It's no shame to own a "kit" bike.

I had a fealing my Dnepr MT11 was a kit bike when I went into the motor to find what failed and found old nasty sludge with metal shavings in it and like new cylinder bores and new pistons and rings, trans all sludge and new clutch plates, with 42 kilometers on the speedo, new tires, panzer grey paint. It had a strange transmission sound and I thought a bent shaft, turned out to be a roller bearing that had a center that was off center! This bike had gremlins all over in and out, silly little agrivating things that forced me to learn how to work on it. So I can now rip right into any part of this intire machine and fix it.  Most work has been fitting and finishing with some take it out and throw it away going on too. If your not worried about keeping the bike "correct" it makes modifications less painfull. If you love tinkering, this is the rig for you! 

I have heard of others that got kit bikes and have had nothing but normal maintenance wear and tear stuff. I have fun learning new or differant ways of building stuff so its all good! At least the parts are cheap for a motorcycle!

Oil cooler

I got it in my mind that I needed a oil cooler to keep this bike cooler. When I first started riding this bike any distance it got really warm, and hot if not moving. I wasn't thinking about it being still new enough to be breaking in,  it only had 1000 kilometers on it then. I had read a few posts about others having to pull over and let their rigs cool off and I wanted to be able to avoid that situation! So I found a cooler with a fan on eBay and also got a spin on car type oil filter adapter and a oil pump for a turbocharger and made a independently powered and pumped oil cooling system. I wanted system that didn't use the bikes motor oil pump to pump oil through the cooler for 2 reasons; the factory oil pump is by no means a high volume type of pump, it's gears are short it is a direct gear pump not a concentric type with a rotor so its not a high pressure pump. I also wanted it to have the ability to cool oil when the bikes motor was off to help cool down after a very hot shutoff and on hot restarts. I will say that after installing a real oil pressure gauge that the readings I saw made me question the accuracy of that gauge! I know that a motor with roller bearings does not need much oil pressure or volume when compared to a motor with insert, shell or bushing type bearings. Dnepr crankshafts have roller bearings on the end mains and inserts on the large end of the connecting rods and bushing in the small rod ends with press fit piston pins. The camshaft has only roller bearings but has solid lifters that push oil down the pushrod tubes for rocker and valve lubrication not so much for cooling. So it needs some pressure and volume at the crank large ends out and just enough up to the cam to lube the lifters and relying splash to lube roller bearings. My Dnepr had no external oil filter from factory, it used only the internal centerfuge and screens to get the particulate out! With old style motor oil you didn't have the additives that include detergents to help hold in suspension the particulate matter so the paper oil filter element could capture it, this can some what defeat the centerfuge and allow fine light weight material to re-enter the lubrication system and be sent to the crankshaft large ends and cause excessive wear. I soon realized I seemed to be going a little O.C.D. on this as it was snowballing into a 

much larger project than I wanted. 

It does help with oil pressure when it starts to drop below 30lbs I turn on just the pump and it jumps up 15-25lbs. I have only used the fan a couple of times I got stuck in traffic and didn't move for a few minutes, it didn't seem to raise the oil pressure but the IR thermometer said it dropped the oil temp an additional 10 deg.

A kinda surprising thing is at high speeds (60-80kph) it not only raises it to around 50lbs but by the gauge it stabilizes the pressure too. 

I think the best part is the filter, easy to change and its gotta be better than just the centerfuge!

The pump I chose is Noisy, it's whine at idle can be annoying. I will try insulating the mounts on it soon. If I replace it I will find a quieter one.

If I replaced the cooler it would be with one half that size and no fan.

I am thinking I will move it forward and take the fan off, it hangs a bit low where its at and looks bad.

Off roading a 3 wheeled, 800lb 35hp monster

I had taken it in the sand with and without a monkey, in hard pack or wet it did fine, in dry or fluffy you needed to keep speed up. I bet the MT-16 (2WD) would do great! Gravel roads are great! I really think dirt and gravel is what these rigs are designed for, at least mine rides and drives great on them.

A guy I worked with rode the Nate Harrison road up the backside of Mt. Palomar here in SoCal, about 20 miles from me. He said its a nice kinda steep dirt and gravel road with trees, wildlife and all, sounded like a nice sunday drive.

Was really nice scenery..... The road was more trail! Broke the aux battery hold down the first time I got the rig to jump about 2 feet off the ground. I had to dodge rocks the size of  softballs, straddle ruts 2 feet deep, and large rocks that where actually part of the trail. Nice drive...... Anastasiya did very good, I didn't have to pickup lost parts all the way back down the mountain, I have done that far too many times in my life, its habit now. I really want a 2wd one now, I will be checking out if its cheaper to convert or just get a differant bike. 

Piloting a rig is like mating a redhead

I love redheads! I dated almost exclusively gingers for, well, oh ya! I still do! So I know it takes some work to satisfy a amber girl good enough for her to cum back! It takes some work to learn to pilot a rig, find a big empty parking lot very near you and don't hit any police cars or people! Practice getting on and off, starting from on ground and on pegs. This bike and a lot of beemers kick "sideways" out from center on left side, ya its weird to Harley and honda riders alike. Get used to it, there's more weird than normal on a Dnepr!

Always do a preflight inspection and pick up any bits that you see around the area that may have came from your bike and figure out where that came from. You will notice that even when properly aligned the rig surges right under acceleration and left under deceleration, and only God knows where under differant braking. After you adjust the sidecar brake and driven wheel brake you can actually get it to stop well enough for 40mph.

