Scarlett gets New Clutch Plates

Yesterday, I worked out of the shop at Unique Rides in Fort Collins, the nearest URAL dealer for me and owned by Randy and Tammy F.  Great shop/dealership for us URAL riders in Colorado!   My job allows me to work remotely so long as I've Internet access, so I could work and take notes/pictures of the work being done on Scarlett at the same time.

Scarlett, my 2014 URAL Patrol Sidecar Rig had developed a severe mechanical screeching noise whenever the clutch was engaged, especially when putting her into first gear.  This noise had led to me aborting the ride up to the top of Pikes Peak last week.

BLUF: (Bottom Line Up Front): Scarlett's clutch plates were toast.  Although a lot of the clutch material was still in place, the center spline "teeth" were gone on one and almost gone on the other.  I am surprised I was able to ride Scarlett back from Colorado Springs at all!

First step was to separate the tug from the sidecar.  No major issues here, and we found the bolt onto which the rear upper support arm bolts onto was loose.  (This was fixed during re-assembly)

 Here's sides of Scarlett one usually doesn't see in pictures.

 Quite helpful, the above dolly...

 On the bike lift, ready for the tear-down to begin in order

to get at the clutch plates. 

 The 2014 URALs don't have a lot of room between the rear of the transmission

and the front of the swing arm.  Randy wrestled with removing the donut for quite a 

while as he didn't want to move the swing arm backwards.

In the end, Randy ended up having to remove the engine mount bolts (supporting the engine from below using a jack and block of wood against the oil belly pan).  This involved removing the gas tank, all associated fuel lines, the throttle bodies, the coil and the fuel pump.  Quite the endeavour, there must be an easier way to gain that needed clearance.

Then, after we got the donut out, off came the air filter box, starter, clutch cable and clutch release lever and finally the transmission gearbox was removed, revealing the cover plate to the clutch pack.

 Here you can see Randy applying heat to each Allen head bolt

securing the cover plate on the clutch pack.  They come secured with

red Loctite from the factory now you see.

 A special tool to keep pressure on the cover place as the bolts are

removed.  There's springs, you see, keeping the clutch pack's components

under pressure, making sure they mate to each other.

 Sorry for the blurriness.  Here, Randy has the cover plate off, and

is removing the special tool from the clutch pack so he can pull the pack off.

 Lots of clutch material and crap remains in the flywheel, 

it would be cleaned out of course before the new clutch pack was installed.

 Above is the clutch plate closest to the flywheel.  As you can

plainly see, the "teeth" that should be there are completely gone.

Above is the clutch plate closest to the transmission.  

You can see the pointy remains of that used to be square cut teeth.

 Above is the transmission input spline, some minor damage but it 

looked OK to use to Randy and I.  Note: it was coated with Moly

Grease by Randy before re-assembly. 

Here's the new clutch pack installed and cover plate back on.

Randy went ahead and painted witness marks on all the

bolts so I can easily tell in the feature if they're coming loose.

Notice, the new clutch plate's square cut teeth, that's how they're 

supposed to look.

The re-assembly of engine components went pretty well after we got the engine securely mounted up again.  Next time the engine gets worked on at this level, I must ensure the fuel tank is empty, save on spilled fuel and mess.

We decided, after inspection, to re-use the donut. (We'd already put it in and didn't want to backtrack several onerous steps to put in a new one)  I really must learn if moving the swing arm back is easier to do than moving the engine forward.  Donut replacement is not easy due to space constraints!

I'll be closely monitoring the donut over the next few rides.

It was 7:35PM when we fired Scarlett back up and heard NO NOISE coming from the clutch area!  Success!!!  A short test ride and it was time to put her back on the trailer for the ride home.

My sincere thanks to Randy for doing this work and staying late to get it all done last evening!  It made for a really long day for all involved.

Mileage at time of clutch replacement: 17,138km.

All work done under warranty coverage, there's apparently been a couple or more cases of the clutch plates failing the way Scarlett's had done.  Yet another example of the great support provided not only by my dealer, Unique Rides of Fort Collins, CO but the great warranty coverage and support by URAL and IMWA!

Warm Sunday Ride in the Foothills

To the West of the Metro Denver area, there's a series of small hills called the foothills, they are the precursors to the real mountains a bit further west.  These foothills are crossed by canyon roads that twist and turn their way alongside creeks and small rivers which carved said canyons eons ago.

As Scarlett is in the shop, it was Brigitta who I rode out on towards the foothills around 9AM in the morning.  It was already in the high 50s with a brilliant sun out with mostly clear blue skies overhead as Brigitta sped along the slabs towards the foothills.

Here's a view of Mount Evans from the south side entrance to Cherry Creek Reservoir Park:

Mount Evans from Cherry Creek Park South

Once on the Southwestern side of the Metro area, we started off in Deer Creek Canyon after taking the Wadsworth Boulevard exit from the C470 slab which acts as the beltway for the Denver area.  The sides of the road had a lot of bicyclists but everyone was behaving and following the rules of the road

The canyon roads still had loose gravel left over from the snowy days in the center portion of each lane so one had to pay attention while enjoying the curves of the road.

