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.