Had a strange urge today. Acting on it, I de-scarecrowed the Ural combo and set to fettling the damn thing, then booked the test. Really set to with the fettling then, as instead of the expected "Drop it round in a week, mate" I got a "Three o'clock this afternoon, OK?" at midday. 15 miles away (the nearest place that would test a combo) which would be the longest trip I'd undertaken on the Ural. It was running, but not overly well, so I aimed for a 2 o'clock departure and spent the following two hours running out of time. Amongst other things, the oil was way too high on the dipstick (!) and smelled strongly of petrol (!!) so I changed it. Looking in the book, the "European equivalents" of proper Soviet oil were Shell and Esso brands that disappeared in the '70s, so it got half a gallon of good old Morris 10/40 semi-synth that everything else runs on and I always keep in stock. Sorted the disconnected horn, tapped the tail light to make it work, pumped all the tyres up (including the sadly flat spare) tightened the right mirror up and de-cobwebbed the exhausts and we were good to go with crossed fingers akimbo. Right off, the fucker decided it wasn't going to idle and the neutral light came on and refused to go off. Neither did it want to pull away at the end of the street and then I rode the chair wheel over the kerb - so that was the first half-mile. Trundled up the bypass at a princely 40mph in third gear - changed into fourth and it slowed down, so back down and give it half a handful - full throttle and it stuttered and slowed, but I was on a mission, albeit a bit of a slow one and I had time to get there, not to go home and fix the thing. Toes crossed in addition to the already aching fingers and we plugged along the first four miles. Dodged the traffic through Flitwick with only a minor heart failure when the dim tart in front decided that although the oncoming artic had flashed her through the narrow gap ahead, and then pulled in ... she'd stand on it and stop to let him through. SS Ural's stopping distance would have been measured in a few metres more than a back bumper, so a good handful of right rudder was applied as well as a damned good footful of back brake and we slewed across the road in fine style, heading through a gap in the parked cars across the road, for a convenient driveway. Chugging backwards (in reverse, of course) and feeling glad for the dark visor, the twin stripes of Russian rubber across the road looked rather impressive if I say so myself, as they unrolled from the front of the combo. Back on the road and facing the right way, the bastard shamed itself and cut dead, with restart a seemingly faint option. Several prods of the button and gladder still for the dark visor, it creaked into life again and off we slugged. With great delight we delayed a BT Land Rover by keeping him to the limit through the next 40mph stretch, but he expressed his disgust by insisting on overtaking round the outside of a bend in the NSL and having to swerve sharply back to avoid being Norbert Dentressangle's lunch. I caught him up at the lights over Junction 12, anyway - he needed a dark visor too, or perhaps he'd caught the sun a bit this morning. Plenty of revs and a bit of clutch slip and we were away at the second time of asking - through the first set of lights anyway, but stalled and failed at the second. Bugger. Managed at the next opportunity and we were fully commited by then, there was no going back ... just Toddinton to get through and then the long, glorious downhill section .... with a sharpish left hander at the bottom. We waved the chair wheel at the oncoming traffic as I leaned across the chair to little avail, but got down onto the flat straightish bit in one piece, just a little lighter and with a freshly tightened sphincter. Slogged up the hill into Houghton Regis at a steady 30, caught the lights and hit the main drag. A sad failure at the next set of double lights, when the flame guttered and died and I really thought that was it. Starter churning, I fed the clutch in gently and we eased up the kerb and across the path, to rest awhile on the grassy verge. Lid off, gloves off, fag on. Twisted the throttle, hit the tit in an idle moment, as ye do - and it clattered back into life again. Shit. It still patently couldn't be trusted to idle, so I gloved, spat fag and lidded while keeping the tickover up with my right boot on the twistgrip. Try doing that on your solo. It all went pretty smoothly after that, negotiated the One Way system and landed in the car park, even reversed into the "MOT only" space without incident. Google Streetview makes going to places you've never been sooo much easier. I'd only just got my gloves off and lid halfway beofre the testers were out of the building and asking questions. When responding to "Just down there at the bottom of the (impressively steep, short) ramp into the workshop where those people are standing" with "What, with these brakes?" didn't actually go down that well, so I put the po-face on. The testers were fascinated: one had never tested a combo before, the other "Not since 1968, Boy". A brief debate as to which class - motorcyle with sidecar or three-wheeler over 400 Kilograms - took place with the obvious Class 2 answer being the correct one - it isn't a trike. Much hilarity occurred when asked for the horn, as it managed a very brief canary impersonation before falling ominously silent - in one of those deathly silent ways. Still, sliding off and peering revealed a dangling pink wire, with a connector matching the naked one on the horn - slip it on, slide back on, hit the tit and ... canary squeaking again. Much hilarity. Joy. I had to nip round to the office and pay then, so missed the actual test, but returned in time to find the outfit facing the opposite way as they manoeuvred the chair wheel onto the rollers. FAIL. Nothing showing at all. It is a bit awkward you know, having to explain to a tester that the chair wheel isn't actually braked: yes, it has a brake drum on it, as it is identical to the wheels on the bike - but no, there's no actuating mechanism. Yes, some of them do have working chair brakes (it even mentions it in the Pidgin manual) but <ahem> not this model <ahem> Fighting their way through the bullshit miasma, they jockeyed the thing round the otehr way and dropped the rear wheel in the rollers. I saw fit to attest to the efficiency of the brakes, vis-a-vis the twin lines on the tarmac in Flitwick, but forbore to mention the binary character of said oval-drummed contraptions. They found out anyway, as