by Garth Leonard
While living in England in the early nineties I read about a Russian motorcycle that was popping up at rallies around England. The first one I saw was in Douglas on the Isle of Man in 1993. It was called Ural, a modern replica of a WWII BMW. A person could buy a 650 cc Ural sidecar rig for about half of what I paid for my BMW R100RS in 1981.
Around 1940 Ural motorcycles went into production at a factory in Moscow, based on the design of the 1939 BMW R71. However, concerned about German bombers striking the factory, Russia relocated the factory to the small town of Irbit in the Ural Mountains. That was the birth of Irbit Motor Works, or IMZ-Ural, as we know it today.
In time, Ural's popularity grew in the USA. The Washington importer worked with IMZ-Ural on upgrades to meet America's desire for reliability, our reliance on unleaded fuel and DOT requirements. These upgrades included a 12-volt alternator, electronic ignition, Keihin carburetors, hardened valve seats, and Brembo front disk brakes.
When I was ready to take the plunge, I looked on ebay for late model low mileage Urals. Finally, a 2005 "Woodland Green" Patrol showed up. On the last day of bidding the reserve had not been met, and the highest bid was still low enough for me to overbid. My bid hit the reserve! A few minutes after bidding closed I got an e-mail from ebay informing me I had won the bid. In the course of two hours I had gone from a contemplative idea to a commitment. I had a Ural in Arizona that I needed to pick up. Was this really happening? This was really happening!
The next morning I went to the bank for a cashier's check, and to the post office to mail it out. But how was I going to get my Ural home? The ideas were flying through my head; fly out and drive it back, tow the trailer to Arizona and haul it back, hire a shipping company to pick it up. I'm sure the blizzard included a few other options. I checked into a few shipping companies and got quotes ranging from nine hundred dollars to almost double that. I was sure I could get my Ural home for less than that. Driving my Ford F250 Diesel to Arizona towing a trailer, along with three or four overnights in motels and meals, would cost as much as shipping.
The last option was to fly out and drive the rig back. After researching flights on Travelocity and Expedia this started looking feasible. Even after purchasing fuel for the Ural, staying in motels, and grabbing an occasional bite to eat, I should be able to pull it off for about half the investment of the other options. There were also two other incentives for this option. The first was that I would meet Mike and Carol, who I was buying the Ural from. The other was simply getting my hands on the Ural sooner.
Mike also volunteered an incentive for me to pick up the Ural in person. He was willing to bring it to Albuquerque, NM, which would reduce my ride by a day, and my motels to two nights. I would merely reimburse him for his fuel. That offer was the clincher.
There were also disadvantages to this option, and they hadn't escaped me. The biggest was the idea of setting off on a two-day trip on a motorcycle that I wasn't familiar with. Additionally, I hadn't piloted a sidecar outfit for three years. Was this really a smart idea? No! Was I going to do it anyway? Yes!
On Saturday morning, March 29, 2008, my wife and I set out for the two-hour drive to the Kansas City airport. I had packed only the basics, my camera, leathers, helmet, rain gear, sleeping bag (just in case) and a couple changes of essentials.
Mike agreed to meet me at the Albuquerque airport at 4:30 p.m. I waited until a quarter to five. Thinking he may be at a different part of the airport, I called his cell phone. He was on his way to the airport, but thought he still had plenty of time. His watch was on Pacific time and we were in the mountain time zone. He showed up about twenty minutes later, apologetic, with a Ural-laden trailer in tow.
After introductions I took a few minutes to look at the Ural. It was everything he said it was. The brochures and other photographs I'd seen didn't do justice to the Woodland Green paint on the Ural Patrol. I was happy with the bike already.
We left the airport and drove around to find a restaurant where we would talk business and swap stories over dinner. We filled out the buyer and seller information on the title and the Missouri License Bureau receipt. I reimbursed him for his mileage from Arizona to New Mexico per our agreement.
In a dirt lot with a berm to use as a ramp we unloaded the Ural and Mike went over the controls with me. After all, the Ural has features not found on other motorcycles, like a parking brake, reverse gear lever, and sidecar drive engagement lever.
As darkness set in I strapped on my helmet and pushed the starter button on the Ural. It fired up instantly with no cranking sound and no throttle applied. I simply pressed the button and heard the whispered answer, "budda budda budda budda budda". We waved our good-byes, and I was off.
It was immediately clear to me that I was not riding a BMW. The engine had a loud rattling cadence at highway speeds. There was less power with the Ural's 750 cc, forty horsepower engine than with my 900 cc BMW/Velorex rig.
