Ural Transmission Finished!

Seventeen days after disassembly, I actually remembered how to put the transmission together. And there were no parts left over. At least none that I could find. I used silicone sealer between the two halves of the case and followed the procedure that Van Le of lemoto.info to "set" the kick starter spring and adjust the upshift and downshift stop screws. I did go through the gears on the bench to make sure it shifted into all of the gears though reverse seems a bit more difficult to get into than before. Reassembling the case took a couple of attempts as I didn't have the kick starter spring procedure memorized and had to pull it to reset the spring to a known position. The specified torque for the case bolts is only 6.2 newton-meters which translates to 55 inch-pounds. This is lower than the lowest setting on my ⅜" drive torque wrench. So I just hand tightened the bolts.

I took the opportunity to grease the transmission input shaft with a mixture of Honda Moly 60 and thick axle grease. The input shaft splines show almost no wear as do the clutch discs. The input shaft is still the original but the clutch discs were changed during the engine rebuild. It was somewhat of a challenge to get the square end of the clutch release rod into the pressure plate but after digging through my tools I found that a nut driver fits onto the end of the rod perfectly and allows me to move the shaft around while rotating the flywheel with the kick starter.

I think it took longer to reinstall the rear swingarm than installing the transmission. It required the removal of the rear shocks to get the swingarm pivots to line up. It's about 99% finished. I took it for a test ride and realized that I had forgotten to attach the rear brake spring. Minor detail. The transmission shifts cleanly and no more popping out of gear. I still need to attach the brake spring and adjust the rear brakes. Then it'll be time for a real test ride.

Update - It runs just fine and the shifts seem more positive than ever. Ran it up and down through the gears tonight and then brought it back into the garage to change the engine oil. The last time I changed it I didn't have a filter handy. Upon examination, I'm glad that I changed third gear as well as there was significant wear where the slider engaged the gear that wasn't noticeable until I could compare it with the new gear.

Mid-Week Update

On Monday, we headed down the Parks Hwy towards Nenana to the Big M Farm at mile 314.5. They have u-pick berries and vegetables. While we were on our road trip, they would be posting these wonderful pictures of ripe berries starting around late June. We picked some golden raspberries, carrots, cucumbers, yellow beets, green beans, tomatoes and peas.

Yesterday, I made yogurt in the Instant Pot trying out its "yogurt" cooking program. I put 4 pint canning jars on a trivet inside of the pot, added some water and steamed the jars to sterilize them and the inside of the Instant Pot. I then added 1⅓ cup of whole milk to each jar. The initial part of the "yogurt" program is to bring the milk up to 180°F to pasteurize the milk. But since I was using the canning jars, I just used the saute function and had a thermometer in one of the jars. After reaching temperature, I moved the jars into a water bath to cool them down. When the temperature of the milk was down to 100°F, I added 1Tbsp of sugar and 1Tbsp of plain yogurt with an active culture to each jar. Stirred it up and added some of the golden raspberries to each jar. The jars were placed back in the Instant Pot on a trivet with about 1½ cups of water in the pot. Select the "yogurt" function and increased the time to 12 hours. In the morning, I put the jars in the refrigerator to thicken up. The yogurt is very tasty. Pretty tart as a result of 12 hours of cooking. (Normal is 8 hours and mild is 6 hours)

According to the recipe, if you then drained the whey from the yogurt by using something like cheesecloth or a coffee filter, then the resulting yogurt would be "greek style". You learn something new every day. I didn't know that was the only difference between regular and greek yogurt.

Today (Wednesday), I drove down to Delta to pick up the transmission parts ordered from Ural. Muriel gave me one of the limited edition Urals of Alaska patches. It'll look good on the RoadCrafter once it gets back from the Aerostitch repair shop. Muriel said that they had made up some stickers but didn't have any at the shop. Mickey also gave me some parts to drop off to RickS in Fairbanks the next time I saw him. RickS was the one that I had purchased the Ural from. Since he no longer has his shop in town, I rarely see him so I just ran out to his place and dropped off the parts.

Here is what I had ordered. On the left is the 3rd/4th shift fork, on top is the 3rd/4th slide, and on the bottom is 3rd gear itself. I need to pick up a different external snap ring tool as the transmission uses a different style of snap rings. I asked Mickey if there was anything I should do when assembling the transmission and he said to just oil the needle and ball bearings.

I should be able to get the rig back on the road before the weekend.

Transmission (Cont.)

I finally got around to cleaning up the transmission case. When I overhauled the engine 1½ years ago, I didn't clean the transmission case. I didn't remove the seals, the output shaft or shifters and just used solvent and a brush on the outside of the case. The oil and dirt came off pretty easily. After cleaning with solvent, I then used compressed air to dry off the remaining solvent. I probably should have cleaned the case before splitting the case but I was anxious to get a look at the inner workings of the transmission.

I heard back from Mickey on Friday and the parts have been backordered but the folks at Irbit told him that he should have them by next week. I was hoping to get the transmission done before the Ural National Rally Day on June September 9th. We'll see...

New Cooking Gadget

This isn't a really a new cooking appliance as we already had an electric pressure cooker. But this particular model adds a few more features. It has a "saute" mode so it can be used kind of like an electric sauce pan. It will also work as a rice cooker and a slow cooker. If you watch a lot of YouTube videos of full time RVers, they all mention the Instant Pot. I suspect that the Zojirushi rice cooker will make better rice but it is a uni-tasker.

On our road trip, a slow cooker and a pressure cooker would have been nice to have along but I didn't want to take two additional appliances. The pressure cooker would use less power than simply cooking on the induction burner as would pressure cooking rice. It does draw up to 1000 watts but that is about the same as the rice cooker.

I hadn't planned on picking one of these up but Bridget had ordered it as a wedding present but the couple already had one. So now I have one as well.

As a quick test, I boiled up some eggs. It took about 15 minutes total. 5 minutes to heat up, 5 minutes to cook and 5 minutes to cool down. And the shells practically fell off when they were done. This model has a program for making yogurt. Maybe I'll try that one of these days.

As another quick "test", I made up some steel cut oats. In the past, I had to pre soak them overnight. The recipe just said to saute them in oil or butter, then add 3x water and pressure cook them for 13 minutes. They came out great. Add some raisins and maple syrup and I had breakfast. I think that this will be a great gadget and addition to the kitchen. Both at home and in the RV.