Brakes Week!

Seems this week will be known to me as "Brakes Week".

Not only is Uma, the VRRV get new brake pads/rotors, shock absorbers, serpentine belt, new rear anti-sway bars along with associated fluid changes, servicing of rear differential, rear axle R&R along with required new inner and outer wheel bearings and finally including an oil change and chassis lube; but other vehicles too!  

As I'm not familiar at all with how Dually Wheels are put together, my regular mechanic shop is doing the work.  We got it back from the shop today.

Martha's Honda CR-V got it's rear brake pads replaced (easy peasy) by me, the rear disc rotors are almost 2mm above minimum thickness so I didn't replace them.  The inner pads on both the rear brakes were pretty close to bare metal!

I checked the front brakes on the CR-V and the brake pads were still showing the wear indicator groove so plenty of life left. The rotors were almost 2 mm above minimum thickness as well so I left them alone for now, will check in about 5,000 miles.

Thing 2 came by for Thing 1's birthday and we troubleshot reported weak brakes on Thing 2's pickup truck.  We determined that there was no brake fluid in the reservoir.  Doh!  Insert heavy sighing here by me.

So, we installed Speedbleeders on the front brakes, the rear brakes are drum brakes.  Then, we bled a lot of air out of the front brake circuits!  Truly, a lot of air.  Thing 2 is also going to order brake pads and rotors  for the front brakes and those will be installed soonest after they get here from Amazon.  The local auto parts store didn't have the appropriate pads in stock for the 1999 Toyota Pickup you see.

Last but not least, I replaced the brake pads on the sidecar wheel for Scarlett, my 2014 Ural Patrol Sidecar Rig.  There was some "meat" left but both pads were worn past the wear indicator.

I'm loving the new brake piston retractor tool by the way.

Exercising Brigitta and Scarlett Repair Notes

 Friday, October 22

Decided to give Brigitta, my '87 BMW R80 Airhead, a good exercise day.  We'd end up covering a bit over 160 miles of city/highway riding, including some miles of sandy dirt roads which she and I hated.  She's definitely a street motorcycle.

Still, managed to get to, wander around, and return from the Paint Mines Interpretive Park near Calhan, CO without dropping her (came close a couple of times due to deeper than expected sand piles) so I ended up calling it a good day.

Temperatures would "soar" into the high 60s and feel quite warm while hiking about the park but would feel quite cool while riding due to the wind chill factor of course.

Instead of parking in the main parking lot, I ended up parking at the Overlook parking lot which is seemingly closer to the main rock formations.  

The picture below shows the main section of colorful rock formation, the overlook parking lot is located above it, but you really have to hike in to view the rocks up close.

The paint mines were where Native Americans traveled to in order to get the colors shown for their use.  Here's a link to the park's website for more info:  LINK

There were more people there than I expected, apparently Friday is included in "the weekend" crowding as mentioned to me by the sole Park Ranger doing his rounds.  Sadly, the imbeciles who I saw disregarding the rules about "NO Dogs" or "Don't climb on the rocks" were quite in evidence but apparently the ranger didn't see them.

Sorry about the watermarks, didn't want to re-process the pics to remove the watermark.  I'd been experimenting with watermarks for a previous project and forgot to disable it within the Export Process of Adobe Lightroom.

Saturday, October 23 - Fixing some stuff on Scarlett, my 2014 Ural Patrol Sidecar Rig

First was the adjustment of the tug's rear shocks to be fully preloaded on the port side and fully unloaded on the right side.  I also set the shock absorbers on the front wheel to softest or least preload setting.  This to seemingly soften the harsh ride of late, we'll see how that goes.  

Second, changing the shocks of course affected slightly the lean-out of the tug so I adjusted the tug inward by one full turn of both upper support bolts.  Now it's under 2 degrees leaned out.  The test ride let me feel like I was leaning less to the left and no increased pulling to the right by the sidecar.