I accelerated up the entrance ramp for Interstate 40 into the evening commuter traffic. The Ural had a slow wobble that took me back and forth across my lane. It was a handful to control at forty mph. I tightened up the steering damper a quarter turn to see if that would dampen out the wobble. It made it worse! So I turned the damper knob the other direction a half turn and the wobble went away. Now I was able to run at 55 mph and almost stay with the traffic flow. The wobble felt like over-tightened steering head bearings. The Ural's damper works by adding preload to the bearings. By reducing the preload the bearings were able to roll more freely and the steering smoothed out.
In search of a gas station I took an exit, paralleled the interstate on a frontage road for a few miles and finally saw the gas station. As I pulled in I noticed three Harleys at the pumps. The three riders stopped their conversation and turned towards me as I slowed to a stop at a pump. I was experiencing my first UDF (Ural Delay Factor) as I later learned it was referred to. UDFs were to become a common theme on this trip. The Ural always drew a lot of attention from bikers and non-bikers alike. Everyone wanted to know what it was, who made it, where it came from, and how old was it. They were surprised to learn that it wasn't a restored vintage relic. With the Harley riders' curiosity satisfied, they mounted up and pulled away.
Moriarty, 20 miles ahead, was the end of the night's ride. I like one-story motels so I don't have to carry my gear up stairs, and I can keep an eye on the motorcycle. I found a vacancy at the Ponderosa Motel for about fifty dollars. I parked in front of my room and took my gear inside. I had only ridden forty miles, but it felt like a hundred forty.
When I awoke Sunday morning it was still dark. The alarm clock blurred 5:10 at me. I wanted to get up for an early start, but was too tired to jump up right away. The next thing I was aware of was daylight seeping in around the drapes. I glanced at the blurry clock again and it read 7:00. After my eyeglasses brought the world back into focus I packed the sidecar, donned my riding gear, and hit the road by 7:30. Santa Rosa was eighty miles east. I would stop there for breakfast and gas.
In Santa Rosa I stopped for a photo with the Ural next to a retired Army tank, two vehicles with a distinct military heritage, an ocean apart. As I pulled in to a gas station I answered the same Ural questions that would become routine. Then I stepped into the restaurant for a half order of biscuits and gravy and a full order of hot coffee.
US Highway 54 crosses the northeast corner of New Mexico, a corner of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles, and the lower half of Kansas. It looked like a good choice for a shorter and quieter route back to
Missouri. As it turned out, it was the ideal choice for the sidecar rig. I was able to travel up to sixty mph over mostly straight roads and make relatively good time. The straight roads may have been boring on my BMW two-wheeler, but I didn't miss having a lot of curves riding the Ural. As the title suggests, the goal of this trip was to get my Ural home.
Dalhart, Texas was my next gas stop. The strong headwind in this northeasterly direction limited my top speed at fifty to fifty-five mph with the throttle wide open. My gas mileage was in the mid-twenties. I was hitting reserve on the five-gallon tank at about one hundred miles. After a gas stop in Dalhart, I pointed the rig toward Oklahoma.
I made my next gas and gab stop in Guymon, Oklahoma. As with all previous stops, it was also a time for re-hydration. By this time the trip seemed to be dragging on without a lot of forward progress. This was a factor of relatively slow speeds, fifty-five mph, and wide open spaces, which gave very little sense of change as I passed through. Again I had to remind myself that I was riding a Ural, not a BMW.
Crossing into Kansas, I stopped in Liberal to plan on how much further to ride today. Earlier I had thought Wichita would be a good stopping place, but by the time I reached Liberal I was thinking about stopping well shy of Wichita. I left Liberal without a commitment, rode through Kismet, and stopped in Plains for fuel. Meade was about fifteen miles further, and that's where I stopped for the night.
I found a vacancy for about fifty dollars again and settled into my room. The few restaurants in Meade had already closed, being Sunday night. So I stopped at a convenience store. It would be a microwaved burrito and Mountain Dew tonight. I rode 425 miles today.
While traveling by motorcycle I usually camp at night. But this was a motel trip. One of the advantages of a motel vs. camping is hot showers! I turned on the shower as hot as I could bear, and stood under the spray for forty-five minutes, letting it massage and relax my shoulder, neck and back muscles. After the shower I talked to my wife on the phone. She mentioned severe thunderstorms and hail forecast for Monday afternoon. That gave me all morning to put down some cool, dry miles. I would deal with the thunderstorms and hail when the time came.