the thing positively leapt backwards off the rollers on application of the rear brake, damn near saving the younger tester a trip to Thailand in the future as the spare-wheel-mounted luggage rack on the chair caught him square in the nadgers. Oh, how we laughed - well, two out of the three of us, anyway. Once he'd uncurled himself, we carried on with the front brake (which has always required a mansized squeeze IYSWIM). The wiry guy on the bike was apparently equal to the task, as the already nadgerbashed chap was pinned neatly between the loop on the front mudguard and the beamsetter for several seconds before we could stop laughing for long enough to pull the bike back into the rollers. I think he was examining the tyre tread depth from ground level - well, it looked like it as he'd coiled up around the front wheel very closely once the beamsetter released him. I didn't laugh - well, not out loud and certainly not till I'd got outside and had a fag on round the corner. They kept me waiting for ages after that, much muttering in their office interspersed with little trips back out to the Ural, squeezing levers and bouncing the (recently cleaned off, thank you *very* much) suspension. I explained the little wobbles and judders as being endemic to the rubber-mounted steel chair. Eventually they reappeared, saving me from an Inquisition by a 60yo R1 rider who "Just got away with a 100mph undertake on an unmarked Plodmobile by saying I was tired and wanted to get home" by presenting me with a beautiful pastel green pass certificate - which, by then, matched the shade of NadgerBoy's cheeks. Performed a lovely three-point turn to exit the workshop, using reverse gear of course, which caused spontaneous hilarity once more (except for NadgerBoy, who tried to laugh but appeared to have herniated hisself) and made a sharp exit. In comparison with the outbound trip, going home was much less eventful, perhaps because there was no deadline, perhaps the pristine pass chitty helped. There was just one incident, when a High Street stopped to let a bimbo manouevre her Chelsea Tractor, so we filtered down the outside and around, to find a Pedlemming about to leap into the road. A severe and prolonged canarying was administered, and I doubt he'll be doing that for a while. (He's prolly still laughing). By the time I got home, I was pretty convinced that the reason for the lack of GO was that the thing was running as a 325cc single - the right pot was off. The fuel filters which I recall fitting not very many km ago were pretty blackened and not transparent any more, so I set out to get the tax disc and a pair of filters. Don't you sit down low in a car - and aren't they quiet - and FAST? Having legalised the beastly thing, I whipped the right filter off (for those not familiar with the layout, there's a couple of flat pots in front of your feet and the carbs sit directly above your feet with a fuel line and inline filter each) and discovered - nothing. No (or very little) fuel in the filter and no fuel in the line. Tapping the end of the line coaxed forth the expected trickle however, so I slipped the filter on and let it fill up. Repeated with the left side (which had a deal more fuel and a load of flakes of rust and paint, and a bit of water in it) and watched that one fill up as well. Started it up and it sounded like a different bike. Well, it was a different bike, it was a 650 twin and not a 325 single, innit. Sat and revved it and watched the pipes warm up, the fuel in the filters vibrate and slowly gurgel away, to be replaced from above. Game on - time for a fag, time for a road test. Lid and jacket on, we sallied forth for the second time today, but this time just for a jolly. Proper (for a Ural) acceleration, much fewer vibes, proper torques and everything. Until I changed into second, and it went off a bit. Hit a bump and it came back, then as we got into NSL, it returned to erstwhile normality and wouldn't do more than 40. Did a couple of miles, then, as planned, turned around and stopped. Beat fuck out of the right carb's float bowl in case the float was stuck or the float needle valve needed reseating and watched the filter fill up again. Hah! It even ticked over for long enough to get gloves and lid on. Pulled away a treat again, then fell at the second gear hurdle - then chimed back in, then out, then roared into full effect at the apex of a left-handed tighter than 90 degree corner, causing the chair wheel to whip into the air and my sphincter to whip a bit more cloth in. Then back onto one for the straight, the bastard. There was a bit more coming and going, and a considerable amount of going better on 3/4 throttle rather than when wound all the way around - and a few backfires. Back into the 30 limit in the village and it was still surging quite hard and stinking a bit. With backfires, too. Backed it into the driveway, dismounted and gave it a once-over ... and had to get Elly to come out with her camera to capture the right-hand silencer. [URL]http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellyukrm[/URL] The pics are headed "Ural" and there's five of them. As you can see, there's a patch on the silencer that isn't shiny silvery chrome any more, it's a rainbow. The inside side (IYSWIM) away from the air flow was cherry red, and the inside of the tube was bright red - a yellowy, just about to melt red, actually. The bevel drive casing was way too hot to touch, too - spit sizzled off it like a very hot iron. WTF has caused that? Mixture too weak due to lack of fuel flow - or unburnt fuel going up just at that point? I've fucked about with a lot of motors, with varying numbers of wheels, but I've never to my knowledge damn-near melted a hole in an exhaust like that. Some ten minutes later, spit was still popping back off the silencer. That was *hot*. I'll be fitting known new plugs tomorrow, although the current incumbents are pretty new and give a decent spark and have the right gap. I'll also have a look at the points (that was the solution to the fucker not running for over a year, the electronic ignition has thrown a wobbly and would cut in and out at will (or, more specifically at me, when I was riding it)) and, I suppose, the timing if I can remember how to do it. I'll have words with the right carb too, and see if I can find the reason for the lack of fuel flow - but would anyone like to speculate as to the cause? Come on, all opinions welcome - and no, I can't hurl it off Beachy Head, Elly owns half the thing and not only that, it appears to be a local celebrity to boot.
