My new 2014 URAL Patrol

I drove a rental car up to Unique Rides in Fort Collins, CO this morning and got there soon as Tammy opened the gates!

Three hrs later, paperwork done, dealer checkout done, windshield remounted, and some chatting, I was on the way home.

More later.

16:30hrs: OK, it's later and as Paul Harvey used to say: "Here's the rest of the story"......

Shortly after I arrived, I noted that Randy had positioned Valencia, the 2011 Patrol I'd traded in upon the implosion of her engine back in January at the entrance to the dealership..   Note, I bought her on March 3 of 2012 and two years and 18 days later, she's now for sale at Unique Rides.  A bit over 48K Kilometers we rode together, Valencia and I, and I know she'll be good rig to whomever buys her from Randy and Tammy.

Here's the girls, passing the torch from one to the other.

Valencia is most likely muttering to the new patrol: "Now you're stuck with him"

The red patrol remains unnamed though the family is quickly whittling down the choices.  Randy, walked me through the changes in the 2014 model and we chatted a bit about them, the adjustments I needed to know about and things to watch for.  

He also showed me the software that URAL had the dealers buy to program/balance the ECUs that now provide the Fuel Injection capability to new URAL Sidecar Rigs.

The software is pretty basic, it comes from the company that builds the ECUs, Electrojet.  Randy explained that the recommended factory settings were apparently not suitable for motorcycles in Colorado's "higher" locations.  For instance, you'll notice in the screen above, my ECUs are set to 30 kPa or kilopascals....the factory says to balance them to 35 kPa.

Randy had found though, that if you follow that, the idle goes to 1600 RPM and when you throttle back to idle, the engine remains stuck at 1600 RPM!  That's much too high for "idle".  So, using 30 kPa is what we're going with while discussions continue between Randy, URAL and Electrojet.

I left the dealership shortly after 1315 hrs and almost three hours later, had made it safely home.  In spite of windy conditions, the rig performed in an excellent manner.  Good power, good acceleration and rock steady thanks to Randy's good setup of the sidecar and the steering damper that the new rigs come with.

There's stuff to be sorted out on the new rig of course, Randy recovered the heated grips for me so those have to be installed.  I have to see if the tachometer I had for Valencia will work with the new rig's spark plug cable.  A thermometer has to be installed of course and some tweaking of the windshield is in order; this is the same windshield that was on Valencia.

The break-in period is now 1000 Kilometers, and I went over 200 Km by riding her home.  So, it shouldn't take me very long to "break her in" but it'll more likely be after say 6-8000 Km before her full potential is realized as that how it is with these engines.

I am of course very glad to finally have the new rig home, the wait had seemed interminable at times; and I am not known for patience!

Another great URAL dealership experience at Unique Rides!  Their Factory Demo day is the 4th of April and there will be several 2014 URAL Sidecar Rigs available for test rides!  Don't miss this event!