Turning right with a right sidecar is interesting in that you can inadvertently "fly the chair" fun, but very dangerous until you get better at just going around in circles. Turning left is more forgiving as your actually putting the most sideways pressure on the sidecar wheel taking advantage of the triangle effect. Turning is much better with a monkey (sidecar passenger), and if you get a trainable one get them to move around to counter balance, communicate with your monkey what your doing, it can make it a piloting experance for them too! Go play in the dirt, a little sand in a parking lot can be a blast! Use your steering damper!! If it doesn't work fix it! I have had many bikes with dampers and most could be driven without it, not driven hard but... A sidecar bike really really needs one, think about how heavy and off center the forces are pushing, pulling, surging....adjusting your alignment is vital if its not right you will know. I did mine by eye, but it was close to begin with.

Piloting with the Dneprglide simi-automatic transmission 

A Dneprglide is actually a clutch activation linkage that works with the shifter peddle, when you start to move the peddle a short rod protrudes from the rear of the transmission and pushes the clutch lever on the rear of transmission opposite the clutch cable, when its adjusted right you can shift up easily without pulling the lever! Think about it, you can keep your hands on the grips and just shift into second in the middle of a turn, on rough terrain, drinking coffee....
It takes some practice but can be useful. The flywheel in these bikes is HUGE for a motorcycle, more Volkswagen size so when you let go of the clutch after shifting into second it can be violent if your to high in the rpms! Reverse is really cool, useful, and just plain weird! When hot to get it into reverse can be tricky, put in 1st, apply slight pressure on reverse lever with your hand not your foot,now shift into neutral while still holding slight pressure on reverse lever it will just pop into reverse just as it slides out of 1st, before the secondary shaft has time to start spinning again. Watch out! I swear you could 25mph with that gearing! Keep hand on clutch lever and foot on brake peddle!

The foot

Into the Fire, working on alien machinery

At least I got a repair manual with the bike (bottom pic) and a member of the Russian Iron forum sent me a correct one (top). 

Both books have way more tolerances and tech numbers than most would need and some of the assembly and disassembly instructions are lost in the translation. And I have found some of the tools online because of the special tool numbers in these books. Nice diagrams but not many exploded style.  Still lots of help all available online for free, and for sale in disc. 

Kinda looks like a Volkswagen beetle motor huh?

A motorcycle lift is essential if your serious! Sooooo much easier. 

I found it had a failed large end rod bearing failure on the right jug, cracked rear of crankshaft, and a piston pin retaining clip on the right jug that had backed out and deeply grooved that jug. This bike ran! Well kinda, when you kicked it you could feel something not right, idle was ok, give it gas and Oh Boy! So I pick my parts dealer online, order everything for the engine that I can't get at the local NAPA from one place and clean and look for problems with the case and trans case, gears ect. 

Yes that's my living room, in a little apartment. Landlord is cool! You can't see Butcher my radical little honda chopper that lives in my house, can't bring myself to put him out! The timing mark below is kinda askew, I found its common with these and the marks on the flywheel can be a little off a little.

This clutch is just like a car high performance multi-plate dry clutch, not like the honda wet multi-plates, this motor and trans is more car like than traditional motorcycle systems. 

I have no idea what the friction material is, secret Russian unicorn horn and griffin blood baked at Chernobyl. It's strange looking, feeling, smelling, no I didn't taste it! Well,,,, just a little piece......so,far it works, so when it fails I will fix it. At this point I really just wanted it running so I could see if it was going to be something I wanted to really do, I had never even ridden in a sidecar with lone Drove one! It's called piloting for a good reason! It was a learning experience let me tell you! I really think someone that  had never ridden a motorcycle would have it slightly easier on there bodies, might not fight it as much! Ok now I have the motor in and learning what it takes to keep it running and how to Pilot the Beast. I found it customary to name your "rig", I picked Anastasia meaning resurrected Ukrain. 

I was warned

Before I purchase anything expensive I research it, and sometimes even change my mind. Early on I found many a review that didn't like the Russian and Chinese boxers, their NOT a BMW! Even on a Google+ community or 2 it didn't look like a good idea. I found the Russian Iron forum to be very helpful and Soviet Steeds forum somewhat less because their more into Urals. The forums did help calm my fears and show me what these bikes where made to do and what some people have actually done to them to make them better. I am experienced with classic cars and bikes a lot so I know old tech well. I am also a certified master tech on modern cars and a certified motorcycle mechanic. What was a plus was parts are surprisingly inexpensive and on eBay! I knew this bike had problems and knew I could fix it with enough information, time, patience, money ect. But would it be worth it? So far I can say a resounding YES!!!!!

It all started with a google search

A co-worker showed me a online picture of a diesel motorcycle of the type he wanted, a Japanese dirt bike from one of the major brands. Later I did a google search to find a picture of that bike to show a friend and in the gallery view I saw a Dnepr or Ural in full adventure gear, and another dressed as a military bike with machine gun and all! I have been riding bikes since 13 nonstop, owned so many it would be hard to list them all, crashed a few times, 2 times over 125MPH. I had been into restoring classic Hondas the last few years and was kinda getting over that phase in my motorcycling. When I saw the Russian sidecar bikes something changed, this I could afford, this I could work on, this I could get into! I started looking, eBay, craigslist, all over the web, and I found 5 for sale in SoCal, 2 Dneprs and 3 Urals, and one Dnepr was listed at 3,000.00!

This was what it looked like the day I brought it home, after a good washing. When I went to look at it it was filthy, broken, and no longer wanted. Needless to say he didn't get his asking price.........

Now it looks like this....