Hodakaguy's Ural Gear Up - Mods, Pics & Adventures.....

[Hodakaguy]

Picked up a new (to me) 2018 Ural Gear Up with 57 miles on the clock, previous owner got sick and couldn't ride it. Been sitting for two years and barely ran when I went to test drive it, opened up the tank and was hit in the face with a strong Varnish smell. Once home I drained the fuel (nasty) and filled the tank with some 91 Ethanol free fuel. Changed engine oil, verified cylinder head torque (36 ft/lbs) and set the valves (right side was a little loose and noisy). Greased the U-joints and took it for a spin

With fresh fuel it's running great, although the idle is a tad low. Years ago I had a R69S with a Steib LS200 and drove the wheels off of it for a couple years, feels great to be back on 3 wheels! My Kiddo absolutely loves riding in the hack!

Next up i need to lube the cables, splines etc and finish with the general maint duties. Now to finish breaking it in and ill do another full service around 300 miles, then again at 1000.

I'll be posting more soon :cheers:

Hodakaguy

Nasty Fuel! I'm surprised it ran at all!

Checked the head bolts at 36 ft/lbs...all tight and no movement.

Kiddo Approved...

Hodakaguy

 

[Hodakaguy]

Wired up my heated gear and attached the wireless heat controller via a RAM mount to the bars. Heated gear has to be one of the best riding accessories made!

Cruising around and running errands, Kiddo loves riding in the hack. Here were stopped and Grandmas house for a visit.

Hodakaguy

 

[Hodakaguy]

Next up....Fuel.

Just like most modern vehicles the Ural comes from the factory very lean to meet emissions requirements. The bike stumbles at idle and occasionally pops and hiccups while riding. It's very difficult to ride through a parking lot in first gear as the bike lurches and hiccups while trying to hold a steady speed. More fuel is in order.

I ordered an EJK (Electronic Jet Kit) tuner to allow fine tuning of the fuel mapping. The EJK can add fuel but can not take away fuel from the factory map. Ural has an updated "off road" map that is suppose to address these issues for the most part but without a dealer close by to me the tuner will allow me to dial in the fuel mapping with no dealer needed.

The EJK Tuner

To allow proper wire routing i pulled the fuel tank. A few spare vacuum caps worked great to plug the fuel lines.

Preparing to route the wiring.

The EJK comes with plug and play connectors for the oxygen sensors and fuel injectors.

The left side OEM oxygen sensor connector.

EJK connectors plugged in and re-connected to the bike. (The pink wire looks pinched from the snap tie but its not)

Injector wiring connected and routed along the throttle cables.

The tuner requires switched power which is taken from the rear brake light circuit. The kit comes with a wiring adapter that works with the 14-16 bikes but won't fit the 17-18 units due to wiring harness changes. I fabricated my own power plug from an SAE connector that I had handy and tapped into the brake circuit under the seat.

The tuner is mounted via velcro on top of the air box where it's easy to access to make any changes that are needed.

While I had the seat off its a good time to add some 3M paint protective film to the rear portion of the tank to keep the front of the seat from wearing into the paint over time.

All buttoned back up

With the tuner set to the factory settings there is a huge improvement. The idle is a lot smoother with no stumbles and first gear is now usable! Rideability has improved with noticeably less stumble when accelerating from a stop. It's acting like it could still use just a tad more fuel down low but I will hold off on any further adjustments until I get vacuum ports added to the throttle bodies and perform a proper balance.

Overall I'm very happy with the EJK Tuner so far

More to come...

Hodakaguy

 

[Hodakaguy]

Next up....Crank Case Vent Mod

I'm starting to modify the throttle bodies to accept vacuum ports (More on that soon) and while I was in there decided to remove the crank case breather line from the air box. The OEM breather line leaves the crank case and enters the air box under the air filter (which keeps the paper air filter free of oil mist for the most part), it then splits through a T-fitting and tubing then is directed into each cylinders intake where the oil mist and oil/water (white sludge) gets sucked through the throttle bodies and then into the cylinder. No need to send this goop to the top end! The bike only has 200 miles on it now and there was already a noticeable oily film built up on the inside of the throttle bodies...Yuk!

