Selling Natasha, the Ural sidecar, as a project rig.

This past Sunday, I finally had some time to take Natasha, my Ural Sidecar Rig, out for a test ride.  She'd been making some strange noises from the drive train area last time I commuted to work on her week before last.

The arrival of the new sidecar for the V-Strom had taken all my time as you can imagine.

I got her, riding pretty well I would say, to a nearby county road and posed her as follows with a hazy view of the Front Range mountains.

 Looking West to the Rocky Mountains

 Looking East towards the prairies 

As I shot the above pictures, I took off my riding glove and placed my hand on the rear wheel hub, it was way hot to the touch!  Dang near got a burn on my fingers.  Not a good sign.  I took it easy going home, but could see signs of final drive oil spewing onto the wheel's rim.

Got her on the centerstand, and removed the drain plug on the final drive, this is what I found:

The golden colored metal flakes you see were non-magnetic, figure they were the brass spacer ring that was part of the replaced items when I rebuilt the final drive back in February.  So I continued flushing out the unit with new oil, and was gaining some hope as the oil drained went from immediately turning from light brown to black to remaining light brown.

I would put the new oil in, drain plug reinstalled of course, spin the pusher and sidecar wheels several times to work the new oil around within the final drive's casing.  Two flushes, came and went.  On the third flush, I actually turned on the engine and spun the wheels since they were up in the air.  I then went to drain it again and I heard a "clink" noise of something metallic dropping into the catch container.

Yep, that's a ball bearing stuck to the magnetic tip of the drain plug.  That means at least one ball bearing assembly has come apart within the final drive!

As I've a new sidecar rig to break in, and I've not the time or inclination to once again dismount the final drive on the Ural, take it apart and assess the damage, I have placed her on craiglist for sale:

Here's a link to the AD on craigslist if you're curious:  LINK

So far, a couple of nibbles but shipping costs and the older Urals' sterling reputation are not helping things in terms of making a sale as you can imagine.

Riding the Cache La Poudre Scenic Byway with a fellow Rounder

Ken Phenix was staying with me this past weekend, I was his "end of ride" witness for this second attempt at a Ironbutt 1000 miles in 24 hours ride.  Ken made it handily with almost an hour to spare I think, but he was one tired puppy at the end of that ride.

Ken is looking like one tired puppy

Ken's Suzuki Bandit adds to the herd of motorcycles in my garage

After about four hours of sleep, we both rode down to Performance Motorcycle Accessories so Ken could replace the rear tire on his Suzuki Bandit, it was a bit thin down the middle.

He showed me how easy it was to take off the rear wheel, doing it right there in the store's parking lot.  He then took the wheel in and the store swapped it out for him for a small fee.

The next day, once Ken was fully rested with a full night's sleep under his belt....we rode out towards Fort Collins and then West on CO 14, aka the Cache La Poudre Scenic Byway.  The weather was gorgeous though a bit cool, especially for Ken who lives in SE Texas and is used to warmer temperatures by this time of year.

 This is the opening scene when one enters the canyon portion of the Scenic Byway

It's here, where Ken had chosen to stop, that I told him things would get even more scenic.

 Just before the rock tunnel, we stopped for pictures of the motorcycles with the high canyon

walls and flowing Cache La Poudre River flowing by

 Another angle on the motorcycles, the road is quite twisty at times

 a glimpse of the Cache La Poudre river

 The rock tunnel one traverses on CO 14

 A snapshot of Ken from movies we took while at the tunnel area

Several lovely and twisting and turning miles later, we stopped around 1PM for lunch

at Glen Echo resort.

 The requisite food p0rn shots for the readers from the rounders website

of which Ken and I are members

 After lunch, the objective was riding to Cameron Pass, we would be stopped at the above turnoff 

area due to increasingly wet and icy conditions on the road.  

 Ken and I pause for a moment at our furthest point of progress, 

Cameron Pass will have to wait for another day, another ride

 As we headed back East on CO 14, Ken stopped a few times to shoot 

pictures, here he is playing in the snow.

Here I am, with the camera looking back towards the West  

 The last stop we made on CO 14

We didn't go all the way back to Fort Collins to get home, I elected to turn south on Stove Prairie road as it's quite twisty in points and more scenic.  The choice however turned out to be a wet one.  We got snow-showered on during most of the time on this road so not able to enjoy the twists and turns.  In fact, since it was below freezing and the roads were wet, it was a bit worrying for me.  Ken, trusting me implicitly it seems, and riding behind me, told me later he was almost giggling while riding in the falling snow.

