You need to find a smart friend who knows how to repair Soviet equipment
Every motorist should be able to tighten the brakes, check the oil, or properly kick the wheel. However, if for some reason a person acquired a broken Soviet motorcycle, he should be prepared for much more serious problems.
If you have a wild desire to drive around the area in a hellishly growling Ural, but you can’t completely go through the wiring yourself or weld a seam on a falling off fork, you’ll have to find an enthusiast friend who will do it for you.
Counting on him to do everything for free is stupid, so you’ll either have to shell out a tidy sum or try to delve into all sorts of schemes yourself. There is a third option: a friend will be carried away by the idea of driving a restored tarantass and will work for food, but in any case you will have to prepare a base-garage, preferably heated, where you will spend your evenings trying to revive the beast.
The most difficult thing in this matter is not to lean on alcohol.
Weaknesses of the IMZ-8.103-10 (IMZ-8.103-30, M-67-36) engine of the Ural motorcycle
- Foot starter (kickstarter);
- Gas and clutch cables;
- Generator;
- Carburetors;
- Cylinder heads;
- Reverse gear (gearbox).
More details about the weak points of the motor...
Foot starter (kickstarter)
The foot starter of the IMZ-8.103-10 engine is a weak point due to the slippage of the pawl. The malfunction is eliminated after dismantling the gearbox and disassembling it with rearranging the pawl with the other side or replacing it. I have an assumption that the metal of the dog is of low hardness. On the other hand, if the pawl is made harder, the gear will fail. You need to choose the golden mean.
Throttle and clutch cables
The clutch control and fuel supply cables are a weak point due to their short service life. To put it simply, they tear, and before that they stretch, which makes it necessary to adjust the timing of the supply of the fuel mixture, as well as the clutch.
Generator
The generator does not run for a long time.
Carburetors
Gasoline gets into the floats, after which the cylinder is filled with gasoline. In addition, carburetors are not matched to these engines; half of the fuel goes to waste, which is not economical. It would be nice if the engine had one carburetor instead of two.
Cylinder heads
Do not overtighten the spark plug heads; the threads break off quite easily. You cannot overheat the engine, the result will be clearly visible on the heads, the studs are pulled out, leading to the landing plane of the heads. If you are unable to avoid breaking the spark plug thread, contact a familiar turner; he will be happy to repair it and install a steel threaded bushing for a modest fee. I can recommend the same for wear of valve seats and chamfers. It is much cheaper to repair heads than to buy new ones; a good turner can do this in no time.
Reverse gear (gearbox)
The reverse gear does not work for a long time due to the rapid wear of the reverse gear in the gearbox.
You can't lure girls with Ural, except local drunks
“Ural” is a convenient unit for transporting potatoes or other agricultural products, so the “woman’s magnet” is not included in its basic package. If your friend is also a bodywork master, and he can give the motorcycle a divine look, then there is still some chance of attracting a female.
The standard appearance of even a very decent three-wheeled Ural will hint to a girl not about romance, speed and reckless driving on highways, but at most to the fact that its owner has a folding bed and half a liter of alcohol in the garage. And this is the main problem.
Garage alcoholics are crazy about “Urals” - this is the dream of their tender Soviet childhood. The sight of a motorcycle flying past causes a nostalgic spark in their bullish eyes, after which the drunks begin to walk in a line towards the garage with the desired equipment.
Some want to be given a ride immediately, others give a million recommendations on how, with the help of duct tape and a bar of soap, they can turn a Ural into a racing car, and for a bottle of beer they can even turn a motorcycle into a purring Harley.
As a result, you can only work behind closed doors, firing cigarettes at the storming crowds of onlookers.
Flaws
The disadvantages of domestic Ural motorcycles include, first of all, their cost. For the Russian market, the price of a new motorcycle varies from 500 to 650 thousand rubles . Many Russian buyers do not understand how a motorcycle can cost more than a car. This price is the result of using foreign parts. An equally important negative quality of the Urals is its high gas consumption with low speed characteristics. The Ural is a very expensive motorcycle to refuel and this also does not make it popular.
High demand on the foreign market has led to the disappearance of original spare parts from Russia, and Chinese analogues cannot compare with them in quality. The low weight of the Urals negatively affects the stability of the vehicle at high speed. When driving over 90 kilometers per hour with or without an empty stroller, a bump can become an excellent springboard. Most Ural models take turns poorly at high speed, which is not acceptable for those who like high speeds.
The “brutality” of the motorcycle’s body causes admiration abroad, but meets with protest in the Russian open spaces. Outdated design in most cases leaves a negative impression of an excellent motorcycle.