I pulled the OEM Vent hose and turned it 90 degrees then added another section of new hose, re-using the original OEM fitting that went into the air box. The new line is routed down below the engine and secured to the lower frame. The internal vent is timed and only allows positive pressure pulses to leave the crank case (No back flow). You could add a filter or a catch can to the end of the breather line but open will work just fine as well. I used a rubber plug with some black adhesive/sealant to seal off the original vent entrance into the air box.

Removing the original Oetiker clamps that hold the intake tubes onto the air box and throttle bodies, these are one time use clamps and are cut to remove them. I'm replacing them with thin rolled edge hose clamps (more info on these soon).

With the intake tube removed you can see the plastic crank case went tubing centered in the intake, complete with white oily water waiting to be pulled into the cylinder.

More oily water sitting in the rubber intake piping.

A quick wipe of the finger inside the intake piping.

Oily film built up on the throttle bodies.

Here you can see the OEM crank case vent hose entering the air box just above the cylinder.

Here's the original vent line removed from the bike with a new section of hose added.

Re-installing the hose back onto the crank case breather connection, the hose is mounted 90 deg from original so the hose can run down underneath the bike.

Here's a photo of the divider tubing that's located inside the air box. This tubing splits the flow of the original crank case gases and directs it to each intake. This tubing would help keep the oily water off the paper air filter. I removed this tubing completely.

A little black sealant on a rubber plug does nicely to seal up the air box where the original vent entered.

And back together, no more oily sludge heading places it shouldn't be! More to come soon on the throttle body mods.

Hodakaguy

 

[OregonJKU]

 

[kwill]

I admire your car/truck/motorcycle skills.

 

[Hodakaguy]

Next up.....How To (And How NOT To) add vacuum ports to your throttle bodies

The first GEN EFI throttle bodies on Urals are balanced via the dealer computer through the OBD Port on the bike. Since balancing throttle bodies is something you need to do on a regular basis that means you either need to take the bike to a dealer often (No dealer close to me....plus I prefer to do my own maint) or you need to find a way to perform the balance at home. There are a couple ways to do this and either will work. First you can modify an OBD cable to fit the bike and then get some software to perform the balance on your computer at home, or you can add vacuum ports to the throttle bodies and balance the bodies with a Twinmax or Harmonizer. Vacuum ports are quick and reliable plus I already own the balancing tools so ports it is for me.

"How To" add vacuum ports to your throttle bodies.

First up remove the throttle bodies from the bike. The factory intake clamps are one time use Oetiker clamps, these will need to be cut off to be removed. I will replace them with reusable thin (9mm) hose clamps with rolled edges so they don't dig into the rubber boots.

Replacement clamps.

Throttle body off the bike. There is a flat portion on the throttle bodies (Top and Bottom) that can be used to add vacuum ports, I'll be adding mine to the top.

Marking out the location for the vacuum ports. A word of caution here: You need to drill/tap on the far outside area of the flat surface, as you move towards the ECU their is a void and if you drill into this void the atmospheric pressure sensor on the ECU board will now to common to engine vacuum....turning your throttle body into an expensive paper weight......see below on the "How NOT To" section to see the results of drilling in the wrong spot or with a drill bit that is to large.

I'll be using a 1/4-28 Vacuum port and drilling with a #3 drill bit. Mark the drill location .200" from the outer edge of the flat spot.

Prep for drilling. I used blue painters tape to cover up the internal ECU vacuum port just down stream of the butterfly (Don't want any aluminum shavings getting into this port). I also used painters tape to cover up the fuel injector, electrical connections etc. Then I took a wad of paper towel and stuffed it up against the butterfly prior to drilling.

Lightly clamped into the vise to drill/tap the body.

Hole drilled....now the tap.

Continued Below......

 

[Hodakaguy]

Continued from above....

Next up I drilled out a couple 1/4-28 grease zerk fittings to make some small vacuum ports.

I installed the vacuum ports into the throttle bodies using Loctite 243

With the throttle bodies back on the bike all that was left to do was to hook up the Harmonizer and balance the bodies at idle and operating speed (I like 3K rpm). The balance went easy and quick and the bike idles and runs soooooo smooth now! A quick and easy modification and well worth the time spent, now I can check balance during my routine maint sessions.

Balance completed and vacuum caps added to the ports to seal them off. These rubber caps have a way of dry rotting over time so I have a couple extras in the tool kit inside the trunk of the sidecar. I may swap out the rubber caps for Vinyl units.

Continued Below.....

