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! 

RV Charging while Driving Function Restored

Wednesday, July 1

As part of the house battery short-circuit debacle, the RV had lost the ability to be charging its house battery while the engine was running on the chassis. 

I tried for several hours on and off and could not figure out what was the deal. 

I suspected it was the battery isolation manager solenoid but lacked the expertise to troubleshoot much beyond the point of accidentally smoking the replacement put in by the Ford dealership.

Martha found me a local Mobile RV Repair guy, Pat Serrant of PEM RV services   Pat showed up today and two hours later he'd replaced the smoked Battery Isolation Manager (BIM), found a couple of fuses that needed replacement and which fixed the ignition override function on the RV's steps as well!

He patiently walked me through the diagnosis steps so that I've gained a better understanding of the charging system.  

New Solenoid 

Fuse for ignition trigger wire

Fuse was busted here too at

The house battery disconnect 

I really must remember to disconnect the battery involved with items I'm troubleshooting!  The above tool, which Pat used to great effect, has made my purchase list.  A bit pricey but beats having to find a good ground with a multimeter while in tight spaces or ackward positions!

You can also use it to provide power to a device when you have the chassis battery disconnected.  Handy.

Thursday, July 2

Spent the morning redoing everything inside the house battery storage compartment on the RV.

After I removed the battery and disconnected the chassis battery as well, I removed and painted the wooden board placed there by the Ford mechanic back in Ohio.  

While that was trying, I secured two metal plates as base support, using self-dapping screws to secure the plates to the seal frame of the box compartment. 

I redid the routing of all the cables so that there's no way they can touch each other, especially the positive terminal by the shunt device onto which all ground/negative cables connect.  It was the contact by the shunt device onto the battery positive terminal which cost the short circuit last month. 

I also lined the walls with plastic cutting board material, thin stuff, to help keep the dust out along with water spray when driving in the rain. White gorilla tape was used to see all the seams and openings remaining. 

By then used a ratchet strap and blocking pieces of wood to firmly secure the battery in place! 

Here's other compartment looks now: 

A more top down view showing separations.

Theoretically, I could go camping now.  But with the Fourth of July weekend coming up (amateur hours), I'll take her to storage instead.  Besides, I've scheduled her for the shop in Parker, CO for diagnosis of recurring OBD codes.

Spring Fling 2026: The Fling is Flung - Home Again

June 29

The last day of this last trip by us via motorhome to the eastern half of the country!

We left the Sylvan Park COE campground at 0645 CDT and arrived home at 1247 MDT.

We're very glad Uma, the VRRV gave us no further issues since the small scare involving the air filter in Wentzville, MO. 

We unloaded Uma and started in on the post-camping trip chores 

Some of the lessons learned:

Anything east of the Rockies is hot and humid in late Spring/Summer.  Sure, it's hot here in Colorado but way lower in humidity!

When you buy cheap parts, you may come to regret it.

You can get oversaturated with history and museums.  16 museums (including battlefield parks and attractions).

You can never go back to the friendships you remember.  

Just because it's grass covered, doesn't mean you shouldn't walk it before driving onto a spot in wetter climates.

Good family will always come through for you.

Don't trust a dealership to buy the right house battery for an RV, provide it to them yourself.  To be fair, they trusted the AutoZone guy.

Getting medical care at a non-VA facility but paid for by the VA is doable, getting prescriptions paid for by the VA can be problematical, self pay if possible.

Last but not least, a saying from Martha's dad: There's always a tuition for life's education.

Here's a compilation of stats, then and now both for record and consideration

I'd mentioned before we'd made a somewhat similar trip to the East Coast back in the summer of 2021.  

2021

74 days trip, 11 as guests of friends 

4887 miles driven by the VRRV.

Assuming $3/gal gas spent almost $2100

$630 camping fees

---------

2026

62 day trip, 19 as guests of friends 

4866 miles driven by VRRV 

Gas avg cost $4.05/gal.  $2635.25 spent on gas by VRRV.  $429.77 in gas for the Honda CR-V and Yagi, the TW200.

$665.63 in camping fees

---------

Back in 2021 I hadn't started using a gas/mileage tracking app to log such costs.

For the Spring Fling the app reports: (just for VRRV)

May 2026: 

Fuel price avg: $4.12/gal. Low: $3.89 High:$4.39

Fuel Purchased 222.948 gallons

Fuel Cost $918.40. Miles driven 1606 ($0.572 per mile)

June 2026

Fuel Price (avg) $3.92 per gallon.  Low: $3.35  High:$4.53

Fuel Purchased 368.442 gallons

Fuel Cost $1,444.88.  Miles driven 2587 ($0.559 per mile)

-------

Overall costs:

Counting fuel, lodging, food, entertainment and misc: $96.61/day.

The above overall costs don't include the repairs to the VRRV due to the short-circuiting incident.