Under no circumstances should you succumb to garage romance.
If you do allow advisors to approach your motorcycle, get ready for them to offer you a drink. Moreover, this will not be done by drunks, but by quite decent men from neighboring garages, bored and always looking for someone to exchange a few words with.
There is nothing wrong with this, but this is only the first forty times. In the end, it will come to the point that on weekends around lunchtime you will be pretty drunk and won’t be able to do anything worthwhile, and in the evenings you will explain to someone’s wife who came to pick up her late husband with a rolling pin that “Vasya is a grown man, he himself knows what's what!"
Garage romance has the oily taste of grease and the tears of broken families. This type of escape from a dull home life is fraught with problems, but it is not always worthwhile to completely isolate yourself and reject persistent attempts to help - sometimes men can provide useful tools or even spare parts.
Buying a Ural is the best way to die young
Do not think that if a motorcycle has three wheels, it will be more stable than its two-wheeled counterpart and that you can ride it while heavily intoxicated. This is a fatal misconception that has claimed a huge number of lives of village fools driving along seemingly safe rural roads.
In addition, fans of the Soviet motorcycle industry know that when making a sharp turn to the right, a motorcycle with a sidecar easily flips over, throwing the passenger to hell. Sharp braking can also lead to a forward somersault, after which the motorcycle easily crushes reckless drivers with its massive 320 kg carcass.
Falling from the Ural is not easy, but very easy, so don’t even think about racing with the police. However, theoretically, with the power of forty horsepower in the engine, capable of accelerating the giant to respectable speeds, it is possible to escape the chase.
A serviceable Ural is not only a good off-road cargo vehicle, but also an excellent motorcycle for learning to ride. Modern models have a quite presentable appearance and are easy to operate, but the price leaves much to be desired. The main thing to remember is that buying an old Ural is a small step for a biker, but a big step for a garage alcoholic.
Review of URAL motorcycle (1985)
The motorcycle was purchased by my father back in 1986, when I was still in second grade. My father applied at his place of work, then stood in line (younger readers will not understand this), by decision of the district party committee, he, as a leader in production, was given a completely new Ural. I still remember this wonderful moment when he was brought from a trading base (17 km from our regional center), in the back of a GAZ-53. The joy knew no bounds!!! Then we didn’t have a garage, my father not only didn’t have the skills to drive a three-wheeled motor vehicle, but also didn’t have a license. For this reason, the motorcycle stood in the courtyard of the house for about 2 months (we had a private house), under a tarpaulin tent.
After some time, dad received a license and the gradual use of this motorcycle began. Then I was a complete goldfinch, I understood practically nothing, and the Ural was the ultimate dream for me, except for flying into space or, at worst, meeting a famous pirate.
But time passed, from the age of 12 my father even began to trust me to control a motorcycle for short periods of time. I, pleased with my father's favor, spent hours in the yard scrubbing the motorcycle with my mother's Soviet shampoo, which I stole from the bathroom, eliminating oil leaks to such an extent that my colleagues turned to my father with the question: When did you manage to replace the engine? Dad, as a thrifty man, through , collected a whole mountain of spare parts (cardan, piston group, gears, clutch discs, several crankshafts, countless spokes, ignition kits, oil seals, etc., etc.). During a period of widespread shortages, especially of spare parts, we practically had a second motorcycle, only the frame and rims were missing.
We traveled constantly and a lot: dad went to work every day (about 10 km in both directions), on weekends he went fishing, to pick berries, to visit relatives, etc. Moreover, we went fishing both in winter and summer. So the motorcycle practically stood in the garage only at night or in severe frosts (-30 and below). It is quite normal to ride a motorcycle up to 25 degrees below 0 (which was later tested). We installed a wind deflector, protective shields on the steering handles and forward. My father also had leggings (cop ones, I don’t even know where he got them from). In general, the motorcycle never let us down, we always made it home, sometimes we even dragged other motorcycles on a tie. I remember that we repaired our Ural 2 times: 1. Rewinding the generator; 2. Piston repair, since jokers (father’s colleagues) threw an M6 nut (bastards) into the combustion chamber of the left cylinder.
Time passed, my father saved money, dreaming of a car. Having about 35 thousand Soviet rubles in our account (if anyone remembers, the cost is several cars), we were never able to purchase our own car due to the queue not moving forward and the real rudeness of the workers of the district party committee, who claimed that dad already owns a motorcycle and this enough.
