Compliance Fitting

Charlie6 from Redleg's Rides had mentioned that having a spare of this item was a good idea. But I procrastinated on getting them ordered. Last Saturday, I heard a slight pulsing, hissing sound at idle and I was thinking that maybe it was the crankcase vent. I reinstalled the crankcase vapor collection canister. This morning, the "hissing" sound was back and the left cylinder was running noticeably lean and when messing with the left carburetor, the hissing sound would go away. When the hose clamp shown here was removed, the crack in the rubber "compliance fitting" was evident. I'm not sure of the origin of the part name.

Replacements have been ordered from Raceway in Salem, OR, but it'll probably take a week to get up here. My temporary repair is a strip of aluminum duct tape around the fitting under the hose clamp. For now it seems to hold and seal just fine. BTW, this aluminum tape is actually metal and designed to seal air ducts and not the normal sticky cloth version. The parts being shipped from Raceway are not the actual Ural parts as they consider them "crap". The original lasted for 25k km, not too bad in my opinion.

There was also a small oil leak from the right valve cover. I removed the cover, inspected the gasket, cleaned all of the surfaces and buttoned it back up. No oil leak. I need to be more careful I guess. The silicone valve cover gaskets on the Beemer have me somewhat spoiled I guess. They are very forgiving.

Occasionally there needs to be one cat picture every hundred posts or so. The cat has never used this part of the cat tree but now that the old tree is getting ready to be discarded, it is getting rediscovered. 

Ural 25k Service

To simplify keeping track of the maintenance intervals, I decided to do the 25k km service a bit early. Plus, I wanted to switch out the winter weight oil now that our daily temperatures higher. The thin oil flowed out the engine like water so maybe I should have done it a bit sooner. Very little swarf on the engine drain plug magnet but the sliver of steel from the lifter was there. I'm glad that it finally showed up and wasn't sitting near a bearing or something waiting to cause problems.

Just because I'm a little paranoid (plus it's easy to do), I checked the valve clearances yet again. All were as I had set them earlier (lower limit) and I readjusted them to the middle of the adjustment range (0.003" for both intake and exhaust). The gas mileage has been dismal since I put in the Napa filter so I'm assuming that it has a lot more resistance than the stock filter. I cleaned the original filter and put it back in place of the NAPA filter. I also re-installed the crankcase vapor recovery tank from Raceway. It's an 8 month item and will be removed once temperatures drop to be consistently below 0°F again.

Here is the list of tasks to be done as part of the 25k service.

1. Change engine oil and filter. (Used 20w50 non-synthetic as that's all that was available)
2. Change transmission oil. (Last change was with full synthetic. Mickey said that I can double the change interval)
3. Inspect air filter element (Cleaned the original element with soap and water)
4. Check carburetors while idling for synchronous operation (not done)
5. Check:
1. Adjustment of steering column bearings (checked, no issues)
2. Tension of wheel spokes (checked, no issues)
3. Toe-in and camber of the motorcycle and sidecar (checked in February)
6. Lubricate:
1. Lever pins (clutch lever was dry)
2. Foot brake pedal shaft (I'm planning to install a grease fitting on the shaft so not done)
3. Hinges of the foot brake pedal shaft and linkage. (done)
7. Check condition and action of brakes (sidecar fine, rear break needed adjustment)
8. Check tires for tread depth greater than 3/32" (no problem. Almost no measureable wear over the winter)
9. Check fasteners for proper tightening. (checked the sidecar attachment bolts)

Posted with Blogsy

Just Like New

This is almost like getting a new bike, right? I finally installed the replacement speedometer courtesy of Ural (under warranty). It was an easy swap, remove a couple of nuts, remove the speedometer cable, remove the trip reset knob and the wires for the lights. Then reverse the process. Total time, maybe ten minutes. This post is to document the mileage on the old speedometer so the mileage could be added to the new one when needed. The speedometer cable was lubricated before being reinstalled.

The needle has broken free from the spring and the speed displayed is somewhat random though it was sitting at 90 mph for a long time. It's kind of handy to be able to look down and see approximately what my speed is. I had gotten pretty used to knowing my speed by what gear I was in and the rpm but it's still nice to have some validation. Especially since I only use the GPS when I'm on longer trips.

Thank you to JedR, another airhead and future Ural owner, for bringing the new speedometer up from Mickey, the Ural dealer in Anchorage. I believe JedR's new rig is getting here sometime next month.

And here is a short video from last nights speedometer test and this mornings commute. Nothing very exciting.

Too Much Sunshine

We are now above 12 hours of sunlight and, as you can see in the diagram, solar noon is now almost two hours late courtesy of DST on top of the skew put in place by the state of AK to be one time zone instead or four or five. As you may notice, I'm annoyed by both of these things. The weather services were reporting that the temperature this morning was +5°F but after I started my commute, it was obviously much warmer. No heated anything needed. My OAT (outside air temperature) gauge was reporting +25°F upon arrival at the university. Quite a difference. (And I believe the weather services were the ones that were wrong.)

In our absence, Spring has arrived in the interior. Evidence of this are the clear blue skies and way too much sun. By that I don't mean that there was too much daylight but it was just too bright. You can see that most of the snow has melted from the south-facing slopes. March is definitely one of the nicest months in Alaska as long as you don't mind a little snow.