Third, ever since my last camping trip near Poncha Pass, I'd been experiencing the engine cutting out momentarily when hitting big bumps on the road.  I felt it again today while test riding the rig after modifying the shock absorber preloads and resolved to find the issue once and for all.  I had to do some field repairs to the ignition wiring during a ride to Gross Dam near Boulder, CO since then and suspected my work.

Scarlett cut out on me as I rolled her off the driveway so that was motivation to dig into the wiring behind the headlamp immediately!  A lot of shaking/probing of wiring finally led to me finding a bad connection to the bottom fuse in the fuse box!  This fuse is for the fuel pump you see, and its corroded wire connection was causing the loss of power (momentary) when hitting bumps on the road.

I replaced the spade connector and inserted a washer to create a small gap between the connector and the outside fork tube housing which the previous connected had been wedged against.  Again, we'll see how things go, but the test drive afterwards went well.

The Southwestern Sojourn - Day 20: Scarlett's 60K Km service and last day at Quartzsite

All good things must come to an end, and so it will be with my stay in Quartzsite, AZ.

I plan on leaving tomorrow, perhaps find some BLM land near Bullhead City, AZ to overnight on my way to Death Valley, CA.  More on that later.

Scarlett, my 2014 Ural Patrol, went over 60,000 km on the clock yesterday while out on the dirt roads near Black Mesa.

Took a couple of trips into town to gather all the supplies and items such as funnels, measuring cup, air filter, oil filter wrench and of course engine oil and FD Gear oil.

Shadowy views of the mountains in the Kofa

National Wildlife Refuge about 18 miles south

Luckily, the local auto parts store, a Carquest franchise, had most of the items and the rest were obtained at the hardware store and Family Dollar store for the measuring cup.  All stuff readily available at home of course, but now I've got the same stuff for the RV to have around.

Changed out the engine oil and filter (I'd packed that before the trip), replaced the 20W50 oil in the gearbox and also in the final drive.  Found the final drive quite low in oil in fact, must check more regularly; am thinking it might have lost some when I lost the bolts yesterday that held the U-Joint assembly to the final drive.

I got some rubber straps aka bungie cords to secure the battery in place until I get the proper metal straps from the dealer.  Darn thing must have been moving about while the rig was bouncing on the rocky trails!

I've elected to wait on replacing the compliance fittings, they're supposed to be done at the 10K km interval but right now, they're fine.  Those are the major tasks involved with the service, the rest I'll get done here and there this week.  Mostly checks and lubrication of specific points on the tug.

I also figured out how to install the TPMS sensor on the inner duallies with no major hassle.  Just use the sparkplug tool that comes with the Ural's toolkit to hold the sensor, put it in place and simply screw it on!  Easy Peasy.  No more long air stem extensions that induce slow leaks!  I'll just use them when I need to pump air into the tires now.

Not a bad sunset tonight, my last night in Quartzsite for this year I believe.

I've seen all I meant to see while here, found some new trails and roads, and enjoyed the mostly warm weather.  It's kind of chilly here when the sun is hidden by clouds in the daytime. 

The Southwestern Sojourn - Day 12: The Ajo Peaks

Ajo: Spanish for Garlic.  Wikipedia says The Spanish may have named the place using the familiar word in place of the similar-sounding O'odham word for paint (oʼoho). The Tohono O'odham people obtained red paint pigments from the area.

Today, instead of going back to the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, I decided instead to ride to the nearby Ajo Peaks; Ajo and North Ajo Peak respectively.

I could see North Ajo Peak from my BLM campsite and its shape was "intriguing". 

 North Ajo Peak is the triangular shaped peak on the right

First though, the morning was spent on repairs/maintenance for Scarlett.  I replaced the lock portion of the ignition assembly with very minor difficulties.  Took two tries to align things correctly in terms of contact points within the lock but it all turned out well.

I also decided to replace the pusher brake pads as the existing ones were getting a bit thin.  No issues encountered there, easy maintenance task for the most part.  Hardest part is pushing back the brake caliper piston to allow for the wider new pads.

