The Virus – a Custom Ural Sport Motorcycle
Ok folks, I guess I have something interesting for you today. If you, just like millions of other bikers, think that Ural and Dnepr MT can be anything but sport motorcycles, get ready to be surprised.
Yeah, I know, the design is awful, still, this ugly sport bike is a Ural motorcycle, at least it was a Ural before the “reborn”. Frankly speaking, the only thing that is left is the engine, with lots of improvements in it, of course.
The frame is fully custom-built for this particular project; the wheels were taken from some other bike (from a cheap Chinese bike I suppose); the disk brakes were taken from an IHz Orion; the mono shock absorber was taken from some Japanese sport bike. I’m not sure where the gas tank was taken from but it looks horrible, the angles are too “sharp” and they spoil the overall design. And so does the rear wheel tire. If I’m not mistaken, it’s a car tire. Spending money on buying almost all the parts of this pseudo-sport bike and installing a car tire because it’s a bit cheaper than a motorcycle one, are you kidding? That’s illogical.
The only thing that the author paid proper attention to is the engine. Even though this is a Ural engine, lots of improvements have been done to it to improve its performance. He added oil cooling, high performance oil pump, new pistons with an increased diameter, replaced a camshaft with a new one that is designed for higher performance, replaced a standard ignition system with the microprocessor-based contactless ignition system and did a few more fixes.
If we ignore the appearance of a motorcycle, I still consider Dnipro MT and Ural motorcycles to be horrible choices for a customizer who plans to build a sport bike. You can install proper wheels, front fork, improve the biker’s position, you can even drastically increase the performance of the engine, but this won’t save the situation because of one simple reason. The way the cylinders are placed on the engine. They won’t allow you to make turns on high speed.
Anyway, custom sport bikes made from Dnepr and Ural appear from time to time and they deserve your attention no matter what. The author spent lots of efforts and made a huge number of improvements to his Ural to turn it into The Virus. Even though I don’t like the appearance, the amount of work is huge and that is what I value when it comes to customizing. That’s why I decided to share the info about this project with you. Hope you liked it or at least found this article useful.
Ride safe,
Alex
