side). I now have a 2013 final drive on my 2005 Ural. Usefully, this matches the final drive on the 2013! Spare parts you can swap around are valuable, and having a fleet of “broadly compatible” vehicles is a nice thing at times.
We do 50mph on the back roads. This is fine. Should I ask more, for any length of time, there’s a negotiation to be had, mostly involving Parts and Attention. I can do 60-65mph for a while, assuming the winds aren’t too badly against me and the terrain isn’t too hilly. I’m just going to cough up parts afterwards (and they’re likely to be entirely unrelated to the engine or drivetrain). Quite a bit of this series of posts is based substantially around a particularly nasty trek I made on what I thought were quiet back roads, that were really rather hilly 65mph two lane highways with a lot of truck traffic. I tried, very hard, to… well, I can’t say “keep up,” but “piss off people behind me as little as possible.” I mostly succeeded (including having run the engine out of gas rolling up a hill at wide open throttle before I was able to switch to reserve), and quite a bit of the rest of this series of posts is the consequences of doing that sort of thing on this particular bike.
Can I explain it in any detail? Nope. Is it a thing? Certainly. I’ve seen it in enough different vehicles, in enough different ways, over an awful lot of years of rolling around in screwball vehicles, to just learn to expect it. The question isn’t “Does the vehicle have a personality?” The question is, “What is the personality, and what does it require of you?” Learn these things, you’ll have an easy enough arrangement. Refuse to learn them, and someone like me will buy the “unreliable pain in the rear” off you for little more than scrap value, work out the details, drive it for an awful lot of miles, and probably sell it to someone else in far better shape than I bought it.
I’m not claiming vehicles have a “consciousness” - but neither have I found suitably complex mechanical devices to behave in ways I consider entirely mechanical. A car has a personality, and a way it prefers to be driven - if you’ve ever tried to drive one car exactly like another and had the car rebuke you, you know what I’m talking about. A 20 year old Russian motorcycle, based heavily on an 85 year old BMW, is quite a bit more complex. Trips will be made. And parts will flow. Such is the circle of daily driving a 2005 Ural.
Notes on Ural Delay Factor
In late 2024, the UDF (Ural Delay Factor) is back. Sometime mid-2020, it disappeared almost entirely. It returned around the 4th of July, 2024, by my notes. If you’re not familiar with that particular acronym, “Ural Delay Factor” is the term applied to the reality that no matter where you stop, someone wants to talk to you about the bike. Often enough, they’re wondering what kind of Harley it is. People who know a bit more are certain it’s an ancient BMW until you point out the front disc brake and electronic ignition. Lots of people are genuinely clueless but curious, and, on rare occasions, you get someone who knows exactly what it is! Usually this person speaks English, but I’ve recently had the pleasure of watching an elderly Ukranian gentleman, who spoke almost no English, with a very cute little snake wrapped around his hand, just baffled that I had a Ural (pronounced in the proper Russian way - “ooral”) in Idaho. This is part of Ural ownership, and if you’re not okay with it, don’t ride a Ural. Just expect that everywhere you stop, someone will ask you some question or another. You cannot be in a hurry on this bike. Also, the handling will try to kill you if you’re in a hurry. Leave extra time and life is fine.
What’s been genuinely surprising to me lately is the rise in on-road interactions. People will roll down their windows at stoplights to comment that they like the bike. The weirdest encounter on that front was while waiting at a railroad crossing for a slow moving (and very long) freight train - someone got out of their car to come back and talk to me about the Ural. All this has increased in the post-2024 UDF, because I’ve never had this amount of interaction before. It’s fine, but it also means that I’ll often enough park somewhere else and walk if I don’t feel like talking about the bike. The good news is that with a Ural, you’re “That Guy.” The slightly annoying news is that you literally cannot be “Not That Guy.” But also, it’s pretty satisfying showing up to a group ride as one of two not-V-Twin-Cruisers, and getting all the attention. Speaking of…
Group Rides
I’ve tried a few group rides again this year. I’ve concluded that a “group ride” with a Ural, at least in a blend of Harleys and similar cruisers, works out to a good excuse to go for a solo ride along a roughly predefined route. I can’t keep up with the other people on the straights, I can’t corner with them (at least not safely by my standards), and I don’t want to flog the Ural hard enough to try for long. I’m sure there are some people happy with a 50mph cruise, slowing significantly for corners, and gentle off the line, but the group rides I’ve attempted this year in the Treasure Valley just aren’t them. If I have enough distance, calm winds, flat terrain, and want to flog the bike, I might be able to hit 65mph. I can’t keep up with people who rapidly accelerate to 70 and cruise on. Yes, this is weird for a former Buell 1125R owner to say, but this is the bike I ride right now.