After a quick lunch, it was riding on AZ 85 towards Ajo but turning at Darby Wells Road to get closer to the Ajo Peaks.

The trail I followed ended up getting Scarlett and I closer to North Ajo Peak first.

 Approaching North Ajo Peak, I posed Scarlett next

to this clump of Organ Pipe Cactus

 This is as close as I got to North Ajo Peak

The road to get closer had a big trench across it

that I wasn't willing to try to cross.

 On the way to the trail to Ajo Peak, I stopped at

this small hill top and was rewarded with this view

 Views of Ajo Peak with North Ajo Peak on the right

 View of the other side of Ajo Peak

The above picture shows the furthest point I rode on the "Scenic Loop Road".  The rest seemed to be just Saguaro Cacti and open desert.  I rode back to the beginning of the trail and got a pic of this sign:

 There's a similar sign at the entrance to the Gunsite Wash BLM Site

Got back around 3:30 PM I believe, just rested and relaxed the rest of the afternoon and had an early dinner before the sunset.

Not much of a sunset, I'll admit, but given the setting, no complaints from me!

I think I'll go back to the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument tomorrow and finish off the riding of drives there.

Replacement Lens is here in time for a nice Sunset

As I had included my Sony A5000 Camera and its lenses in a Valuable Property Insurance Policy back when I first purchased the camera; it was covered for accidental damage by the insurance company. 

Surprising right?  I had managed to drop the lens back in Montana, last week, and the zoom mechanism had failed; rendering the lens unrecognizable and therefore unusable by the Sony camera.

There was some paperwork to be done by the insurance company but soon I was cleared to buy a replacement lens.  I ordered it from Amazon and it got here today.

Rest assured, I will be adding the new lens to the insurance policy as well.

Pretty lazy Sunday otherwise, did some tidying up on the motorcycles such as repairing the mount on Scarlett's tank bag and mounting the USB charger outlet more securely.

Cleaned out the stuck brake piston on Scarlett's sidecar brake caliper so that it now moves again.  Craig H. had spotted rust on the brake disc, a sign that no contact was being made by the brake pads.

Also replaced a muffler clamp on Scarlett's exhaust pipe jumble of adapters and tightened things down to hopefully not vibrate loose again.

As Sunset approached, Scarlett and I rode out to meet it at the usual spot.

Some URAL Maintenance notes and thoughts.

Some information that has come my way and been added to the repository in my brain as to the care and feeding of the beast that is the URAL Sidecar Rig.  Your mileage will vary, do your research!  All the below items refer to my 2014 Ural Patrol Sidecar Rig.

1.  I've always been taught/reminded to put a bit of anti-seize paste on spark plug threads so they're easy to remove in the future.  Well, because NGK plugs are called for by URAL's owner's manual, I've now quit using anti-seize paste because:

All NGK Spark Plugs are manufactured with a special trivalent Zinc-chromate shell plating that is designed to prevent both corrosion and seizure to the cylinder head; Thus eliminating the need for any thread compounds or lubricants.  Source: LINK.

I believe, it was the previous use of anti-seize that cruded up the threads on one of the spark plug holes on Scarlett's cylinder heads, causing me to have to run a M14 x 1.25 tap to clean out the threads.  Now I can spin on the spark plug with just my fingers, before I had to use a socket wrench.

Make sure you gap them plugs correctly!  Look in the manual, the gap should be .04" for the 2014 model.

By the way, when replacing plugs at the 10k interval, keep the old ones onboard as "get me home" spares.  Those NGK BPR6HS plugs are sometimes not readily available at your nearby auto parts store.  Have I ever needed to use those "spares"?  Nope, more of a reverse-juju thing in my mind.

