My friend has a sidecar-less Ural Wolf 750, which participated on our European tour this summer.
Our trip was about 8500kms, half of which was driven on East European roads (Via Baltica and southwards).
The bike's main issue was the short service intervals (about 3000km), but Ural maintenance shops were relatively easy to find, and they provided excellent service.
After the trip we finally started doing the maintenance by ourselves, so this shouldn't be a problem next time. The Ural is a very simple machine to maintain, and provides easy access to all major components (air filter, oils, valve clearances, carbs).
The Russian tyres shipped with the Ural were very slippery, resulting in several crashes. We replaced them with Avons resulting in much better handling.
Gas consumption varied between 6,5 - 12 liters per 100 kms, better gas mileage being on the slow (60 - 90kmh) roads in the east. The bike was a new one, so the mileage is bound to improve slightly with usage.
The only problem on the trip was that the valve clearances started slipping on our way back through Germany. Reasons for this were exceeding service limit by 1500kms and blasting at full speed on the German autobahns. Bad valve clearances caused the bike first to not start with kickstart, then stall at traffic lights, then significant loss of power, and finally only start by hill starting. Valve clearances were quite easy to set correctly next weekend over some beers. :-)
All in all, the Ural performed much better than our expectations, and will participate on our future excursions as well.
The Ural is a very nice bike that causes lots of interest in other bikers. The Ural rider community also is a very friendly one, resulting in lots of nice chat and beer.
BTW. I've seen a 650cc Ural Solo Classic run a Iron Butt Bun Burner test (1500 miles in 36 hours) succesfully.
Next summer we'll probably also bring a Jawa along. We'll have to see how that performs.
You can read about our trip and see pictures at
http://reissut.nemein.net/
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