After the longest transit of Stove Prairie Road by this writer, we arrived at the crossroads where the small settlement of Masonville still exists.  There's an eclectic collection of ironwork, old contraptions, vehicles, statues and such here for the passing rider:

 This metal sculpture was my third favorite one at the Masonville site

Here's the number one and two metal sculptures at Masonville, we parked 

our motorcycles without realizing what a neat alignment they formed with 

the two statues of wild stallions.

Proceeding south from Masonville, we were soon on CO 52 heading east towards the city of Laporte where we again turned south on US 287 and motorcycled our way through one more snow shower.  We made it hope a bit after 6PM, almost 300 miles under our belts and about 8hrs in the saddle, quite the ride.  We experienced all four seasons, Ken got to see and play in snow, ride during a snow fall and neither motorcycle had issues.

Vikki the V-Strom gets a Dauntless Sidecar

Last Thursday, I took receipt of a M72D Model Sidecar from Dauntless Sidecars.  Past issues regarding mechanical reliability of my other sidecar rig, a '96 Ural Sportsman had led me to pursue a more reliable tug for a sidecar and things just kind of fell in line after my failed attempt to come home with a R90 Sidecar Rig in Texas.

After work, I started working on sorting things out, taking the plastic off Vikki, my 2004 Suzuki V-Strom DL1000 motorcycle, unpacking the sidecar from the shipping crate and just trying to figure out how things would be mounted.  You see, while Dauntless does send some pictures with the sidecar, there's a lot left to figure out on your own.  All the pictures related to the subframe mounting to the motorcycle, nothing on how to attach the sidecar itself per se.

Sure, during work hours, Jay the owner is readily available to answer questions but some more detailed instructions and photos would have been better.  Jay did end up sending more photos when I asked him about certain things and while some of the pictures didn't quite apply (wrong sidecar), they also helped somewhat.

Here's all the pieces involved with creating a subframe mount for the 

Suzuki and attachment hardware for the sidecar.  The workmanship is very good, very solid feel to it all.  Still, there was tweaking required at points.

Vikki, sans all the plastic and pieces required to provide mounting points for the sidecar mounts and subframe.    

Notice that the engine guards are gone, they can't be on due to the subframe mount.  

Not needed with a sidecar of course.

First thing to be mounted, a cross brace reinforcing the upper frame of the motorcycle and providing the rear upper mounting point for the sidecar, and the cause of the 

first WWID (What Would Ivan Do) moment.

You see, the charcoal canister is in the way of the right side rear upper mount above, 

I had to move the canister out of the way!  The canister is that object just hanging in the above picture.

Luckily, was able to free up the hosing enough to reroute it and the charcoal canister

and ended up securing it with zip ties to the right side of the rear swing arm.  

Can you spot it behind the hardware in the foreground?

Next, an unexpected but not totally surprising removal, the motorcycle's center  

stand had to go

since the subframe required one of its mounting points.

My good friend Oscar came by at this point with his lovely wife Janet and their son Stevie

who was quite fascinated with the sidecar still sitting in the crate.  Here are Stevie and my oldest son Patrick

goofing around inside the sidecar.

Next up in tasks was the mounting of the right side subframe mount.  

It would be one of the more difficult tasks as you will see.  

Here's where I relearned a bitter lesson, fitting metal parts to other metal parts requires a bit of "tweaking", "cajoling" and judicious leverage.  If you're forcing something, you're doing it wrong usually.  You have to keep things "loose" in all mounting points so mounting screws go in easy.  Otherwise, you're making the job much harder.

Note the rear mount point for the right side subframe above, it attaches to the mounting holes for the right side rider's foot peg.  Not much flexibility as to how it mounts huh?

Well, the trouble is, with the subframe mounted in the previous picture, it left the inner mounting point about one inch short of where its supposed to mate to the damn center stand mount point!  Oscar and I puzzled over this quite a bit and finally we got a solution.  

So, the second WWID moment.  

After much trial and cursing, finally ended up using one of the metal bushings that was part of the center stand I removed, to "bridge" the gap between the edge of the subframe mount and the center stand mount point. 

 Not bad eh?  I checked with Dauntless and while they couldn't figure out why I had to do it, they saw no issue with my solution.  I really hope they take a second look at the Suzuki V-Strom subframe mount for future customers' benefit.

So, hours later, the right side subframe mount is in place.  Quite the travail.

I now moved the sidecar alongside the V-Strom and after much guesswork, some emails and calls later, figured out the correct placement of the "A Arms, which form the mounting arms attaching the sidecar to the subframe mount anchor points.  Again, pictures would have been nice as the guesswork on my end resulted in wasted time and energies on my part!  

