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:
- 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.
- 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.
- Check spokes. All good.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.