“Down Day” outside Mendoza

January 30, 2016

Today was a planned “day off” or “down day” at Camping Suizo in Mendoza. A nice campground. I slept well, at least until about 5am when the storm hit. It rained hard for a couple of hours, then tapered off. Enough to splash mud on all four sides of my tent, even under a canopy of trees.

Note to self: If you put your boots under a plastic table hoping to protect them from possible rain during the night, make sure one of them isn’t directly under the sagging umbrella hole, which acts as a perfect downspout. My left boot was half full of water this morning.

I’ve been a bit slow on my maintenance schedule on the bike. Okay, maybe more than a bit. The last time I adjusted the valves was in Boquete, Panama, which was 7,500 miles ago. The service manual calls for 3,000 mile intervals.

Time for some TLC

So this morning I did some maintenance:

  1. Check intake and exhaust valve clearance. Surprisingly, both were within spec. I’m impressed, considering they are old-school tappet valves with a 3,000 mile suggested interval and they’ve been working pretty hard, especially the last few days on Ruta 40.
  2. Adjust and lube chain. This is only the second time in 15,000 miles that I have had to adjust the tiny 428 chain on this bike. So here’s my observation: if you leave home on a chain-driven bike on a trip like this, and you don’t have an O-ring chain installed, shame on you. Nobody in South America carries o-ring chains, for obvious reasons: they are expensive. The dealer in Punta Arenas said he could order one, full payment in advance, with a four to six day delivery time. Not bad. I might take him up on that depending on how it looks when I get there. Unfortunately, he also said he could order the rear sprocket, with a 45 day delivery time. Ouch. I hope to be in South Africa by then. C’mon, Baby. Hold in there.
  3. Check spokes. All good.
  4. Air in tires. This is the first time I’ve been below 5,o00 feet elevation in a long, long time. So even though I aired my tires back up in San Pedro de Atacama after crossing the Bolivian desert off-road, they’re a little low due to elevation change.
  5. Check air filter. Not as bad as I expected. I’ll leave it in for another few weeks, probably til I get to Ushuaia, then change it.
  6. Install three missing bolts in rear rack system. This is the second time the mounting bolts for the pannier racks have vibrated out. Last time, in Mexico, I only lost one. This time, three out of four. (I know….you’d think I would’ve felt them moving around, but the rest of the mounting system still held everything in place pretty well. I can see why people break pannier racks and subframes though. A lot of weight and forces acting back there. Going to look for some Loc-Tite tomorrow.

Overall, pretty benign and still amazing for an 18 horsepower 250cc air cooled motorcycle over 15,000 miles. Knock on wood. I’m not fooling myself: things wear. That’s the nature of mechanical engines. It’s just a matter of time. But in general, this one seems to be holding up quite well.

8 thoughts on ““Down Day” outside Mendoza

    • MacBook Air. I’ve never been an Apple guy (Android phone, PC, etc), but I’ve really enjoyed this laptop. It’s taken a beating riding along in my pannier, and does great. Good battery life, quick startup. Yup, it’s a Mac.

      • They take your soul piece by piece…Resistance is futile, We are the Apple…

  1. No nylon lock nuts on those racks? Can’t someone FedEx you some chain/sprockets to be waiting for you somewhere? I guess the somewhere is the issue but maybe to one of the hotels you have planned…

    • I have a spocket and chain sitting in Texas all boxed up and ready to go out DHL. The problem ( from experience of several others, including Judith, Ian and another friend Paul from Australia) is that it arrives in Argentina or Chile within a day or two, then gets stuck in Customs for a month. Still considering shipping them to the shop in Buenos Aires where I will crate my bike to ship to Africa.

      • I ship a thing all over the world and rarely have trouble with customs. And it’ s a odd little robot thing. I haven’t shipped to SA much I admit, but I have a few times. And My thing has never gone to some relatively obscure place either. Maybe they are getting their HTS codes wrong, etc. If those are right, and there’s a good verbose Commercial Invoice (4 copies), my stuff has always “flowed”. I use FedEx international Priority.

  2. Just curious Pat. Do you plan to stop and rebuild/replace the engine somewhere along the way or continue until something happens?

    • Good question Mike!
      I think my current plan is to monitor it for anything unusual, ie sounds, smoke, low compression, oil consumption, etc, and decide then if something shows up.
      Right now, all seems good (fingers crossed). Absent any problems beforehand, I hope to make it through Africa then assess the condition and decide on any work to be done. I can get parts easier once I’m in Europe.

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