My natural alarm clock awoke me at 7:00 again. I dressed and loaded my gear. This time I went across the road to the restaurant rather than ride first, eat later, as I had done the day before. Hot coffee sounded like a good way to start the day. As I motored out of Meade, I pondered the sky -- gun metal gray with a low ceiling. It could turn ugly today, but it wouldn't be the first time I had ridden in foul weather.
With no head wind this morning I easily rode sixty mph. Eventually, I increased my speed to sixty-five, and then to seventy just to try it out. But the comfort zone on the Ural is sixty mph, so I slowed back to that speed after a few miles. Everybody was passing me. This is the reality when driving a Ural. A semi passing me in the same direction would increase my speed five miles per hour in the truck's draft. An oncoming semi's wind blast would knock five miles per hour off my speed.
About an hour into my ride I passed a sign reading, "Greensburg 1 Mile". I could already see the first signs of destruction from the massive tornado that all but leveled the town on May 4, 2007. All the trees had their branches trimmed off to stumps, making them look like some strange cacti from a science-fiction movie.
The tornado was classified as F4 on the Fujita Scale. The base of the tornado was one to two miles across, and it generated wind speeds up to two hundred sixty mph. Eleven residents died in the storm, and the town's destruction was nearly total.
There was very little left of the business district. A small trailer had been set up to serve as a temporary post office. Post office boxes were outside under a makeshift shelter. The city and county government offices, police and sheriff's offices had also been moved into trailers. "For Sale" signs adorned foundations where homes once stood.
As I continued on I watched the sky start to break up a little. Instead of deep gray, the clouds were now gray and white. Small blue patches showed through. Eventually, the blue patches grew and the clouds diminished somewhat.
About thirty miles west of Wichita US 54 becomes a four-lane divided highway. I rode through Wichita without much traffic delay, and stopped in Haverhill for gas. I phoned my wife to give her an update, and get the latest weather report. It was raining heavily with strong winds in Warsaw, Missouri, where she works. I was happy that I could most likely get into Missouri before I had to don rain gear.
After El Dorado, Kansas, US 54 was two-lane again. The sky was darkening up more as I progressed towards Missouri. I stopped after about seventy five miles in Yates Center for my last fuel break in Kansas.
When I entered Missouri the sky was the same gun metal gray I had seen that morning. In Nevada, Missouri, I was back on familiar turf. Nothing that nature could throw at me now, short of a tornado or large hail, would deter me from getting home before dark.
In El Dorado Springs I made my final fuel stop of the trip. I turned off US Hwy 54 onto Missouri Hwy 82 north. This is a curvy, hilly route that runs about twenty-five miles through farmlands to Osceola. Near Roscoe I had my first glimpse of Truman Reservoir, which continues all the way to the hydroelectric dam in Warsaw. In Osceola I turned north onto State Hwy 13, passed through Lowry City, turned east onto County Road C for a couple miles and north onto County Road NN for about five miles.
There are scattered Amish communities all over this part of Missouri. Yellow signs with a black silhouette of an Amish horse and cart bear the words, "Share The Road." Cresting a hill or rounding a curve to see one of these slow-moving vehicles immediately in one's path is not uncommon. I slow down and wave when passing an Amish cart, and receive an appreciative wave in return.
A right turn onto County Road Z east put me ten miles from home. When I turned into the driveway it was about 7:00 p.m. I rode 415 miles today. Even though I had to brake hard for two deer on Hwy Z, I made it home before dark when the deer are harder to see. When I parked and dismounted I looked up at the cloudy sky and thanked it for minding its manners. I had not been hit by a single drop of rain on the whole odyssey of getting my Ural home.
About the Author: Garth Leonard is retired from the U.S. Air Force where he worked twelve years in the occupational and traffic safety fields, preceded by ten years in avionics on B-52 bombers. For sixteen years of this time he also taught Motorcycle Safety Foundation classes for military and civilian riders in California and England. Garth worked at two BMW dealerships on the east coast in the 1970s: BMW of Cambridge as a service technician, and Philadelphia Cycles in the parts department. In the 1990s he worked at BMW of Denver for four years as service manager. Garth currently lives near Canon City, Colorado. He owns a 1974 R90/6, a 2005 Ural Patrol, and a 1981 R100RS which he has ridden nearly a quarter million miles, and has recently restored. (Note: The 2005 Ural Patrol was recently replaced by a 2012 Ural Yamal.)2005 Ural Patrol -- Rider Impression: My fondness for the Ural grew over these two 400-mile back-to-back days, and the daily riding since. A couple weeks later I rode to St. Louis and back on the same day, another 400-plus-mile ride. The Ural is surprisingly comfortable, even with the solo tractor-style seats. The only drawback to the solo seat is when shifting my weight for turns the upturned corner of the driver's seat is a little uncomfortable in a rather sensitive anatomical area. The driver's seat has about two inches of fore and aft adjustment to accommodate different leg lengths. Even with my 30-inch inseam I prefer the seat in the rearmost position. The seat height is low, 30.9 inches, which is not as relevant on a sidecar rig as on a solo bike. Ural makes an optional bench seat, which might be more comfortable. But I prefer the look of the double solo seats.
