Wednesday, February 10, 2016

cracked head





A few weeks ago, the Ural started running bad. I thought I was having carb or ignition problems but it turns out it was a cracked head around the exhaust spigot. A giant section of the exhaust spigot cracked off and it caused a severe exhaust leak leaving me with a Ural with no power. This past weekend, John came over and he helped me take the head off. This particular head style is fairly hard to come by. The later heads have a bolt on flange style exhaust and my model has a slip on style. I guess they only made the 750 for a few years with this style of head, so replacements are hard to come by. I could choose to swap out for the bolt on style but pistons need to be changed as well. I was able to contact someone who has a set of heads, but I'm waiting for him to take them off the engine and give me a price. I guess I'm grounded for a while until I can either find some heads or figure out a fix. I've thought about milling the remaining spigot off and then machining a new collar and welding it on, but I figure this will be a real challenge due to an oily aluminum head and the proximity of the cooling fins. I'd take any advice anyone has though as I need my wheels back so I'm not dependent on the wife for a ride to work each day.




6 comments:

eric said...

I can try to weld it this weekend? Any idea what alloy that is? I know I have a few types of AL tig rod at the shop, one of them was for castings if I remember correctly...

PKM said...

Sorry for your trouble. But low quality is Russian tradition...

Frankie Flood said...

I can't complain PKM. The old Ural has been running strong everyday for the last year and it starts even on mornings when the temps are below zero. My BMW's are great bikes as well, but sometimes they would give me trouble with temps below zero. The metallurgy is definitely better on the BMW, but I'm honestly not knocking the Ural; it's a tractor...pure utility at it's best. I think they get a bit of a bad rep on the internet.

Frankie Flood said...

Eric, that would be awesome. I did find some heads last night, but it might be good to have a backup since this year head is a little hard to come by.

Shop Teacher Bob said...

I'd try 4043 filler.

I'm available for welding if you run into a bind.

Frankie Flood said...

Awesome! Thanks Shop Teacher Bob!

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