Originally written by Norcal new guy on 1/23/2006 6:49 AM
I have a Ural Patrol as my first rig. I like riding it. What I do not like is it's lack of the ability to go freeway speeds. My question is with other more powerful rigs does the darting around increase and if yes is it more or faster. I hope people will know what I mean by "darting around". Always putting some kind of input into the handle bars.
Much has already been said but, being a bigmouth, I will throw my $0.02 in. The Ural sidecar motorcycle is not and never will be a freeway rig. Ural solo's can get away with it but not the rigs with that 250 pound "saddle bag" (plus ballast, plus passenger, plus tools, plus spare tire, plus groceries, plus...) slowing it down. Fact of life. Sorry. For that very reason, I am having another rig built I CAN run the freeways with and keep the Ural for fun riding on secondary roads.
I have been riding my Retro rig for two seasons now and find what I call "squirrelyness" to be a constant - and possibly something due to the way the Ural front ends are set up. The Retro does not have a LL front end but it is still set up by the factory to be "sidecar friendly". The steering is very light and it is quite easy for the rider to over-react as the front wheel reacts to road surface conditions. And it does get worse the faster I go. My personal VMAX is about 58 mph actual/70 mph indicated by the way-off speedometer. (Actual speed determined by GPS.) Beyond that, I am not comfortable at all on the Retro.
That being said, after a while, you don't even notice it as it becomes second nature. Late in my first summer of riding the Ural, I knew I had reached a milestone when, one day, I hit an irregularity in the road and the rig reacted with a sharp swerve. I corrected before I even had a chance to think about it and went happily on my way. That is when I knew I was finally getting the hang of things as the correction had been automatic and unconscious. Relax. It will come.
Sarge
P.S. Already mentioned, but watch those tire pressures! Ruski tires wear like iron. Ruski innertubes have the air-holding ability of pantyhose! Check your pressures daily and it is better to err on the side of too much than too little. When I first bought the Retro, I let the tire pressures get too low and, literally, I could barely keep the rig on the road.
Claude, Lonnie, et al.
RE: the steering damper. I still run some pretty lumpy tires and the damper negated a low speed wobble on loose surfaces, especially sand. It also toned down some of the near wrist breaking rut, rock and stump inputs, and flat stopped the rigs tendency to try and follow those tar snakes. Even with the damper, I estimate the steering effort at less than half that with the OEM trail. Danny
