Pre-departure bodging

Since I was about go around the world I obviously put lots of effort into preparing the bike as much as possible. Mostly this involved servicing, so changing the brakes, filters, oil, spark plugs, chain, etc. Unfortunately all this effort was wasted because I discovered the rear wheel was on its last legs (another entry has the full story) and the only option, in my mind at least, was to buy a new bike altogether.

A new bike that I knew absolutely nothing about. A new bike that had a very incomplete service history and was owned by a guy who I suspect would not even notice if the frame suddenly split in two.

So with all my servicing efforts null and void and with only 2 weeks left to departure I had to start again. The new bike went to a garage who serviced it - turns out not much needed doing. But there was still some extra bits and pieces that the old bike had but the new bike didn't. Like crash bars. Crash bars are quite important since I imagine that most of the off road sections will be traversed parallel to the ground.

So I bought some crash bars and, despite the very clear warnings that came in the box, decided to fit them myself.

These bars attached to the bike with a couple of bolts on the front of the frame, and another bolt that goes through the lugs underneath the bike which provide a pivot for the centre stand. The bolt itself was much smaller than the inside diameter of the lugs so a fat metal tube was provided to fill in the gap. This tube needed to replace the one which was already attached to the bike.

The first job was to remove the centre stand. There is a massive spring which holds the stand up which it turns out is not so much a spring as a solid lump of metal, incapable of stretching, bending or being manipulated in any way. For 2 hours I fought with this spring. 2 hours of shouting, hammering, massive blood loss, blaming the Chinese/Welsh/Martians/the cat from next door, drinking lots of tea, trying again and repeating the whole process. On the ten billionth try it finally came off.

Tricky part done all I had to do was lightly tap the existing pivot out and the stand would just fall off.

That took another hour.

But all that is fine. It's always hard to break through rust. So I cleaned everything up and put the new tube into the lugs.

It didn't fit.

I can't write what words came out of my mouth next because I don't really want this to be classed as an 'obscene' blog.

The tube that came with the crash bars was to fat to fit through the hole on the bike. There was really no way to make it fit. The outside diameter was about 1-2mm to big when compared to the old one. But I couldn't reuse the old one because it was too long to allow proper mounting of the bars.

I must say I was really surprised with Givi for this error. Who ever would have thought that a product of Italian engineering would not be fit for purpose?

So the decision was made to chop a bit off the end of the old tube and use that in preference to the new one - at least I knew it would fit back in the lugs. A metal working service was kindly provided by a colleague the next time I popped into the office (for the fifth time since officially going on holiday). Much to my surprise everything went back together properly. The tube was now the correct length, it fit, the centre stand was remounted and the crash bars attached. Everything was great.

Except for the spring.

The centre stand was resting on the ground because there was nothing to hold it up. The spring sat in the middle of the garage floor taunting me with the knowledge of the pain and misery to come.

Eventually I could find no more reasons to procrastinate and had to attempt fitting it. It went on very easily and it in no way involved me wasting several more hours achieving nothing, giving up, talking to the neighbour and Mike doing it in 3 seconds with just a screwdriver.


Saga over. Nearly.

My procrastinating time was mostly spent prodding the engine in various places trying to make it look like I knew what I was doing. During this highly skilled investigation I managed to convince myself that the engine was overheating (even though it wasn't) because the coolant level was too low (this despite the fact that the coolant was changed only a week previously and there was no signs of any leaks anywhere). So the next day on my way back to Bristol I stopped at a garage to buy some more.

I filled up the system only to have it overflow immediately. Not good. I didn't want to seal it for fear of too much pressure and blown radiator caps. I didn't have the tools to drain the system (not that that would be a good idea anyway) and couldn't find any rubber tubing to siphon some out.

And I was stuck at a garage in the middle of nowhere which only sold petrol and sweets. And kitchen roll.

Brilliant. Kitchen roll. A plan was formed.

I would like to point out that you should not buy into the marketing ploys. One sheet of Plently is not plenty. In fact, one entire roll of Plenty is just barely enough.

And you will need another hour to waste stuffing screwed up sheets of kitchen roll into the reservoir and hoping that they don't break up.

In a couple days I will be in Istanbul where I need to do some bodging to the electrics. I can't imagine what is going to happen then.