Here's what I learned only by calling and fortunately managing to catch the designer on the phone on a Friday evening.  You have to mount the rear A arm first, making sure the clamps straddle the rearmost eye bolt mounting hold in the sidecar frame.  Once that's lined up, you move the forward A arm around till it lines up with the forward lower mounting point on the motorcycle's subframe.  I had unfortunately copied the arrangement on my Ural, clamped down the forward A arm first and lined up the rear A arm second, that was not right.  Again, I blame the lack of pictures/instructions bundled with the sidecar.

As you can see in the picture above, there's two WWID issues.  The electrical plug sticking out of the sidecar body, where one connects the wiring harness for the lights on the sidecar,  is right above and near the mounting hole for the rear eyelet bolt for the upper rear support arm!  

I told Dauntless and apparently mine was the first sidecar where they'd done this, and they would ensure it wouldn't happen again.  Nothing like being a guinea pig.

The second issue is the damn inner portion of the clamping mechanism does NOT fit on the sidecar frame because of the square metal portion pictured above.  Just no room!  Dauntless told me it was supposed to be a tight fit but seriously?  I sent them email with pictures, and they would later confirm that cutting was involved.

So, cutting was done, using a Dremel cutting disk, a hacksaw and files.  Lots of work, a sawsall would have been better and has been added to the list of tools one should have.  Note the gap created above.  Once I cleared it up and painted it black, it looked pretty good.  Using my methods though, it took most of a morning.

The picture above shows how much of the inner clamp fit into the gap created, no way in hell it would have fit and clamped tightly without the cut above.

The rear A arm in place, clamped down, with rear upper support arm in place.

Note how the mounting eye bolt is in the way of the electrical plug as I mentioned before.  You'd think they would have noticed it when doing the work?  My guess, whoever installed the plug, did it on the sidecar, which was at the time, not mounted to the frame.

Ken, who was visiting, helped me do the final mounting work, doing most of the measuring and most of the tightening of the mounting bolts while I saw on the V-Strom to keep the suspension compressed as he ensure the sidecar remained level and I kept the motorcycle level.  We would end up coming pretty close to the right specs!

We took Vikki out for a short test ride, with Ken as the monkey, and she ran pretty good but I felt a steady pull to the right past the point when the rig should have been tracking straight.  Still, pretty good first run.

Over the next day or so, I would hook up the electrical harness with help from my loving wife.  A few blown fuses later, I had it all working.  Bolted on the last pieces of the left side subframe and rode the V-Strom sidecar rig to work today.

One final WWID moment, the way I'd mounted the left hand subframe had resulted in the gear shift lever being interfered with by the gear shift pedal!  I couldn't shift up past second gear!  Dammit.  I saw that the rubber boot covering the ball joint was catching on the pedal so I worked it loose enough to be able to shift.

After work, I swung by my friend Oscar's place to discuss perhaps bending the gear shift lever.  He analyzed the situation with that talent of his and came up with a better solution.  He added three washers to the forward mounting screw and two washers to the rear mounting screw and things bolted on not only fine but there was now clearance!  Damn he is good.

He also helped me unmount the rear upper support arm, which allowed me to extend it out by four turns, thereby increasing the "toe-in" of the sidecar.  I rode the sidecar home and she handled much much much better in terms of pulling to the right.  Oscar is the man!  

Sorry for this long posting, but it was quite the effort to assemble the sidecar onto the motorcycle.  Definitely not a simple bolt-on solution, some tweaking is quite involved!  Still, she's now assembled and riding well, I am for now a happy camper.

Some cosmetic work remains, you have to cut a hole in one of the plastic pieces to allow the rear upper support eye bolt to poke through; Oscar is doing that for me.  I have to tweak the sidecar windshield's apron mount so it angles a bit more to the rear; get used to not having a driven sidecar wheel (this is a glorious thing on the Ural I now realize); and of course, begin the farklization of the rig!

One final remark re Dauntless' product, very good overall, just be prepared for some small gotchas and some modifications.  I hope they will work on improving the instructions and pictures for future buyers.

ABCD on the Cache La Poudre Road

Here's my entry for Gary France's great one day photo contest:  ABCD, will you participate?

My friend Ken Phenix from Texas rode with me today up to CO14, west of Fort Collins, Colorado.  We cruised the Cache La Poudre Scenic Byway and took this show at the rock tunnel I've liked ever since the first time I saw it back in 2006.

I was originally trying to come up with something close to the lovely shot Gary has of himself flanked by distant mountains in the link above.  Didn't come close to the angles and perspective required though, I've so much to learn about such type of photography.

Still, here's my entry, for what it's worth.

Looking forward to all the entries from my fellow bloggers!