2.  Oil Fill Level.  I've always tried to keep it right at the midpoint on the dipstick.  I don't recall where exactly but I'd gotten the idea that keeping it near the full mark would cause some of the oil being forced out by way of engine case seals.  Now, not so sure that would really happen because:

• The engine is not a pressurized in terms of the engine oil.  So, keeping it at near or full level, as indicated by the dipstick, is a good thing.  Per Mickey, the URAL dealer in Alaska and whom I consider a great mechanical guru, when your dipstick shows your engine oil at the midway point, you're really low by about half a quart!  If you're near the ADD mark, you're probably starving the engine of oil.
• Mickey believes the stock oil pump on these rigs provides an adequate flow of oil from the oil sump to the top of the engine where it then makes its way via channels to the components that need oil.
• If you're going to go with the deep oil sump sold by URAL, you have to get the extension from Crawford's Technical Sales: LINK to go with the deeper sump otherwise you're just wasting time and money.  Note, a deeper oil sump will not help with heat dissipation, but it will provide more oil for your system.  Crawford also sells an oil pump with higher flow but I've no data on it and since the stock pump provides adequate flow....
• I can't go with the deep sump as I've installed Mr COB's skid plate and as long as I keep the oil level at or near the full mark, I should be OK per Mickey, and based on an email comment to Mickey by Jason of URAL.
• Not saying to go above the full mark on the dipstick by the way.
• Measure the oil level with the dipstick plug sitting atop the threads, not screwed in.
• My rig's engine does not leak oil, yet, and am approaching the 35k km service interval.  It still uses oil though, some is probably lost through the crankcase vent, some out the exhaust pipe, who knows.  You have to check, and often!

3.  Brake Pads replacement for the pusher brake caliper:  Anecdotally, the OEM brake pads don't last as long as the third party sintered material pads.  The sintered pads are believed, by some, to place more wear on the brake disc rotor.

• Remember to loosen the adjustment of the hand brake BEFORE trying to compress the pistons back in order to have more room for the thicker new brake pads, you'll save yourself a lot of cussing and effort this way.
• If you're having trouble pushing in the piston to accommodate the new thicker pads, you may have to remove some brake fluid from the reservoir so the piston can be pushed in easier.

4.  Keeping the drive shaft/hub splines lubed.  In my experience, I find that if I go past 2500 kilometers without exposing drive and hub splines to check for the presence of grease, that I will find that the hub splines on the pusher wheel and the corresponding splines on the final drive, dry and with a light coat of rust even!  

The other drive splines and hubs appear to have some grease when I check so you could go longer on those, just not the pusher wheel splines.  My theory is that the pusher wheel gets hotter than the sidecar wheel, due to periodic friction of the rotor with the brake pads as the wheel flexes during curves.  This heat in effect boiling off the grease over a period of time.  This is only a theory, I do know to not skip this check every 2500 kilometers, or less.

5.   Engine Oil change interval.  For the 2014 and later rigs, the change interval went from every 2500 kilometers to 5000 kilometers.  I still change the engine oil at the 2500 km interval but only replace the oil filter at the 5000 km interval.  I also replace the transmission and final drive oils at the 5000 km intervals.

6.  U-Joint Grease Input.  At the same time I change the engine oil, I also take the opportunity to inject fresh grease into each of the U-Joints on the rig.  I figure it's cheap insurance as replacing U-Joints, while not expensive in terms of parts, can be very time-consuming in terms of labor.  I've done it, not fun.  If you've the right grease gun fitting, you can get at all the u-joint zerks without dismantling anything.

img src = Amazon

Link to Lincoln 5803

7.  Compliance Fitting Replacement.  The manual says to replace these every 10k km.  I thought at first this was a bit overkill when I did the 10k services on Scarlett.  So I left the original compliance fittings in place as they looked fine.  Less than 2000 km later, they developed splits on the inside of the fittings which caused air leaks and issues.  Now I do the recommend replacement interval, and carry the seemingly still OK old fittings as "get me home" items.

8.  Air Filter.  Carry a spare.  On the older rigs I owned, a dirty air filter was cause for bad performance and riding issues, especially in dusty conditions.  Fuel, Spark and Air are the three components to making your engine work!

The air filter I usually use, equivalent to the

one sold by IMWA.  This is the "Get Me Home"

or GMH unit that I carry for long rides.

