Repairs, Roosters and Services for Valencia

Over the last seven days, have been providing all of the listed items in the post's subject line to my 2011 URAL Patrol Sidecar Rig, Valencia.  All part of the post-trip maintenance that she required after riding over 10,000 miles over the last three months.

First the repairs.  You'll recall that a bearing failed on the right side control rod for Valencia's engine, allowing its piston to strike the right side head.  A flurry of repair activity later, it was discovered by Raceway Services that they should have also ordered a new left side cylinder as the existing one was "scored".  To get me back on the road and not wait another day, they honed the existing one enough to get me home; the idea being I'd have the Fort Collins URAL dealer swap it out once I was home.

That day was this past Wednesday, once the parts had arrived from URAL.  I rode up to Fort Collins to Unique Rides where Randy and Tammy run a URAL dealership.  It is the same dealership where I bought Valencia, by the way.

Valencia and I arrived at 10:30 AM and would not leave till after 5:30 PM, long day, mostly due to difficulties encountered by Randy in the installation of new u-joints for the propeller shaft leading to the sidecar wheel.  The replacement of the left cylinder, the portion of the jug through which the piston travels, went well.

 The old jug removed, ready for the new cylinder

 A view inside the engine, I was glad to see no metal particles anywhere

on any of the internal surfaces!

Here's a picture of the old cylinder, note all the scoring ...

The rest of the day was spent wrestling with uncooperative u-joints.  I was glad I had Randy do the work, I would have been extremely frustrated. The old u-joints were worn you see, to the point I could move them upwards and sideways way more than allowed.  It's usually a pretty straightforward operation, I've done it before, but something about the u-joint in question caused "issues".  Randy finally ended up chucking the American-made u-joint and putting in a Russian u-joint instead.  Ironic, but it did work, finally.

So, that's the repairs, hopefully the last of them for a long, long, long while.

Yesterday, I visited Darrell, a fellow Uralista....to borrow the use of his Harmonizer Carburetor Synch tool.  Lovely thing, I must buy one for myself soonest.  On the way home, I stopped Valencia across the street from this person's house to capture his roosters.

 Why did these tall metal roosters catch my eye, that's obvious....why

take pictures of them?  Martha likes Roosters as decorative items.

Finally, today was the day for finishing the 40,000 Kilometer service for Valencia.  Fluids had been changed earlier in the week and now it was time to grease the drive shaft spline and grease the small u-joint connecting the drive shaft to the final drive.

You have to remove the pusher wheel, disconnect the sidecar wheel propeller shaft, rear brake rod and 2WD engagement rod to free the final drive.  Once the above is done, you unbolt the four 17mm bolts and the final drive unit slides off for easy access.

 I believe the manual says to grease the splines at least every 10,000 Kilometers, I 

was quite please to see the splines above still had some Honda Moly Grease on 

them after more than 20,000 Kilometers!  The trip to Alaska, with its intervening

episodes of unexpected repairs required had thrown my schedule of maintenance off.

 Here's the final drive, mostly cleaned up with the u-joint grease

renewed and the spline socket grease renewed as well.

 A view of the drive shaft spline, all cleaned up, note the lack of any

wear or damage.

 Well coated with Honda Moly Grease, the spline is ready for

installation back onto the final drive's u-joint assembly.

 One of the consequences of using a Russian u-joint on the sidecar propeller shaft is

that the clearance between the grease zerk and the nut holding the right

side of the pusher wheel's axle.

The tool that comes from URAL is of course a bit too thick, a

bit of grinding with my power grinder though and I had all the clearance

necessary to secure the axle nut.

So, maintenance and services are done.  Some more tests are required to restore my full faith in Valencia of course.  Riding in a pouring rain with explainable rough-running issues is one, the theory is that the air filter gets waterlogged, but until I do the ride......

Today is supposed to be a scorcher in terms of temperatures.  The second test is to simulate stop/go slow riding conditions to see if the PowerArc's electronic control module passes muster.  I replaced it on Monday with a new one from Raceway Services after it experienced heat issues last week.

There's always something to do on a URAL it seems, and still it remains a very fun rig to ride.