The handlebar reach is directly related to the seat position. It feels right with the seat rearward, giving me a very slight forward lean to reach the bars. The bars are wide, providing ample leverage for muscling the rig around. The optional windscreen and leg guards provide some weather protection. However, the handlebars are wider than the windscreen, so there is no hand protection. The trip from Albuquerque was cold enough for this to be an issue. I have seen pictures of older 650 cc Urals with hand guards installed, but hand guards don't appear in the accessories catalogue on the Ural web site, (www.imz-ural.com) for the 750 cc machines.
The forty horsepower engine makes the Ural a ride of leisure on the road, which is not a problem, as the machine starts feeling unstable at speeds above sixty-five mph. Those speeds don't happen very often anyway. It requires a long downhill grade or a strong tail wind to go faster. Passing a slower moving vehicle (and there aren't many of those) requires a very long passing zone as acceleration is not the Ural's forte. The factory-recommended top speed is one hundred kph, or about sixty-two mph.
One must learn how to shift a Ural. With the inertia of its heavy flywheel, and two-plate dry clutch, shifting is a slow, deliberate process, much like every other process of riding a Ural. Once the clutch is disengaged, a pause to allow the flywheel to spin down lessens the gear grinding through the shift. Double-clutching also works, but only from first to second. The Ural features a heel-toe shifter, although that also takes relearning. Upshifting by pressing down firmly on the heal shifter eliminates the grinding and smooths the shifting. Around sixty mph in fourth gear it feels like my R90 feels when it wants to shift into fifth. I find myself stabbing for fifth gear, but there is none. It doesn't matter, at sixty mph we're nearly maxed out anyway. The rear wheel is driven by a drive shaft, naturally. The drive shaft is exposed and linked to the gearbox with a rubber coupler ala pre-'55 BMWs. The Patrol and Gearup models feature on-demand two-wheel-drive with the flick of a small lever near the gearbox. However, this feature is good for off road or snowy conditions only.
My fuel economy was nothing to brag about being in the high twenties. But I was pushing a head wind most of the way. A person should get thirty-two mpg, which makes this a gas hog among motorcycles. (I have logged up to thirty-eight mpg on local riding in the weeks after the odyssey.) With the Ural's five-gallon tank, including a half-gallon reserve, a person's range should be near one hundred fifty miles. By comparison, my wife's Toyota Prius Hybrid delivers forty-nine mpg. My brother has a gasoline-powered Toyota Echo that delivers in the low forties. Perhaps Toyota should build motorcycles! A real reverse gear (not a starter button reverse) is a nice feature on a 736-pound (dry weight) motorcycle. So is a parking brake. The Ural has both.
When one has the option of switching his motorcycle into two-wheel drive, one looks for an opportunity to try it. This is strictly an off-road feature, as there is no differential gearing or limited slip in the final drive. I tried it out on a dirt and gravel road, and found steering the rig takes considerably more effort. Perhaps the road surface was still too hard for the two-wheel drive feature. I suspect that off the road, or in heavy snow, it would be unstoppable, like a heavy if lopsided ATV.
The Ural's electrical system may be its Achilles heel. On the ride back from Albuquerque the turn signals stopped working. After the trip, I troubleshot the problem to a faulty flasher relay. I purchased an updated three-pin relay from Forever Endeavor Cycles in Eureka, MO (www.abcbmw.com) to replace the Russian-built two-pin relay. But I had to modify the harness to adapt it to the Ural, and add a ground wire. While digging through my box of electrical supplies to find a brown wire, in keeping with the factory color-coding, I found a new two-pin Napa relay that I had purchased years back for a pickup truck. I cut the eyelet connectors off the Ural's relay harness and crimped on blade connectors for the new Napa relay. I secured the relay to the Ural frame with a zip tie, and everything checked out. I also replaced a fuse and a sidecar taillight bulb in the first two weeks, and a sidecar front turn signal bulb two weeks after that.
