Ural Chronicles VII 2022-07-08 update

Air pressure in your tires.  Check it.  Don’t trust knock Amazon valve caps that are supposed to show green-yellow-red when the pressure changes.  And we all know the air leaks out of the crappy Russian rubber. 

Russian rubbers… I wonder if those leak too?

My tires were waaay low as I thought the valve caps were working.  I had tested them when I put them on, and yes, the color changed when I bled the tires.  But in the Real World the tire leaked air and the valve cap stayed green.

I have a pump that connects to the battery lead but I found a gas station air pump and whoosh-whoosh-whoosh pumped them up.

It is amazing how much better the rig rides, doesn’t vibrate, gets better gas mileage.

Air.  It’s important.

2022-06-04

Air up your tires.

I store my rig for the New England winters at https://vaultmotorstorage.com/ in Merrimack NH. I don’t have a garage so I don’t want the Ural out in the elements all winter. I have a pop-up tent in the driveway for the season. It does adecent job, but has blown away on more than one occasion regardless of how I try to hold it down.

When I got the rig out of storage this year, I was worried about whether I’d have any issues. Vault has it on a trickle charge and they take good care of it while it is with them, but they don’t check the tires. As we all know the old saw about air and Ural inner tubes – What did the air say to the Russian rubber? Jut passing through. I had low but not flat tires. When airing them up with their pump, the sidecar would not hold air. It was leaking at the valve. It did put Dynabead in last year and one seemed jam the vavle stem. I did not want to have to change the whole tire with the spare so I pulled the valve from it instead. Worked fine. When I got the bike inspected for MA safety inspection, the nice guy at Rt 3A Motor in Chelmsford MA gave me a couple of stems for free. I guess they are now part of MOMs https://northchelmsford.moms73.com/

So, airing up your tires is just like voting – do it early, do it often.

Set your valves.

Other than the valve stem, the bike was perfect! A little noisy in the valve train. I reset the valves and it quieted down and ran even better. Gas mileage increased too.

So, setting your valves is just like voting – do it early, do it often.

Torque

When resetting the valves, I was hammed fisted when tightening the valve covers. I am using Real Gaskets https://realgaskets.com/product-categor … ycle/ural/ and their torque value is like 1 to 2 foot pounds. Ural manual – which is probably wrong for the Ural stock gaskets – was 8.8 ft/lbs.
I tore the Real Gasket all to pieces and didn’t realize until I saw the oil leaking. I bought more – f-ing expensive!!! – and made a cork gasket out of some left over material I had from somewhere. My homemade one worked fine but I did change it one the Real Gasket came in.

So, double-check all your torque values based on the manufacturers specs. And do it early and often… or at least when you open the valve covers.