 

[Hodakaguy]

Continued from above....

And Now.......

"How NOT to" add vacuum ports to your throttle bodies.

I wanted to post this section to help others and hopefully prevent some headache for those who also want to add vacuum ports to their throttle bodies. Originally I purchased a couple vacuum fittings with built in O-rings for this project. Although these fittings are sweet they are also larger than the ones I used above and required a larger hole to be drilled accordingly.

These are the fittings....nice.

I marked the location and drilled out the hole.......DANG! Found that there is a hollow section that opens to the back side of the ECU board. I probably could have drilled the hole further outboard and maybe just cleared the void but it would have been close with this size of bit. If I had known the void existed I would have drilled accordingly.....lesson learned.

Here's a mark up showing the safe area to drill. Follow the measurements in the first section above and you will be fine.

I did make an attempt to seal the gap temporarily so I could ride that day (Was warm and sunny that day of coarse) but it didn't work out either. Some metal shavings had gotten down into the back side of the ECU through the void and shorted the ECU power to the throttle body housing. When I re-installed the bodies after the fix I found the ECU doing some bizarre things and acting erratic, also found that both throttle bodies were electrically hot even with the key off. Dang....no riding that day.

My improvised repair to seal the void. It would have worked as a temp fix if the shavings hadn't messed up the ECU.

Body showing electrically hot....not normal. I removed the body again and tried to blow out any shavings that had gotten into the ECU but there was no change, At this point I was done and knew a new throttle body would be needed.

Luckily I was able to find a like new pair of used throttle bodies with the latest off road maps already installed (The ones I tapped at the start of the thread). With the new bodies balanced the bike is running better than ever before! And just to show the above shot is not normal here's a shot of the new bodies showing no voltage like they should be.

Now off to rack up some more fun miles.


Hodakaguy

 

[Cabrito]

Great pics and writeup.

 

[Hodakaguy]

Went out yesterday with the kiddo and put on 65 fun miles. Here I stopped to snap a pic of the bike with the Hanford Nuclear Reactor humming along in the background....making that power!

We also found out that the low fuel light doesn't work . I always reset the trip odometer at each fill up but hadn't been paying attention to it. A quick call to the wife had rescue fuel on the way :

When the bike died and coasted to a stop I told my son "I'm pretty sure we're out of fuel". He quickly replied "That's ok, we have an extra can on the back". I then said "Yeah but it's empty". And he replied..."What good is a spare can if its empty!". LOL....he has a point :

Hodakaguy

 

[OregonJKU]

Went out yesterday with the kiddo and put on 65 fun miles. Here I stopped to snap a pic of the bike with the Hanford Nuclear Reactor humming along in the background....making that power!

We also found out that the low fuel light doesn't work . I always reset the trip odometer at each fill up but hadn't been paying attention to it. A quick call to the wife had rescue fuel on the way :

When the bike died and coasted to a stop I told my son "I'm pretty sure we're out of fuel". He quickly replied "That's ok, we have an extra can on the back". I then said "Yeah but it's empty". And he replied..."What good is a spare can if its empty!". LOL....he has a point :

Hodakaguy

Sure looks like a lot of fun!

 

[jgaz]

Love your how to posts.

I‘ve added grease zerks in several places years ago on my Pentons.
I knew the thread size was 1/4-28 but never thought of using a zerk as a vaccum nipple.

Thanks! One can always learn something from your posts.

BTW: Another example is your use of plusnuts. I’ve set maybe a hundred or more rivnuts but had never heard of plusnuts. Thanks again!

 

[Hodakaguy]

Love your how to posts.

I‘ve added grease zerks in several places years ago on my Pentons.
I knew the thread size was 1/4-28 but never thought of using a zerk as a vaccum nipple.

Thanks! One can always learn something from your posts.

BTW: Another example is your use of plusnuts. I’ve set maybe a hundred or more rivnuts but had never heard of plusnuts. Thanks again!

Glad you like following my posts and that I can share some helpful tips....sharing ideas is what it's all about

Hodakaguy

 

[Hodakaguy]

A quick cold start video. The off road mapping in combination with the EJK Tuner is a great combo! Idles super smooth hot or cold and there is a noticeable increase in pep across the throttle range. No hiccups, decel popping etc. A whole different beast compared to the ultra lean stock mapping.


Hodakaguy