We seem to find some of the most unique bikes when we're not looking for them. We had just pulled up in line to the Viking Ferry Terminal in Helsinki, Finland, on a borrowed '94 Harley Heritage Softail when we spotted this outrageous chopper right in front of us in line for the boat over to Stockholm, Sweden. Our jaws dropped because, from behind, it looked like an old BMW Boxer with a high sissy bar and a 20-inch-over front end. Since we had a 30-minute wait to board the ferry, we walked up to take a closer look.
The young dude who owned the bike was standing nearby jabbering away in Finnish. We walked over and did our best ugly-American Milton Berle impression trying to make ourselves understood. After a few minutes of loud talking and wild gesturing, the group busted out laughing at us. It seems that they spoke English better than we did and were having some fun at our expense. We told the dude that we were from Street Chopper magazine and were heading over to Sweden to attend the Norrtelje Custom Bike Show, the oldest and most prestigious custom bike show in all of Scandinavia, to try and find some bikes to feature for our readers in the U.S. The 24-year-old guy was Ooli Erkkila from Lahti, Finland, in the Northern Region, and he was also heading over to the show to enter his bike.
We asked him why he chose a BMW to chop. He chuckled and told us to take a closer look at the engine. To our amazement it wasn't a BMW at all. It was an old '59 750cc Russian Ural! We had seen a few Urals set up with sidecars back in the States but never bothered to give them a second look. We really didn't know too much about them though, so Ooli gave us a brief history of the bike's origins.
Back in the '30s, Russia knew that it would be going to war with the Third Reich at some point. In 1939, Russian engineers in Moscow were tearing down five BMWs purchased from Germany through some Swedish intermediaries. The engineers copied the BMW design in all details and made molds and dies to produce their own engines and gearboxes in Moscow. The Russians soon set up a factory in Moscow producing hundreds of Russian sidecar motorcycles. At this point the bike had no name. As the demand and function for the Russian sidecar rig spread in the military, the top Russian generals worried that the factory in Moscow was within easy bombing range of the Germans. They decided to move the motorcycle plant further east, out of bombing range, and into the middle of the Ural mountain region. A site was chosen in the small trading town of Irbit, located on the fringe of the Siberian plains. The only building on the site was a brewery, and it was soon converted into the first R&D facility in preparation for the construction of a massive new production complex to build what would soon be called the "Ural" motorcycle. Over 5,000 Urals were produced for the Russian Army during World War II. They saw use in combat against the Germans in many sectors and battles and must have mightily surprised the German sidecar gunners when they came up against Russians riding the sidecar BMW clones! Now back to Ooli's ride.
Ooli had never built a chopper before - his forte was building radical custom bicycles. He wanted to try his hand at building a chopper but being young and strapped for cash, he looked over at his old ratty Ural and thought he'd give it a shot. He was greatly inspired by Scandinavia's master builder, Mika of Mr. Moore's Custom Craft in Finland, and figured he had the skills to make the old Ural into something sweet.
Ooli chopped all the unnecessary junk off the bike. He used his bicycle-making skills to fabricate the hardtail frame with a 45-degree rake and a 13-inch stretch. He hand-fabricated the peanut gas tank from an old Triumph T-100 tank. Ooli felt that the original front end didn't afford the proper trail, so he made up a 20-inch-over to fix the handling problem.