I meandered near the rock formations of Deer Creek Canyon, the light was good even at such a late time in the morning:

Next, Brigitta and I motored up High Grade Road from Deer Creek Canyon, which becomes Pleasant Park Road as it climbs further into the foothills and eventually dumps one into Conifer.  In the intervening space though, there's curves aplenty and tight hairpins to keep one on their toes.  Add a little gravel where you want to make your apex turn and it makes for some heavy concentration while riding.

It was cooler as I got to the top area of Pleasant Park Road and soon I was in Conifer filling Brigitta up at the gas station there.

Brigitta and I then re-traced our route back onto Pleasant Park Road, this time enjoying the views from a different perspective and a bit slower as I was hoping to find a narrow but safe spot for pictures along the road.

Pleasant Park Road

Traffic remained light throughout the foothills portion of the riding thankfully but more and more motorcycles were seen heading into the foothills as I left them behind.  It was early afternoon now and so warm that the cruiser guys were riding with only a T-Shirt for upper body covering and their token helmets if they bothered at all with a helmet.

I made a slight detour once I got back on Deer Creek Canyon Road, taking Turkey Creek Road North towards the Mount Lindo Memorial Cemetery.  I wanted to get a view of the downtown area from high atop this small mountain where the cemetery is located.  This is the same small mountain that has a giant cross composed of electric lights, which are visible at night, displaying a cross on the side of the mountain facing Denver.

The road to the top is dirt and it was slow going for me on two wheels as the surface conditions were sub-optimal in spots with fresh mud and "moist" looking areas causing some worry.

 Downtown Denver

From Mount Lindo's main parking lot.

That's US285 making its way into the mountains.

Made it home shortly after 2PM with temperatures in the high 60s F!  Truly a lovely day for a ride on a motorcycle, no weather challenges, just a bit of gravel to watch out for in the blind canyon curves.

If you got the impression everything is looking pretty brown, that's because it is, no spring budding yet on the trees and the grassy areas remain asleep.

Friday the 13th Sunset

Friday the 13th, 2015.

The superstitious fear this day, where bad luck is supposed to abound and one must be extra wary.  Me?  I ride a URAL Sidecar Rig, I already take a chance every time I ride!  ;)

Kidding of course, I love riding my URAL sidecar rig, along with my other motorcycle, Brigitta.

Scarlett is in the shop for repairs on her clutch at the present, so I rode Brigitta, my '87 BMW R80 Airhead this evening to catch what turned out to be a pretty glorious sunset.

I rode to the "Plains Learning Center" located on Quincy Road near my home neighborhood.  You learn about life in the Colorado Prairies back in the 1800s here.

First, I took a few pictures of Brigitta before I put the camera into time-lapse mode.

 Shot in "Enhanced Smart Mode"

Shot in "Sunset Mode"

Next, it was time to go into "time-lapse, sunset" mode.  For the curious, the camera time-lapse app locks in the F-Stop and ISO to f8 and 100 and uses auto exposure tracking (low mode by default) to adjust shutter speed as the light from the sun grows dim.

I also set it for Aperture priority so everything would be in focus, longer focal depth you see.  I could have gone higher than f8 I think but everything looked fine on the LCD screen so I left it alone this time.

The Sunset mode in the time-lapse app sets it to take a picture every ten seconds, for 40 minutes, to produce a 24 fps frame rate which is what works apparently for the human eye.

I just stood there and enjoyed the colors paint the evening sky with their bright yellows and oranges fading to red and purples....quiet nice.  I hope you enjoy the video:

The time-lapse app was also set to take pictures each time the camera shot for the video.  That's 240 pictures to choose from!

Here's a few that stood out: (Note, I edited the below in photoshop to include the "lit" headlight from shots prior to the time-lapse sequence of photos)

The pictures above of course don't come close to doing justice to the wonderful colors displayed by Nature.

Previously: A Sunrise with Pikes Peak

A Pikes Peak Sunrise Time-Lapse Sequence

I rode down to Colorado Springs Wednesday afternoon, hoping to catch a good sunrise with Pikes Peak as the main subject in the background.

It was overcast and gray that evening though, and this is what it looked like:

I awoke early the next morning and rode Scarlett over to a spot I'd previously seen on the ride down from Centennial.

It was a gloriously red sunrise but as I had set up the camera for time-lapse, wasn't able to use it and shoot the colors to the east at the same time.  Here's what my iphone captured of the colors as the sun neared the horizon in the East.

 Here's how my camera was aimed....

 The colors to the East

"The setup"

I was using the time-lapse app that one can download for a small fee from Sony, directly onto the camera.  How things have changed eh?  I didn't mess with the presets for "Sunrise" at all.

The resulting 10 seconds of time-lapse video are the result of 40 minutes of time-lapse shooting.  So, its not something you do at a whim and it does tie up your camera and of course requires a tripod.  The results were OK, I'll get better at it, it would have helped to have clouds moving overhead but what are you going to do right?  

I had the app in the camera set to also capture pictures at the same time it was capturing images for the AVI file it created.  Here's one of the resulting 240 still pictures.

This was my third attempt at a time-lapse video, the first two were sunset attempts and they came out fair but not really worth publishing as I was basically learning how to use the app.  

Hope you liked the time-lapse video.  The app shows promise, assuming of course I learn how to use it correctly and Mother Nature provides the scenery.