Uraling in Alaska - Day 36: Retrieving Valencia

Today I rode down to Anchorage once again, luckily its less than 50 miles away.  It was my last day with the loaner rig and while she runs nice and has great storage options, I shall not miss the louder pipes on her.

I got to Anchorage URAL, Mick's place, shortly before 11AM and we chatted for quite a bit about the proper way of doing some maintenance tasks, he showed me the parts that had been replaced; remarking that there was slight wear on the tip of the clutch release rod but nothing untoward.

 As we chatted, Mick did work on a car's brake rotors (turning them)

and I walked about the shop taking turns throwing the ball for Sophie

and getting pictures of the new blue and white rig that Mick is putting together

 Pretty

GlennandSun had asked me to query Mick on what he uses for 

jets in the carburetors on the loaner.  Mick opened up a carb he

had on the shelf and said he replaces the jet inside the hole next to

the two exposed jets in the above  picture with a size 42 jet.

I plan to find said size jet and replace mine.

I took her out for test ride and she ran strong as ever!  I couldn't reproduce the slight clutch drag during the short 10 mile warm up run though but I am not too worried about it as Mick said everything looked fine with the clutch install and he'd put in the new clutch release rod/bearing and sleeve.

I brought Valencia back, and Mick tweaked the idle down a tiny bit.  He was finally satisfied with it and declared Valencia good to go for now.  He told me to stay in touch and let him know how she does from now on.  I thanked him for his support and attention to detail and left the shop with Valencia.

I motored on back to Wasilla, holding an indicated 60 MPH with no issues.  Mick said he didn't trust the readings being given by my ebay-sourced digital tachometer so now I am looking for a better one.  If the existing tachometer is wrong, then I've been making decisions based on bad data.  Mick told me he had found the idle too low on Valencia before he started working on her.

I got Valencia back to Wasilla, to Bob and Sharon's place, and as Valencia was close to her 32,500 Km odometer reading, performed the 32,500 km interval services.  I didn't do the final drive as Mick had done it for me as he'd found it with slight water contamination, so the major tasks involving fluids were done for the engine and the transmission.

Oh, as I got into Wasilla, I could feel a very very very slight surging when stopped at a light with clutch lever pulled in and in first gear.  Not as bad as before (and it hadn't been that bad even then), popping the transmission into neutral again gets rid of the surging.  I'll have to ride her more and on longer rides but it "appears" that replacing the clutch release rod "may" have helped.  Either way, its something I can live with and now that I fully realize one should go into neutral when stopped at lights (still keeping an eye to one's rear in case the oncoming cager is being stupid), I am working to always put Valencia into neutral.

There's an art (more like fricking magic) to using the clutch pedal to find neutral on URAL rigs, I must develop this skill to go along with using the transmission lever to pop her into neutral.  The trick (and it only works for me 25% of the time at best for now) is to pop her into first while slowing down to the stop, then using the toe lever to put her in neutral.

Once you're stopped, finding neutral via the clutch pedal is incredibly harder, and for me, impossible so far.  So at that point, I'll do the kicking of the reverse lever to put Valencia into neutral.  It's all good, I'll get it down sooner or later!  

So glad to have Valencia back, I leave tomorow for Valdez by way of Glenallen.  I am told some majestic mountain scenery await Valencia and I.