Thursday, February 18, 2016

BBBC #18 and Another Ural Update

This post is part of the blogger challenge titled BBBC. Today's topic is:

18. Fruit

I have been accused of being an iFruit fanatic by others within the university IT organization and this is the type of fruit they were referring to. Back in the late 90s, the only Apple products that I used on a regular basis was a Newton 130 and a Macintosh IIci. It wasn't until OS X was introduced in 1999 that Macs started to replace Dell. I was regularly running Linux on the Dells but with OS X, I was able to run MS Office with all of the reliability and flexibility of a unix back end. I've had numerous iPods, iPhones and iPads over the years and never felt a need to try anything else. The mobile with a local Barrow phone number is a Nexus 4 running Android and it's fine but I've never felt a need to switch from iOS or OS X.

Ural Update

Jed came by this morning and in a couple of hours we completely disassembled the engine. The clutch tool was nice to have but I believe that the method of using either 2 or 3 bolts, nuts and washers would have worked fine. I used my 1/2" impact wrench to remove the flywheel bolt. We could not get it to budge with just the breaker bar. Even with the impact wrench, I needed to remove the regulator from the compressor to maximize air pressure to the wrench. Bruce's flywheel puller worked great for removing the flywheel and rear bearing retainer but it took much more effort than I would've thought.

Once the rear bearing retainer and rear main bearing were removed, I just needed to pull the crank and front bearing out. I ended up calling Mickey as it didn't seem to want to move even though I thought I was using enough force. Mickey said to put the engine on the bell housing, put a 2x4 on the end of the crank and hit it hard. We did that and it popped out after a couple of blows with a splitting maul (blunt end). The crank was removed and examined. To me, one rod bearing is shot, the main bearings don't run smoothly and the front cam bearing is noisy. But none of them exhibit any play beyond that.

Notice all of the aluminum on the right of the picture. A whole lot more that I saw in the drained oil. The source of all of the aluminum? I'm thinking that one rod bearing cage has disintegrated. I can't find any other source for all of that aluminum.

On Friday, I'll be driving down to Delta with the engine parts to get a second opinion and make up a parts list and order. Meanwhile, time to clean some of this stuff up.

6 comments:

  1. I guess I shouldn't be surprised anymore that anything involving maintenance/repair on a URAL requires hitting it with a hammer. You wrote: "Mickey said to put the engine on the bell housing, put a 2x4 on the end of the crank and hit it hard.". So, did you place the block of wood against the rear of the crank and hit that or did you put the block of wood on the front end of the crank?

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    1. On the front. I actually put a deep socket into the front of the crank and hit that with the splitting maul. It's much easier to use a heavy hammer lightly than a light hammer hard.

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    2. thanks, that makes sense now. I used a three clawed gear puller when I removed the timing gears on my '96 sportsman rig after the grenade incident....wonder if they would work for pulling the bearings off the crank.

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    3. There isn't room behind the bearing for the puller. The bearing is partially recessed into the slinger.

      But it doesn't matter to me as I plan on replacing both.

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  2. Its just two bad you seem to need two wheel drive with all that snow and ice. I cannot understand how Urals can be marketed as go anywhere motorcycles with this sort of track record. My Bonneville is closing in on 90.000 miles. I did have to replace a rectifier once.

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    1. I agree with you completely. The solution by some has been to replace the Ural engine with a 247 BMW engine. Though the next weakest link is the transmission and final drive. The biggest difference, IMHO, is the pressurized lubrication system. The Ural still relies on slingers to lubricate the big end of the rod bearing. BMW abandoned slingers for a high pressure oil pump in 1970 with the /5.

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