Link to Filter (Amazon Associate Link)

On the 2014 rigs and newer, the improved/redesigned airbox does a superior job of staying functional in dusty environments.  Having said that, I've personally found that if you ride in snowy conditions and your rig remains outside with freezing temperatures, you could develop issues with air flow. 

Carry a spare that's dry, I had my filter get wet from driving in snowy conditions, it froze overnight, and caused really hard starting issues the next day and bogging down of acceleration even after I got the rig started.  Swapping the filter fixed that particular issue.

9.  Carry a small jump starter battery.  Point #8 highlighted the need to carry one of those nifty small batteries that function as a jump starter for cars and such.   I pretty much drained the stock battery trying to start the rig with a clogged air filter and I'm pretty sure that the battery had suffered as well from sitting out in the cold overnight.

img src = Amazon

Link to unit carried during 2020 (amazon associate link)

If I was doing the Alaska ride again, I'd figure out a way also to easily disconnect the stock battery and take it inside with me overnight, to keep it warm.  Or, do like RichardM in Alaska (he rides in seriously cold temperatures) and uses a car battery located in the sidecar.

10.  Hard starting with EFI Mapping OR1.02.  To me, it seemed easier to crank and start the engine with v1.01 of the Off Road EFI Mapping.  v1.02 has been reported as making engines harder to start for the EFI rigs and I tend to believe this.  However, if you turn on the ignition and flip the Big Red Switch (BRS) to on for a few seconds (I count to ten at least), the engine tends to start a bit easier.  

It's still not as easy to start as with v1.01 of the Off Road mapping however, and I rarely can cold start the engine using the kick-start lever with v1.02, whereas with v1.01 it was actually doable most of the time.

Mileage suffers also with v1.02, before with v1.01 I used to get between 34-38 MPG, now I am happy to get 32 MPG and usually get like 29 MPG in city driving.

The main impetus for getting the v1.02 mapping is that it smoothed out the rig's popping and hesitation when the engine was not warmed up and when moving at parking lot speeds while in first gear.

I am still debating whether to go back to v1.01 both for the MPG increase and easier to start condition.  The slight popping and hesitation of v1.01 though, in slow stop/go traffic can be quite annoying though; still it had been something I'd grown used to until v1.02 came along with its siren song.

11.  Heidenau K37 Knobby Tires.  They seem, in my experience to last longer than the stock DURO 308 tires and have better grip off road of course.  The manual says to keep the pusher tire at 40 PSI but I've found it causes faster wear on the center portion of the thread surface.  I keep mine at 36 PSI cold and when measured after riding a few miles, the PSI increases to about 42 PSI.  This one is definitely a "your mileage may vary" category!  You weigh different than I, drive your rig differently to be sure and you must find what works for you.

12.  Spark plug cables.  There'd been recent times where the rig sputtered and seemed to "miss" when cold and moving at parking lot speeds.  I went through many diagnosis scenarios but it ended up being worn connections at the coil end of the spark plug cable.  Best option is to get the updated spark plug cables that come with a metal connector that slides onto the pin inside the coil connector and grips it nicely.  The early 2014s just pushed the bare end of the spark plug cable onto the pin in the coil connector, and basically friction and the plug were all that ensured a good connection.  Many miles and hours later, things get "loose".

source: Darrell S.

Left side is old cable, right side new cable with connector.

13.  2014 Parking brake.  My rig never did well with the parking brake that came with it that uses the pusher brake caliper to hold the rig in place.  It was, for me, always getting out of adjustment; necessitating tools to get it dialed back into adjustment.   In the long run, it caused me a couple of sets (at least) of brake pads which had word very rapidly.  It even caused the pusher wheel to overheat because the system caused the rear brake to activate.  Ended up removing the brake assembly, and using a hand grip brake lever plastic doodad from Zero Motorcycles.

Disabled Stock Parking Brake, the bolt pushes

on lever to keep piston right snug against the brake pad.

I'll add more to this posting as I think of other things.