I’ve no objections to showing up for a good cause, doing my own thing for the day, and showing up for the end of ride raffle, but even the trike guys cruise faster than I can sanely do these days. It’s not worth the effort to try and keep up, when I simply can’t.
Wardrobe Upgrades
Related to the Ural Delay Factor, I’ve surrendered to it at this point, and I’ve picked up a couple of Ural specific shirts to wear out and about if I feel like being social. They certainly make it easier to find the person to ask about that weird bike parked outside!
I’ve had people show up in certain smaller pubs and go person to person, asking literally everyone who owns that bike outside until they find me and ask me questions about it (which, often enough, includes “Do you want to sell it?” No, of course not, it’s my car!). Both of these shirts capture the reality of Ural ownership. It’s hard to ride any distance without a silly grin, because the rig is so absurd in so many ways. And while you’re not fast, you are unquestionably the coolest vehicle on the road! Though I think it might be a tossup between a Ural and a 1930 Willys…
Tire Changes
One of the major downsides of the Ural is that they go through pusher tires (the “motorcycle” rear tire) like you wouldn’t believe (if you get 5000 miles, you’re doing exceptionally well). It’s a skinny tire, heavily loaded, and it wears like it. I don’t like to go into winter with bald tires, and I decided to be clever this year. There’s a harder wearing tire I’ve found that is fine in the summer, but (as I learned last winter, on the other Ural) it’s dreadful in the snow. Doesn’t grip at all. The normal tires I run are pretty good in the snow, but don’t last very long. I also have this spare tire that has been running a weird rounded profile scooter tire that’s totally fine as a spare - but this year, I’ve decided to solve my problem. I’m putting the hard wearing tire on one wheel, and the “grips snow well” tire on the spare! When the weather turns, I’ll swap them (which takes all of about 10 minutes), run the good winter tire in the winter, and then swap them back in the spring! Yes, this pusher tramlines on grooved concrete like you wouldn’t believe…
Siped, lugged, and squiggled. This one does just fine in the snow and ice!
Tire changes are one of fairly few things I don’t do - I can, given enough time and cursing, but I’m not good at it, I don’t have the machinery to be quick at it, and I tend to put holes in tubes when I try. Unfortunately, I’ve been having a hard time finding competent shops to do tire changes for me. I used one for a while, until I learned it was rather more closely attached to some of the local 1% motorcycle clubs than I’d prefer. Another one worked for some years, but as they’ve completely screwed up the last four tire changes I took there, I wasn’t going back. I called around and found no shortage of places that would change tires on the “Well, drop them off, we’ll get to them when we get to them…” sort of schedule, and that’s also a problem for me right now, because this is my transportation!
Throughout most of the world, motorcycles are viewed as transportation. In America, they’re viewed as recreational toys, and the attitude shows in a lot of the shops. Of course you can just drop stuff off, and wait until they have time to get to it! You’ve got a car (well, truck, if you own a motorcycle) and other ways of getting around, obviously, so it’s no problem. Anyway…
I finally found a shop in Nampa that understood my constraints and was happy to schedule me for a Friday morning, with the understanding that I actually wanted the tires changed while I waited. It’s a KTM dealership, but a big spoked wheel is a big spoked wheel, and dirtbikes tend to have big spoked wheels! I showed up with the new tires bungee corded to the tire rack, took the spare in, and proceeded to pull the pusher off. This isn’t a big deal with a center stand, though I will suggest that putting the rear wheel up on a random chunk of 2x4 makes getting the bike on the center stand rather more trivial than it otherwise is. Without the 2x4, it’s a lot of grunting and lifting. With the rear wheel on a 2x4, a rather gentle tug (relatively…) on the footpegs while standing on the center stand pops the bike right up!