But the Great Power of the USSR collapsed, the time had come for daily inflation, money was already in the millions, prices were jumping daily, and only upward. The time of good earnings had passed (lately my father worked in a production cooperative), people thought only about their daily bread. The time for my studies came and I left the village for 5 years. All this time the motorcycle stood in the garage without moving for a simple banal reason - there were simply no tires. When I returned home in 1999, the first thing I did was take out my motorcycle. Over the course of 5 years, the battery died and crumbled, all the seals were leaking and needed repairs. I started the iron horse with difficulty, rode it for a month and decided to repair it. In the closet I found a book on the operation and repair of a motorcycle (included with the Ural), studied it thoroughly and, together with my father, began repairing it.
This is where the above pile of spare parts came in handy. Together with my father, I replaced the complete piston with cylinders, the crankshaft (although it was possible to drive the old one), all the seals, went through the box, replaced the ignition, went through and replaced all the seals and cuffs in the fork and shock absorbers, replaced the crosspieces, clutch, installed new carburetors (which I constantly adjusted, but eventually achieved synchronous operation), together with my neighbor, I also replaced the valve grinder. After the repair I tried to start it, but nothing happened. I haven't shown the motorcycle to anyone. Local craftsmen even set the ignition using a device, but the Ural did not even show signs of life. During the first week I pulled the kickstarter and in the end the Ural sneezed!!! There was no limit to the joy. I started to pull the kickstater with great enthusiasm and the bike sneezed a couple more times. In short, I finally started the Ural and, as a result, achieved incredible success - with a light press on the kickstarter (precisely a press, not a kick), the motorcycle started and worked like a clock. I was very happy with this turn of events, as was my iron friend, who found a second youth and felt the pleasant work of the replaced parts without extraneous knocks and sounds. Friends and acquaintances have already begun to bring their iron friends to me for repairs, to consult, and I enjoyed the trouble-free operation of my unit, monitoring its technical condition. I regularly changed the oil, including transmission oil, during operation, by adjusting the carbs, I achieved normal fuel consumption and synchronized operation of both pots.
I also used the motorcycle almost all year round: commuting to work, winter and summer fishing, outings and swimming, trips to the girls in the evening, etc. They offered to sell it to me several times, giving good money, but I refused, believing that friends are not sold. By the way, commercial fishing and motorcycles are very developed in our area, especially Urals, Dnieper and Izh Planet are always in price.
One day a girl turned my motorcycle over. At night my friends and I went for a swim in the river and I gave her a ride. So, approaching the shore, she turned the steering wheel towards the stroller, while the stroller was on a hill. As a result, the motorcycle overturned and rested its cylinder on the bottom of the river (fortunately, the bank is shallow). A friend sitting in a stroller flew over us and landed on his belly, the girl and I also took a swim. The motorcycle roared throughout the area, I turned the ignition key, which safely fell into the river. Everyone searched, lighting matches one by one. As a result, the girl found the key, the motorcycle started up and after the swim it rolled not only home, but we also went for payment in kind with the same girl (I think that she paid off completely, there is something to remember). As a result, the left cylinder head, cylinder head cover and that's it.
I drove this miracle of motorcycle construction until 2004 (until I bought a car), I also drove relatively long distances (max 200 km) fully loaded (passenger, full sidecar of cargo), carried iron, materials for work, traveled all the fields and mountains in the area, I was always sure that I would get home. If anything broke on the road, it was something minor that could be fixed in the field. While using the motorcycle, I collected an even larger mountain of spare parts (a complete set of rims, a spare engine, etc.). I rode without a stroller for one summer, it’s a beast and pulls well, but the speed is still limited to 100 km/h. Although for the most part I drove the motorcycle carefully and treated my iron friend purely as a human being, following the principle “The machine loves lubrication, cleanliness and affection.”
After buying a car in 2004, I used the motorcycle less and less, and later it sat in the garage forever. Over the entire period of operation, I noted some disadvantages:
1. Contacts of turns and dimensions on the stroller are oxidized;
2. On a hot engine, oil constantly leaks through the clutch rod on the rear wall of the gearbox (no matter what I’ve done, it doesn’t help);
3. Carburetors have to be constantly adjusted to ensure synchronous engine operation;
4. Oil leakage from the front fork, replacing cuffs and seals helps, but not for long, given the condition of the village roads;
5. The speedometer constantly lies (the speed jumps from 60 to 80 km/h);
But there are many more advantages, even now, when I only travel by car, I remember the Urals with love and trepidation, and every spring I just want to delve into it, but there is no way, since I live in another locality. My son-in-law uses a motorcycle; he is a fisherman and this means of transportation and delivery of goods is just right for him. So our Ural is still in service, for 25 years already...
