Silly American capitalist tools, your motorcycles are soft and weak!!

[Kiwi_Roy]

The Chang Jiang
the Chinese army had over a million of them
I think they were made using the machinery from the Russian Ural factory
I visited Jimbo's Classic Sidecars near the Beijing Airport, he had a business restoring them using BMW engines
http://s1304.photobucket.com/user/Kiwi_Roy/slideshow/Chang%20Jiang
The side valve engine is a genuine Chang Jiang
Note the high state of polish they get on the old beamer mills
On a trip through Beijing I took a sidecar tour with Beijing Sideways to the great wall, highly recommended.
 

[PeteS]

So I watched the video and came away impressed. Right after that one finished a second one came up with a guy giving the pros and cons of this bike. The pros, presented first, had me interested but the cons convinced me this is not ready for prime time. Rear tire life of 2000 miles, 40 HP pushing 700+ lbs, and transmission full of neutrals.

https://youtu.be/bB8PhQRmc7g

Pete

[lucian]

Now there's some serious Russian hacking.

[webmost]

That there's some funny chit.

I love the Blue Ridge Parkway. One of my annual BRP projects is my Johnny Sotweedseed tour (sotweed being King James' word for tobacco). Instead of apple seeds, I ride up and down the ridge sowing Pirouette cookie cans with six or eight cigars in each. One of these excursions, I bumped into a Ural rally at Willville, several years back. An affable bearded fellow stood smoking at the bonfire, I bombed him with the sotweed. He came strolling over to our camp site later with a bag of Russian beer. I think it mighta been called Baltika, or some such. Cyrillic label and all. This cat was such a hard core Ural fanatic he'd even done the factory tour in Irbit Siberia, and even the Dnepr factory in Kiev. We had a great time swapping stories, getting lit, and lighting stogies. He was perfectly aware that Urals suck donkey dongs; he just got off on the fact. Half his stories were hilarious breakdowns and the ingenious jury rigging that got him home.

[Lannis]

Long as we're swapping Ural Willville rally stories ... I did the same thing.   

Rolled into Willville and it was full of Urals.   Stayed and got to talking when in comes a loaded-to-the-gunwales Ural sidecar outfit.   Rider gets off and sets up a BIG tent.   Takes a cherry-picker engine lift off the bike and assembles it.   Uses it to help his paraplegic wife out of the sidecar and into a wheelchair.   She rolls into the big tent and they set up camp for the weekend.

The moxie it takes to own a Ural must be part of the pure guts it would take to go motorcycle camping together as a couple when one is paralyzed from the neck down!

Another time, two of us were riding in the Rockies (around Netherland, CO) on a two-lane road when we saw a sidecar outfit tipped up on its left crashbar with the chair in the air, on the opposite shoulder.   Like Moses, we said "I will turn aside, and see this great sight ...", and behold, it was a Ural with the rider under the sidecar, turning wrenches.

We asked if we could be of help, and he said no, he had it, he was just doing a quick repair.   We asked if he would need someone to follow him to his destination, and he pointed back down the road and said "No, I live about 1/2 a mile down there."   

One of us made the unnecessary comment (it might have been me) that this could be a record for long distance travel on a Ural.   It was a joke, but the owner sighed and sort of agreed with me as if I were serious ....

It's those kinds of things that make you wonder ....

Lannis

[webmost]

The moxie it takes to own a Ural must be part of the pure guts it would take to go motorcycle camping together as a couple when one is paralyzed from the neck down!

Awesome!

Bout as good as the fellow from Merryland rides a GoldWing trike ... cause he has zero legs! Both snipped off by a train. Forget his name -- we call him Wheels. No cherry picker, but he does have a wheelchair rack that deploys from the side of his Wing. He also tools round on his knuckles and ass, bragging he's the only guy you know whose stuff drags in the dirt. Great guy.

[Sasquatch Jim]

  He should zip up his pants when he goes for a knuckle walk.

[Bill Hagan]

Loved the video.   Thanks to the OP.

Heck, even Kathi watched it and laughed. 

She did ask if I one in mind.  I equivocated, and will not let read the rest of the thread.   

Bill

 

[Arizona Wayne]

Not too many(10?) years ago we rode our Guzzi hack(CX/Velorex car) from Yuba City, Cal. to Stevenson, Wa. on the north side of the Columbia river 60 mi. east of Portland, Or. on the north side on Hwy 14 to a sidecar rally.  Ural was there with demo rides.  We camped with other PNW Guzzi hack riders and witnessed many hack owners riding the demo Urals, lifting their chairs repeatedly.    There were all kinds of hacks there, some from Canada, and it was a good time.  But I never saw a Ural going more than maybe 45 mph.  I had even ridden a 650 Ural in town and there it was acceptable.  But those motors are so ancient they just were never made for 65 mph constant speeds, no matter what they claim.  Every year they claim they're better than the year before.  That may be true but they are never completely gone thru to really be bulletproof like 90% of other brand products.  If you just putz around town in them they're probably OK.  But they have never been made for hiway speeds even now.  Even the solo Ural bikes don't hold up @ 65 mph speeds for long.  They were originally made for dirt roads where you constantly accelerate/decelerate, not constant speeds.