Ural ADV ride

All photos: http://roscoau.smugmug.com/Motorcycles/Ural-Adventure-Rally-45-10/19377160_H6x9Bn

A couple of times each year Ural Australia (AKA Jon Taylor, Australian Ural importer) organises events for owners. The last one was for ten days, down to the Snowy Mts and back.

The thing is Jon likes playing in the dirt and is quite competitive. In the first video in this post http://www.advrider.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16845188&postcount=985 #24 is John Taylor riding a little Suzuki DR 200 in the 1986 Australian Safari, where he finished 4th outright in the motorcycle category.























Day one: A 7:30am start from The Huts to Kentucky General Store for breakfast and the ride start. A couple more guys turned up here making 15 Urals and one ring-in (750cc 24hp Chang Jiang) of dubious origins which had nevertheless travelled under it's own steam from Queensland to the Russian Owners Club rally at Weabonga. Excellent brekky was had at the store and we set off for Walcha Road and Woolbrook, through gates and creek crossings to Bendemeer for morning tea. From there, Hall's Creek, Watson's Creek, Kingstown (lunch), Bundara, Tingha then Inverell for the night.












Day two: Brekky in Inverall and off to Copeton Dam, Keera Creek, Barraba (early lunch), Crow Mountain, Linton Station, Wood's Reef and back into Kingstown for a wee break. 6km out of Kingstown is an impressive winery called Merilba where a little sampling was called for. A few bottles were seen to slip into bags for later appreciation.

From Merilba it was a straightforward run via Uralla to The Huts for a BBQ and farewells.

The roads we travelled were stunning! The scenery was great and it was a rare gem of a ride with good company and enough challengers to make it really satisfying. Bring on the next one, which is likely to be in Tasmania. Bring it on!

Everyone enjoyed themselves and the only mechanical problem was a mudguard mount breaking on the ring-in (which otherwise ran fine). Nothing a bit of fence wire couldn't fix.




























Edit [Pete]: img tags spacing to allow for 1 pic per line, removing scroll bar

How cool

LOVE those pics....just went through the whole lot....twice

Looks like a hell of a lot of fun.
And how good is it to be able to fix the only "breakdown" with a bit of wire?
Sounds like the Urals have come a long way over the last few years.

Still running the same 18" wheels allround?

Thanks for the post....this is good fun reading and gawking.

Pete has got his Dad's 1982 model (I think) Ural back out of his Aunties shed to fix up.
It had been sitting in the back shed for over 10 years under a cover.

Pete already has the parts from the Ukraine to start the fix up.

That is after he finishes all the work on my bikes of course.

glitch said:

Looks like a hell of a lot of fun.
And how good is it to be able to fix the only "breakdown" with a bit of wire?
Sounds like the Urals have come a long way over the last few years.

Still running the same 18" wheels allround?

Click to expand...

19" wheels...

It was bloody fantastic. We were lead through places only a local would know and had a ball. The worst road was the tar from Kingstown to Urally. The dirt was smooth as.

Here's a map of the route: http://www.dualsportmaps.com/?link=100293

19s?

Oops, didn't know. But it's still "one spare wheel covers all"?

Thanks for the map-link, too ...a bit out of our weekend range, but one of those days...!!

Had another look at those pics....great stuff!!

glitch said:

19s?

Oops, didn't know. But it's still "one spare wheel covers all"?

Click to expand...

The spare does fit all, but only in an emergency in the case of the front as it leaves you without a front brake (because of the disk on the front).

Seriously, this bike is the most fun I've ever had on a bike. I has taken 30 years to find it (and I probably needed the same 30 years before I could appreciate it properly) but unless I get to update to another Ural this will probably be my last bike.

What is real world road speed like?
The Ural web site says 105kph but the only time I've been on a ride with a Ural I reckon the guy would have been lucky to have seen 90kph on any of the straight slightly downhill sections.
These things do fascinate me but I guess there are lots of bikes that do that, oh for a Jay Leno budget. I'd love to see one of the 2WD ones, they do import them into NZ but they are only used off road there and I guess the same would apply here.

K1W1 said:

What is real world road speed like?
The Ural web site says 105kph but the only time I've been on a ride with a Ural I reckon the guy would have been lucky to have seen 90kph on any of the straight slightly downhill sections.

Click to expand...

I usually travel around the 85-90kph by choice. It's the bikes 'sweet spot' IMO. I have seen 115 on the GPS but that's missing the whole point of the bike. Flat ground it'll sit on 100-110 but it doesn't take much of a hill or headwind to pull it back.

There's no getting around the specs - 45hp and 335kg plus the frontal area of a proverbial barn door.

Even with that I have wandered along comfortably on 500km days without drama. It's all in the riders mind set.

roscoau said:

The spare does fit all, but only in an emergency in the case of the front as it leaves you without a front brake (because of the disk on the front).

Click to expand...

Now...THAT sounds like fun!

roscoau said:

It's all in the riders mind set.

Click to expand...

Absolutely! Which, I think, is the reason that there seem to be more and more folks around who're down-sizing rather than upsizing.

Seems like the smaller capacity bikes are having a resurgence as ppl realize who much fun can be had at lower speeds and lower specs.