Visiting with the Machidas and Scarlett is back together

 While I was waiting on parts from IMWA/Ural for Scarlett, my 2014 Patrol Sidecar Rig, we were fortunate to have Bridget and RichardM camping in the somewhat nearby Chatfield State Park.

They were enroute to Albuquerque, NM to attend the big Hot Air Balloon Festival; spending Wednesday through Friday of this week at Chatfield.

The weather while they were at the park was cool and overcast, sadly but the company was great.  We chatted, we dined, and they got errands done as well.  Sadly, no real time or inclinations for touristy stuff and even sadder, no pictures of them or Martha or I.  Sorry.

Here's pics of the Wildlife Viewing area within the state park, I used my Sony HX80 camera which is back from the shop.

While we camped, Martha worked.  She did get this great pic of a very nice sunrise that I managed to sleep through as I was camping too, near the Machidas.

Saturday, the parts from IMWA/URAL arrived....only three days after being ordered by the local Ural Dealer.  How's that for quick service eh?

The installation of said parts went easily enough.  Sticking the lower triple tree assembly with the steering stem in the freezer shrunk down things enough to easily tap the lower bearing into place.  Had I heated the bearing beforehand as advised in this great video, it would have probably just slipped right on.

The plan had been to use the special tools (borrowed from Brook R, local Airhead guru) but Russian specs were a bit larger than BMW specs.  So I was only able to use the tool bits that enabled easy pressing in of the outer races.

I do, highly recommend, Brook's tutorial post on this procedure:  LINK

Sunday, today, after returning the VRRV to storage....it was time to do a test ride of Scarlett and my ham-fisted repair work.

I drove Scarlett to Arvada, to the home of Brook R., the owner of the special tool kit for replacing steering head bearings made by cycleworks.net.  Brook wasn't home so I left the tools in the location previously coordinated with him.

Since I was on the west side of the Denver Cesspool, I decided to continue the "test drive" and head into the foothills/mountains using Coal Creek Canyon Road aka CO 72.  I wandered my way to Gross Dam in Boulder County.

Here's one's initial view of the dam itself:

There's two options once you near the dam, the North Shore and South Shore routes.  I took the North Shore version first.  This dirt road proved very, very wash-boarded!  Scarlett was bouncing more than I like at times but eventually we made it near the top and near the parking lot for the North Shore trailheads.

The view from the parking lot was not bad, you can see the dam, somewhat:

I made my way back down to the T-Junction and got onto the South Shore route.  This was a much smoother route, with only one short patch with some shallow holes here and there.  I will say, the scenery is better on the southern route and you get much closer to the dam as well.

It was now time to head back home, I took a different route back, crossing the metro cesspool area via US285.  Traffic was a bit heavier than the morning but still not too much of a shitfest.

It was 185 km or 111 miles worth of a test drive.  I'm happy to report that the only problem I had was when the severity of the wash board road caused Scarlett to start misfiring.  Not sure why it happened but a restart was that was needed to get things working right again.  The wash board bouncing was so bad that it even popped the final drive into 2WD!  Luckily, I spotted this while wondering what had happened to the engine.