KTM Moto One in Nampa. Great guys! Not only did they get both tires changed in about an hour, they asked what pressure I wanted in them (I’ve never been asked that before, I always assume it’s wrong and I go air them up myself), and as one of the new tires is directional, whereas the old ones weren’t, the guy doing the work came out and made sure that he was installing it in the proper direction for where that wheel mounted on the bike. Plus, it cost a good bit less than I expected! I will absolutely keep using them for tire changes, because this sort of service is rare these days. Thank you guys, so much! They also stock a range of Amsoil products for motorcycles.
I Ride Year Round!
Beyond the UDF, this year I’ve had a lot of conversations with people who don’t quite understand the concept that I ride year round. Yes, “year round” includes winter. I don’t have a “riding season,” though I am always entertained in the spring to see people out wobbling around on underinflated tires. I have a Russian motorcycle that is statically stable and has two wheel drive - I can lock in the sidecar wheel for slick conditions and get through about 6” of snow without too much trouble if I have to, which covers the bulk of winter out here.
The secret of winter riding, beyond “a Ural,” is just good riding gear - and depending on temperatures, heated gear. I’ve been riding for 20 years now, and I ride in the cold. Anything over 40F is totally fine - I am good for unlimited distance just on insulation. From 20-40F, insulation works pretty well, but it starts to run into problems eventually. I’ve done long distance rides at 20F when well insulated, and I still end up “motorcycle cold.” From 0F to 20F, best keep the ride short. Or, better, have heated gear. This is just some of my collection of riding gear that I use as needed - liners, rain coats, a variety of gloves, insulated riding pants.
I layer up. The key in the cold is that anything outside the windproof layer is worthless. You need a windproof layer on the outside. For me, this is either a layer directly under my mesh riding jacket, or a solid plastic rain/snow suit over the top. Below that, I add insulation as needed, put the heated vest on the inside, plug in, and go. It’s fine. I’m planning to add some better hand guards, though.
What about the peak of summer? I have a vest and backpack that circulates chilled water. Put a windproof layer on the outside or you spend a lot of energy cooling the local airstream, but I genuinely can ride year round on a Ural. I just try not to ride in the peak heat of the day - not only do I not care for it, the bike doesn’t particularly like the heat. Stop and go, in peak summer heat, is a good way to end up contributing parts.
Uraling an Iron Butt
Do you like good motorcycle stories? What about someone taking the first 750 Ural Solo (the version without a sidecar) in America, on an extended Iron Butt rally? Quotes from the factory tech include, “Just find metal, make pushrod.” Many define “Adventure riding” as taking inappropriate equipment to out-of-the-way places, and a Ural, on an Iron Butt rally, certainly qualifies!
https://www.longhaulpaul.com/archives/against-a-slight-breeze/
Well worth the read.
Random Other Suggestions
At speed, the sidecar tarp will flap in the wind and eventually start coming apart at the corners (this corner, flapping freely, bangs into the shovel mount). A hard drive magnet does a great job of keeping things well secured. Three works well - one for the back right, one for the back left, and one for the center right (down below the passenger opening) seems to keep the tarp a lot more firmly in place at speed.
And you want the windshield raked enough to get full wind blast in your helmet. Not only does it clear fog better in cooler weather, it’s far quieter than your helmet being buffetted around. Also, I swear I just had someone wash this bike… not that you can tell from the bug splatters on the front of the sidecar. There was a charity bike wash, so I showed up and donated a bit extra because I have a lot more square feet of metal than most bikes.
Anyway, so far, so good! My 2005 Ural continues to be a good way to get around, and a great excuse to explore new backroads between two points!
If you've found this post useful, insightful, or informative, why not support me on Ko-fi? And if you'd like to be notified of new posts (I post every two weeks), you can follow my blog via email! Of course, if you like RSS, I support that too.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.sevarg.net/2024/12/21/ural-notes-part-1-general