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....