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The Ural Wolf
Welcome to the web's finest Ural Wolf site
Dedicated to 750cc of "Russian Iron"
Creator: Nick Staib
The Ural Wolf (or Урал Волк) is a Russian shaft-driven bike with a 750cc air-cooled horizontally opposed "boxer" engine.
Motorcycle Rider - “I’ve ridden more than a few American and Japanese cruisers that don’t ride as well as this...”
Site links:
HOME
Web links:
USA - Importer IMWA
Russia - IMZ Ural
Site running since 2006
Comments
2006 - The August site launch was fun - 350 visitors that first weekend.
Welcome Australia and NZ; North & S America; India and Bahrain; South Africa and Egypt; Scandinavia; Europe and, of course, "mother Russia"
2007/8 - Added site to Wikipedia. Google now indexed it. Google images brought visitors from Alaska to Mongolia via Iceland, from the Aleutian Islands to Bogotá. All came to enjoy the Ural Wolf.
Google Analytics reports 4,000 visitors (from launch) from 88 different countries - spending an average of 5:48 minutes.
2009/10 - Steady climb to 65,000+ visitors. Migrated the site to 'sites.google'.
800 more Urals made in the factory in 2010.
2016 - We made a decade on the web...
2022 -Migrated to sites,google,com
A warm welcome to the web's finest Ural Wolf resource website!
A handsome bike from the Ural Mountains of Russia. Simple by modern standards and easy to home maintain. No need for a diagnostic system here. Sure, the valves chatter and the gear change is solid, but - if the worst does ever happen - what other bikes can be fixed with their own comprehensive tool kits?
These bikes generate huge 'loyalty' - see typical comment below from Guestbook:
"My Wolf and I are having a nice life here in cold Scandinavia. Have never had problems with it! I keep running with the wind, and see where the road will take me and my wolf. "
Like other cruisers, the Ural Wolf can be fitted with extras. Below, a factory bike has been transformed into a proudly owned and unique bike.
A wet white-walled Wolf
So, what can you expect in here?
Photos and links to other online resources, pages on the 750cc engine, on DIY maintenance and on reliability - all topics raised by potential riders.
The Wolf is blessed with a fine leather saddle and curves.
Living history
BMW R71
This R71 above is the source of Ural DNA. The R71 was itself derived from the first elegant BMW motorbike, the R32 below, designed 10 years earlier, in 1923.
BMW R32
The history of these well travelled Russian motorcycles is murky, but can be traced back to 1939, when Russians engineers obtained BMW R71 bikes and sidecars. Reverse engineering the bikes, they built M-72's by the thousands to be used in the defence of Mother Russia against the Nazi invaders.
As the German army thrust towards Moscow, the Russians relocated one of the factories further East, to the city of Irbit, in the safety of the Ural Mountains. From there came their name.
Production in Irbit started in an ex-brewery and following privatisation in 1993, and a management buyout in 2000, remains an important source of local employment.
To delve into the history of these bikes, with many pictures of early bikes and engines, this link takes you to an Italiian site (translated into English).
On to punchy page 2 > The Engine
My thanks to all whose images I have shamelessly plundered to help liven up this experimental site :-)