Maintenance: Scarlett's 50k Km Service Interval

Since the original purpose of blogging was to record maintenance work on my motorcycle (only one back then); figured this post was fitting.

Scarlett, my 2014 Ural Patrol Sidecar Rig, has reached the 50,000 kilometer mark and so it was time to do the 10K service as listed in her owner's manual.  The 10K service is the most complete one so I use that checklist.

Scarlett's reaching 50K km is a milestone for me, as I've not gotten above 40k km on any of my other rigs before they were either sold or traded in.

Of course, her engine's crankshaft was replaced at 41.7K km, and the gearbox was rebuilt by Sergey at IMWA before that so it's not like she made it to 50K km in one piece!

Still, the engine (which was also rebuilt by Sergey under warranty) remains working with no leaks or seepage, the gearbox continues working smoothly so I shouldn't complain.

All oils were swapped, air filter replaced, oil filter replaced, spark plugs replaced though they were working fine.  Also replaced the original spark plug cables that the rig came with, with the improved connection at the coil cables from IMWA. 

Note: if you ever find your rig "missing" at low speeds, and if you've the original stock spark plug cables that you basically press into the pin on the coil side, cut off a bit, press it onto the coil connector pin...do both cables this way.  When you can, get the improved cables with the metal connector on the coil end which ensures a better connection which makes for smoother engine performance.

One of the two compliance fittings, the round black object shown below, was starting to show cracks on the inside.  The checklist says to replace both at 10k km intervals and so they were.

  Note the nice caramel color on the ceramic tip just

under the electrode, it's what you want to see

Hopefully you can see the ragged crack evident

on the inside wall of the port side compliance fitting.

At $30 each from the dealer, I wish they'd last longer

but what are you going to do right?

Nothing major was found, and I also greased all three u-joints on Scarlett, checked the tightness of the spokes on all the wheels and tightened where needed.

Coincidentally, it was also time to replace the gearbox oil on Fiona, my '99 Bural since it had a new input shaft.  The oil came out dirty, after only 200 km since the installation, as expected, and with shiny particles floating in the oil.

The shiny particles are just the "final machining" done by the owner of the gears.  You swap the oil way more often than once the gearbox is broken in, to avoid the accumulation of this swarf in the gearbox bearings and such.  I'll do another oil swap of the gearbox in another 200km.

Both rigs are road-ready.  Stay tuned for more travels.  Though Fiona will be quite limited for a bit as I need to "break in" the new input shaft and so cannot exceed 45 mph until she goes past 1500 km (give or take) from 4257 km mark on the odometer.

Last Day of Spring Sunset

I used the title Summer's Eve Sunset on Facebook to originally post these pictures, then I was reminded of the feminine hygiene trademark.  Doh.

It was a record breaking day yesterday in terms of temperatures.  99°F (37..2°C)!   Definitely a scorcher, but it did produce nice cloud formations and lighting conditions for this Spring season's last sunset:

As you can see, Fiona my '99 Ural Patrol with the '84 R80 Beemer engine is back on the road.  I received the replacement Final Drive mounting studs yesterday and replaced the two outer studs, leaving the two inner studs for the next time I have the final drive unmounted from the swingarm.

I also replaced the engine oil/gearbox oil on Fiona and Scarlett's engine oil.  It was a bit early for both but the oil was looking dirty and this way I can now use their respective odometers to schedule future maintenance.

Last Fall Sunset of 2016

A warm day here in the Front Range, much melting of the snow that fell earlier, oh well, the forecast is for a White Christmas here in Colorado.

ScooterBob is on the way to Alaska now, RichardM gets to host him next in the frigid northern reaches of that great state.

Scarlett and I went out to catch the sunset, to mark the passing of the Fall Season, tomorrow is the first day of Winter.

Today, I also replaced the pusher tire on Scarlett.  I'd put on a used tire back at the start of August of this year, since it still had some "meat" on it.  Got 2089 km out of it before the center line was too worn.  Now there's a new Heidenau K37 for this coming Winter's riding!