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Ural in Media
Moto-Euro On Assignment
FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
It’s still dark and a persistent drizzle oozes from the heavy sky. I
pull the Moskvich to a halt at the border checkpoint and roll down the window.
"Papers." I hand over the folded parchment and pray that Slava’s handiwork is
good.
"Purpose of your visit?" "I go to visit my grandmother." It’s a lie, but I’ve practiced
it a hundred times. The guard reaches inside his overcoat for a pair of wire-rimmed
spectacles and steps into the dim yellow light of a tiny wooden hut. On the small
desk, he inks a stamp and brings it down on Slava’s paper.
05:58
>
"Proceed." The iron barrier creaks as it
swings upward. I crunch the Moskvich into
first gear and roll forward.
07:39 I have to collect Larionov at the
airport at 09:15 and I’ve made good time
from the border. But now I’m stuck in a
huge traffic jam in a place called Everett.
Perhaps a military convoy ahead.
09:18 Another barrier, but this time at
the airport parking lot. It’s in a town called
Sea-Tac, which isn’t shown on my map.
Larionov is waiting with two heavy suitcases.
We say nothing until we’re inside
the Moskvich. "Ilya and Dmitri are ready
for us," says Larionov. "They have our
transportation."
09:55 I’m lost. Larionov is drumming
his fingers nervously on the Moskvich’s
dashboard. I pull over and wind down
the window to ask the way to
Redmond. "Billville?" says the
passerby. "Take the 520 to the
end." What.s Billville,* I wonder..?
10:07 Ilya and Dmitri are waiting. Their
cover is a motorcycle import business. We
load our photographic equipment into a
Ural Gear-Up sidecar unit. "Why the military
camouflage?" I ask Larionov. "Double
bluff," he says. The steel roll-door rattles
upward revealing a heavy gray Seattle
sky. Our mission is underway!
11:47 We’re waiting to board the ferry
to Bainbridge Island. Our mission is to
photograph the Space Needle-a suspected
missile installation. Larionov is riding
the Gear-Up. I’m following on a Ural
Russian Wolf. "What kind of Harley is
that?" shouts a man from a pickup truck.
An elderly gentleman is staring at the
Gear-Up. "I was in Africa in 1943," he
says. "I remember these." But our Gear-
Up was built only in 2003.
13:09 The cloud cover has broken and
the sun appears. Larionov and I are on the
vehicle deck pretending to take pictures of
the bikes while shooting the Seattle skyline
to update our maps. The ferry pulls
into the harbor. "Time for Starbucks," says
Larionov.
Gearing Up
OK-here’s the real story. "Larionov"
Williams phones me from Moto-Euro’s
Phoenix gulag and asks me if I’m going to
the Seattle Motorcycle Show. Yes I am.
"Want to test a couple of Urals?" he asks.
Does a Russian bear poop in the woods?
Most of the rest is true. I did cross a
border. We did meet Ilya and Dmitri at
Ural’s head office in Redmond. We did
ride a Gear-Up and a Russian Wolf. We
took the Bainbridge Island Ferry. And we
went to Starbucks, too.
Ilya is Ilya Khait, General Manager of
IMZ-Ural in Irbit, Russia, and President of
IMWA Inc, the company’s US subsidiary.
Dmitri Slobodin is Vice-President, CFO
and CIO. We also meet Gary Kelsey who
runs the sales side in the US.
The two Urals in question are a
Russian Wolf, a cruiser-style version of
Ural’s solo machine with a longer rake,
forward controls (as well as regular-a nice
touch) and a lower seat. The Gear Up is
Ural’s top-of-the-line sidecar rig with leading
link forks, engage-able sidecar drive
(making it a 3 x 2?) and reverse gear. It
comes in a Jackson Pollock paint job with
lots of neat extras like a spotlight, jerry
can, sand shovel, spare wheel, air pump
and machine-gun mount. The last item
might help sell the Gear-Up in the
Ozarks, and it makes a statement in
the city, too.
Until recently, an independent
importer handled Ural distribution in
the US. But in May 2003, the parent
company, IMZ-Ural announced the
setting up of subsidiary Irbit
MotorWorks of America Inc, to
handle distribution. Long time Uralist
Derek Smith, who helped write some of
the maintenance documentation sees a
big impact on customer service and quality
control.
"When Ilya says we’ve got a problem,
he picks up the phone and chews them
out at the factory," says Smith. "Ilya has
direct control over the whole process. He
spends half his time here, half at the factory."
One of the fascinating aspects of the
Ural is its passionate following-enthusiasts
like Smith who donate their time and
expertise to spreading the Russian word.
The Ural booth at the Seattle show is
"staffed" mainly by volunteers, all equally
obsessive. It’s there I meet Fredda Cole,
who set land speed records on a Ural at
Bonneville Salt Flats. Fredda took the
titles for 650cc pushrod engines, both fuel
and gas, with and without sidecar. The
blueprinted 650 was pushed to 117mph
solo and 110 with a sidecar frame bolted
on. The sidecar record still stands.
