Mon/Tues/Wed – DakarMotos, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Monday
As mentioned I will be in the same spot for a fair while and doing infrequent updates. The past few days have been busy with stripping the bike down and doing the needed repairs. The good news is that all of the parts I have needed have been in stock here in BA which is fantastic. These included the clutch push rod, the push rod seal and the fuel pump low pressure screen, so they took a day or so but did arrive as expected on Wednesday. You can see the gunked up fuel screen in the last photo of this series of the fuel pump, it is all that black shit, apparently it is supposed to be white 🙂
This is Ken, doing some repairs on his bike which crashed and suffered quite a lot of external damage.
This is Xavier on the left, the owner of DakarMotos and Carl his m8 on the right, in the process of removing the cylinder head to look for a problem with Carls bike.
One of my Iridium spark plugs showing advanced rust from the water in the fuel, probably from up in Bolivia.
A bit of relaxing by Xavier and Carl while Ken and Carol dish up some steak and vegies a bit later on 🙂
This is our bunkhouse, next to the workshop, I am on the lower bunk where all the crap is and also you can see the small kitchen area. A basic place to stay, but cheap and near the bike and the workshop tools and equipment are available.
Tuesday
I checked the other spark plugs today and found them all the same and also saw a red deposit down the holes, but we have decided that this stuff should burn off with some fuel injection cleaner in the fuel for the next few fills.
More riders turned up, this is Spencer, an American riding an old R80GS, he also did the desert run where I crashed but he ran over a big rock which flipped up and jammed into his sump and cracked it, and threw him off the bike after lifting the bike in the air. He fixed it OK with JB Weld but has taken it off to be welded properly 🙂
Carl also found a big issue with his head, one of the valve seats on the input had fallen off the actual head, bummer!
So the day passed with a lot of stuff getting done, I was also trying to sort out paperwork for the sale. A bit of background for those that missed it. When I left the US I registered the bike in my name, no worries I had the rego papers, BUT, the Title( an extra bit of paper they have in the states) would not arrive for three weeks. So, when it did arrive in San Diego, I was in Mexico and I asked Craig to send it to an address where I knew I would definitely be and that was the hostel in Panama. Well, it never turned up, but because Craig had scanned it into his PC and sent it to me, I was using a colour copy that I printed out and this had allowed me through every border I had tried to cross.
OK, so now I had to do a Title transfer and last week, I had filled out a document for a replacement Title and scanned it in, and sent it to Craig. This bit of paper is needed to sell a bike in the states, and I now have to wait for this. But, in the meantime, it may be possible to do the sale with the paperwork that I had on me, we shall see. For those interested, this is not an illegal way of doing business down here. I have a US registered bike and am selling it to a US person via the US registration system. The money will also be transferred in the US, so there is no actual sale being done here in South America, the only issue we have to deal with is to cancel MY temporary vehicle import permit by leaving the country and then the bike comes back in with the new owner in control and a new TVIP gets issued in his name. This can apparently be done quite easily 🙂 In the meantime we had some other riders arrive, David from the UK was here for a few nights, he is on the left having a fang and you may remember Tony on the right from the other day when I left Ushuaia, he is here to send his bike home, but there are no more beds left here, so he is around the corner at a cheap hotel.
Wednesday
More of the same today, but this time getting the bike back together, most of it was done and I even got the new fuel screen, check out the colour difference! But actually, the test was when I blew through it, the old one was hard to get any air through, while the new one had no resistance at all, so I am pretty sure this will fix the running problems at low fuel levels.
My guess is that when the tank is low, the actual weight of the fuel is not enough to force enough fuel through the clogged screen and into the pump, so it is starving for fuel. But, when the fuel level is high, the extra weight will force enough through the screen. Anyway, around here the days have been a tad wet and hot with a lot of rain and when the sun comes out it reminds me of home, very humid! But, in the evenings, even with rain, it is good to relax with some cheap beer, maybe do some computer work and even have time to read a book and play with some local pussy 🙂
I had a small issue with some of the gear I wanted to keep from the bike. In order for me to take the Scotts Steering Stabaliser home, because it is very expensive to replace, I needed the original bar clamps which are up with Ken. Stephen is also a little taller and would like the original dogbone links put back on which would raise the bike an inch. So, I had emailed Ken up in Salt Lake City, and he found the little baggie which I had put all these parts in and sent them on Monday morning. Well, who knows how long that will take to get here, so that meant I had bugger all to do tomorrow except try and plan a few things for the future, in case we made a deal and I sold the bike, it is still up in the air at this moment. It has been late getting to bed here in BA, late dinners because of the heat, a few beers, well OK, more than a few, but as Xavier does not arrive in the workshop until around 10am, I get to sleep in 🙂
Day –0 miles and km
Trip – 54,042 miles and 86,972 km
Cheers
TravellingStrom
WORLD 
TravellingStrom 