On the bright side, so to speak, the Ural has a large 420-watt alternator, compared to my 1981 R100RS' 280-watt unit. I was confused about this by reading two different Ural brochures, the owner's manual, and the web site. The new brochures and web site boast 770-watt alternators. The old brochure states that the Ural has a 300-watt alternator, although it lists the amperage as 35 amps. Watts (w) is the product of amps or current (c) and volts (v). Hence, w=cv where c=35 and v=12, which yields 420 watts, not 300 as the brochure states. I posed the question directly to IMZ-Ural, the American importer. They forwarded my question to Dave Clark at Forever Endeavor Cycles. I got an email back from Dave Clark, which confirmed that the 2005 Ural does, indeed, feature a 420-watt alternator.
On reflection, I was impressed that the importer forwarded my question to Forever Endeavor Cycles, as it shows that the importer promotes the individual dealers by giving them an opportunity to interact with someone who is interested in the Ural product. The importer couldn't necessarily know that I had already met Dave and Nicklette at Forever Endeavor Cycles. Dave has over a quarter century of experience working on BMWs, and now works on BMWs and Urals. They're good people, and they're not far from BMWMOA Headquarters. Stop in and say "Hi!"
The speedometer is cable-driven off the transmission, the same as my BMW. The dial readout is in miles per hour and kilometers per hour. The odometer and trip meter are in kilometers. So math is a must while riding the Ural. There is no tachometer.
The design of the Ural is very simple, so maintenance should be easy. The owner's manual is informative concerning basic maintenance tips. There is a two-CD set available with a printable service manual, and short videos to show routine maintenance procedures. The tool kit contains the tools for anything the owner is likely to need, including a tire pump and tire irons. Ural provides a plethora of accessories on its web site, (www.imz-ural.com), and a downloadable parts book. In spite of all this, if a potential owner still shies away from maintenance, there are authorized dealers now in about thirty-four states and five Canadian provinces, and any good BMW airhead technician should be able to work on a Ural.
Speaking of tires (were we?), the rig I bought had about 3,000 miles on it when the rear tire was replaced by the previous owner. IMZ-Ural manufactures their own tires. Although they retail fairly cheaply, you pay for it in the long run by the low mileage. Avon makes a tire in the required 400 x 19 size that retails anywhere from $117 to $140, depending on the source. There are other manufacturers that still produce this odd-sized tire. Two good references are www.russianiron.com and www.sovietsteeds.com. Some of the Ural sidecar models come with a spare tire, which will replace the rear motorcycle or sidecar tire, but not the front with its disk brake.
A lot of attention has gone into the fit and finish of the Ural. The Woodland Green paint is beautiful, and draws comments, even from non-riders. The instrumentation is simple, consisting of a speedometer with odometer and trip meter, lights for high beam, neutral, turn signals, and generator, all mounted on an attractive chrome dashboard. All the chrome appears to be very good quality, as does the upholstery on the motorcycle and sidecar seats. Everything about the frame, drive components, and solid steel body parts is as rugged as military combat equipment, to which the Ural is genetically linked.
Entering and leaving the sidecar is made easy by its roomy dimensions, a step on the side, and a grab handle. The side wall is also cut low for ease of ingress and egress. The one drawback to sidecar comfort is an inside body seam on each side that may or may not cause discomfort to a passenger's leg near the knee while going down the road or trail. The trunk is large enough for two helmets, riding gear, and rain gear, in addition to the supplied tool kit. The downside -- it's not lockable or watertight. The Ural sidecar is almost a hundred pounds heavier than my Velorex Model 562. This is significant. I haven't had any unplanned "flying the chair" episodes with the Ural yet, as I sometimes did with the Velorex attached to an R90/6.
Sidecars are not for everyone. Sidecars don't take away or change a person's riding preferences. They expand them into new areas. IMZ-Ural is one of the last motorcycle manufacturers to feature a factory-built sidecar rig. There are aftermarket sidecar builders in several countries so that virtually any motorcycle could be converted to sidecar duty. But there is nothing quite like the retro-looking Ural, that has been in production and refinement for over sixty years, has on-demand two wheel drive, and shares the same DNA as our BMWs. The ticket to ride ranges from $11,000 to $16,000 depending on your preference. There are several models between those two extremes. They also market a solo model for about $8,000. Urals are the perfect conveyance for exploring backroads and trails almost anywhere on the globe.
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