So what's a Ural, then?
As sharp Moto-Euro readers will have
noticed, the Ural engine bears a strong
resemblance to a pre-Spandau Beemer
lump. This is no coincidence. In 1939,
impressed by how rapidly the German
forces were able to deploy fighting power
with their machine gun-equipped BMW
and Zundapp outfits, the Russian defense
ministry secretly purchased five R71s in
Sweden and had them reverse engineered.
As WWII alliances shifted and
realizing they were Hitler’s next target, the
Russians moved the motorcycle factory
out of Luftwaffe range to Irbit, just east of
the Ural Mountains in Siberia-where it
remains. After hostilities, they picked up
much of the Munich maker’s tooling as
well.
The modern Ural range is made up of
two solo machines and five combinations.
In fact, Ural makes the only factory sidecar
outfit you can buy in North America.
Essentially, there’s one engine with two
frame and two fork combinations. Both
frames have pivoted rear swingarms, but
vary in the way the shocks are mounted.
The sidecar bikes use a conventional pivoted
spring/damper unit, while the solos,
Wolf and Retro, use what looks like a
modified plunger frame. All sidecar units
(except Troyka and Retro) use a leadinglink
front fork-much the best design for
three-wheeling-while the solos get telescopics
by Paioli. The Wolf gets Brembo
disc brakes front and rear, while all others
get a Brembo front and IMZ’s own
mechanical or hydraulic rear drum.
The engine is a 750cc horizontally
opposed air-cooled OHV flat twin driving
through an engine-speed clutch and four-
speed box. Sidecar units and the Retro get reverse
as well. The Patrol and Gear-Up sidecar rigs come
with selectable two-wheel drive for mountain-goat
tractability.
What's it like to ride, then?
Riding the Russian Wolf is both strange and
familiar. The cruiser style ergonomics, switchgear
and controls are all in the usual place and work as
expected. There’s an air of solidity and over-engineering
everywhere, from the massive frame to the
beefy mufflers. The electronically ignited, Keihincarbed
engine fires up easily on the electric leg
and, when warm, settles to a steady putt-putting
idle. Blipping the throttle makes the bike rock as the
flywheel tries to catch up with the pistons, but you
don’t notice it when rolling.
And it’s when rolling that the bike becomes less
familiar. Those of us who regularly ride sportbikes
are used to clutchless snicking gearshifts and
instant throttle response. The Ural demands you
dance to its rhythm. Upshifts require you to wait for
the flywheels to slow, then apply considerable force
to the shifter. This is rewarded by a crunch from the
cogs as they mesh. When you get used to it, it’s
fine. One curiosity is the neutral
finder (reverse/neutral finder on
reverse-gear equipped machine), a
small chrome lever on the right side
of the transmission. There’s no
conventional neutral in the gear
pattern; pushing down firmly on the
chrome lever disengages the tranny.
Though the cruiser geometry
means tippy slow-speed handling,
the Wolf feels much like a good sixties
British bike at higher speeds:
tidy, predictable and solid. The
power band is smooth, and the big
flywheels mean easy standing
starts. The bike is quite highway
capable, bowling along easily at
60-70 mph. Which is faster than I’d
feel comfortable on the Gear-Up...
Sidecar rigs are different, of
course. The weird steering, handling and braking all take some getting used to, but the
Ural makes a pretty much ideal tug: torquey with lots of flywheel effect to get you off the
line, and those beefy leading link forks, which flex much less than telescopics under a
combo’s severe side loads. After a day at the helm, "Larionov" is throwing the rig around
like a pro, though having buddy Chris’s bulk in the chair helps a lot on right-handers.
Want to get noticed? Forget the $30,000 custom cruiser. The Gear Up turns heads
wherever it goes, from gawping teenagers to misty-eyed veterans. It could also be the
perfect urban assault vehicle, the two-wheel drive, slogging torque and reverse gear taking
it places no SUV and few ATVs would consider. In any case, a few dings in the bodywork
would add to its street cred, which it already has in spades.
And it’s only this year that Ural has played its trump card. The Retro is a retro bike that
isn’t: the fifties styling cues-single seats, "plunger" frame, headlight nacelle-are all standard
features. All Ural has done is dress them up with fishtail mufflers, an unsprung front
fender and period pinstriping. The piece de resistance is mounting the neutral finder lever
on the gas tank, like a hand shifter. Accessories include a chrome pancake air filter and
blackout headlight cover with more goodies in the pipeline.
Summing up: These are machines built to last. They may be unsophisticated, but they
do the right things right. I especially like the all-hydraulic brakes and clutch, shaft drive,
the excellent Brembo disc brakes and the overall sense of durability. I suspect a Ural will
still be plodding along when most of its glitzier contemporaries are being overseen by the
proverbial junkyard dog.
Written and Photographed by Robert Smyth
exclusively for Moto-Euro Magazine.
ME69 Winter 2003 issue 12
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