Sunrise Ride with Yagi

I was awake at 5AM, previous experience said it was probably not worth it to try and get more sleep, so up I went for some coffee.

It was a mere 75°F this early here in the Colorado Front Range so I sat outside on the driveway watching the eastern horizon begin to light up.

The coolness got me thinking, once minimally caffeinated, that this was probably a good time of the day for a short ride.  It was another torridly sunny hot day in the weather forecast (but at least not as humid as in the lower elevations in the rest of the country).

Coffee consumed, geared up, and off I went in my latest effort to reestablish trust in Yagi, my Yamaha TW200 with its sporadic charging issue.

I rode through the quiet neighborhoods and then proceeded east on Quincy Road, past the county fairgrounds and onto Sage Ridge road to pose Yagi.

The air was nice and cool as it was let in by the riding jacket provided by Steve of Scooterinthesticks and for a little while my mind was pleasantly in neutral.

Something to be said for riding a motion the cool of the day, along a low traffic county road, nothing intruding in one's thoughts but the act of riding.

Photos collected, I rode back in now warming temperatures.  Yep, it was going to be another one today.  Some clouds in the forecast for the rest of the week so perhaps some relief from the sun's heat.

The same sun, which warms one when riding in winter's cold conditions isn't quite as welcomed in summer.  Yep, there's ways to deal with heat and riding gear, but nowadays my mind just doesn't see the return on investment of effort.  

Still, it was a nice ride and Yagi's charging system was working....guess I shouldn't ask for much more eh?

Umarang is back from the Shop

Umarang, or Uma the VRRV, was retrieved from the mechanic shop this afternoon.

She went in for frequently occuring OBDII error code P0152.  Here's what Google AI said of the error:

The Ford E-450 P0152 code indicates that the upstream oxygen sensor on Bank 2, Sensor 1 is stuck at a high voltage reading (typically above 0.9 volts). This tells the powertrain control module (PCM) that the engine is running excessively rich (too much fuel, not enough oxygen) on the driver's side of the engine.

The technician found a broken wire on this O2 sensor, so easy fix with a new sensor. 

He also ran diagnostics on the two rear O2 sensors and and the MAF sensor at my request.  All good.

All Uma needs now is an oil change soon and new tires in about a month or so.  We're letting the credit cards cool off a little from being used the last couple of months!

Update: 16JUL26.  Engine oil and filter changed out at Walmart service center.

Repairs/Maintenance on Scarlett's Final Drive - the prep work

About two days ago I got the word from Randy F. (retired Ural dealer) that he was willing to do the work involved with replacing leaking seals and the worn driven gear hub on the final drive.

To prepare the final drive for transport to Randy's shop, I removed it (carefully slow due to my still recovering back) and cleaned it up.

The final drive is the component which takes rotating input from the primary drive shaft coming out of the motorcycle's transmission; converting it to rotating motion and "driving" the pusher wheel when in 1WD and also the sidecar wheel when in 2WD.

Here's the final drive, sort of cleaned up:

the arrow points to the driven gear

hub's teeth, onto which the rear wheel is

mated onto....

The worn out teeth of the driven gear hub are seen below.  Quite pointy.

Below pic shows the replacement driven gear hub, note what the gear teeth should look like when compared to the above pic:

Here's the mostly cleaned up final drive, along with the new driven gear hub that Randy will install.  The rubber boot goes on the sidecar drive shaft, I just zip tied it to hub to remind me to get a new one from Randy.

Next, I replaced the pusher wheel's splined flange, which mates the wheel to the final drive's driven gear hub.  Here's what it looked like before I removed it from the wheel: Yep, quite filthy.

again, very pointy

gear teeth

Why are both items' gear teeth so pointy you ask?  As they're "mated" or "coupled" together for operation, they induce wear on each other's teeth I believe.  Eventually wearing down the teeth in spite of periodic applications of grease by me. (usually during oil changes of the engine).

Here's the new splined flange before I reinstalled the mounting bolts and inside wheel cover:

mounting hardware installed.

To show you the wear, I coupled the old splined flange onto the old driven gear hub's teeth.  You can see how the gaps between the two sets of gear teeth were quite large.  

Next, I put the old splined flange onto the new driven gear hub's teeth.  I think I could have gotten away with not replacing the flange on the wheel but it would have induced wear sooner I think.  Not to mention, it wasn't a hard task.

All this work below has been long over due I'm almost sad to say.  I'd been thinking about replacing the driven gear hub on my 2014 Ural Patrol's final drive for quite a while now, but had put it off at any excuse.

For those of you who've been reading this blog for a while, you know that's quite unlike me.  I use to rush to repair or service, now, not so much.

There's an upcoming fork in my riding life's road ahead I believe.  Brigitta, my '87 R80 is gone to a new owner who'll ride it more than I had been.  Yagi, the 2006 TW200 is proving a bit unreliable with a sporadic charging issue.  Scarlett, my 2014 Ural Patrol has become a local riding only machine.

Part of me suspects that getting all this work done is to prepare for their eventual sale.  Who knows?  I'm coming up on 20 years of writing this blog, and loyal readers have seen it change ... 

Repeat Lesson on Motorcycle Starting Issues

Last month I had learned that the starting issues on Yagi, my TW200, boiled down to a bad battery not providing enough power to start the motorcycle.  I had wasted too much time thinking it was a starter relay, or starter switch issue when I should have checked the battery first along with its connections. 

Today, June 6th, I relearned this lesson. 

I had cleaned out and sprayed graphite lube into the starter on my 2014 Ural Patrol, and it was still having sporadic issues starting the engine. 

This morning, I took apart the ignition switch, to clean it out and while doing so one of the wires going to the kill switch broke off.  Hmmmm, possible culprit I thought.

I managed to resolder the wire onto the kill switch assembly and tested it to make sure it worked before putting it all back together. 

Once assembled, I now had consistent starter issues in that it would not crank the engine on despite many efforts! 

Instead, I learned a new diagnostic procedure, at least when it comes to my motorcycles. 

I hooked up my old battery charger / starter to the battery on Scarlet and she cranked right up! Multiple attempts were made and all were successful. 

I disconnected the old battery charger and the problems returned, pretty conclusive I thought. So there's a new AGM battery on order via Amazon, should be here in a few days. 

The testing had basically drained the old battery enough that it would not provide enough juice to crank the the starter and thereby the engine!