I was very excited to pick up our new 2012 Ural Patrol this afternoon!

Neutral light wouldn’t come on in the parking lot, but the service coordinator told us to make note of it for the 500k service and they’d adjust it then.

Less than 10k down the road, it was dying when idling at stop lights. At 10k, I pulled into a parking lot and we called the dealer, who walked us through adjusting the idle screws on the carb. (Was duly impressed with the size of the Ural stock toolkit - WAY bigger than our BMW stock toolkits.)

Adjusted about 1/4 turn and it was idling properly again, so back on our way.

Within another 5-10k, it was dying at idle again. We were in traffic and on a time constraint (had to get a rental car back) so I opted not to stop to adjust the idle screw again - I just gave it a little throttle while we were stopped at lights. A little bit later, the SO peeled off in the rental car to try to get it back on time, and I was sick of holding the throttle and clutch (since I could never tell when it was in neutral and had trouble getting it to go in when I futzed around) so I opted to pull over and adjust the idle screws again. I did several 1/4 turns until it would finally idle without dying. All told, probably 1-1.5 turns. (In addition to the 1/4 turn the SO did initially.) I did have to give it throttle to get it to start - starter alone would turn it over but not catch.

Off on my merry way again, and within just a few ks, it wanted to die at idle again.

Also, I was noticing problems with power under throttle. I could give it quite a bit of throttle and not really get much response for 3-5 seconds and then it would sort of “wind up” and suddenly I’d get a lot of torque. It was definitely different than on first picking up the bike. This was happening intermittently, at first, but then more and more frequently when starting from a stop.

I decided at this point not to stop and try to adjust the idle screws again, but to rather get home and try troubleshooting the problem in more depth. So I was in a bit of stop-and-go traffic and having to hold the throttle open a bit at stop to keep it from dying when idling. After a bit of this, I heard a soft whistle sound - kinda like air deflating from a balloon - and then a bunch of smoke started pouring off the left side of the bike. No liquid was spewing and I couldn’t figure out where the smoke was coming from, so I pulled up a bit and into an illegal spot half on a sidewalk. Saw this when I got off the bike.

I wasn’t sure exactly what the purpose of that hose was, but I wasn’t about to ride around like that without finding out. So I manhandled it into a parking spot on a side street (this was a very busy area - Harvard Square, in Cambridge, if any of you are familiar with the Boston region) and got a lot of UDF while waiting for the tow truck to take it back to the dealer.

So there we have it - my beautiful new Ural Patrol dead on the side of the road, towed back to the dealer - just 2.5 miles from home! Cry! (Between 40-50km from the dealer - I forgot to look at the ODO before it was towed.)

Any idea what these symptoms are, guys? Does this sound like a dealer setup issue, or a component failure that can’t be blamed on anyone? (I’m pretty sure it wasn’t user error, as I was babying it pretty good - mostly 30MPH or under, with a couple of short stretches at 40MPH but for a minute or less. Unless I seriously screwed something up when adjusting the carb idle screws?)