Greetings All

Time for the next mini (major?) drama in our story.

In our last cliff hanger we were waiting in the delightful Mexican town of Chihuahua famous for its very small dogs and men wearing cowboy hats and very pointy toed boots (including a very tasteful snakeskin finish, hot pink colour with black tiger stripes, I am not making this up I have photos to prove it)

After just over two weeks in our luxurious hotel (I originally slandered it by describing it as a one and half star hotel, it was actually only a one star hotel) I picked up my shiny new and round wheel, bolted it on and we took off for the city of Zacatecas, 800km south of Chihuahua.

Zacatecas is a magnificent Spanish colonial city, and we were sorry that we were only staying two nights but we had to get to Mexico City as we had been invited to spend Christmas with a local family. To our own amazement we were on the road bright and early, this was probably our downfall.

About 80km out of Zacatecas Kitty suddenly lost power, we pulled over to the side of the road and discovered that the right hand cylinder was not providing any power at higher engine speeds but was idling ok. My brain cell concluded that we probably had some dirty fuel and clogged the carburettor jets. After pulling the carbie apart on the side of the road and cleaning the jets we still had a problem.

repair

Just as an aside, we were in the middle of nowhere, it was as flat as the eye can see with no dwelling in sight but after 20 minutes we had a crowd of people all watching me lying on the ground bolting Kitty back together, where they came from I have no idea but we did provide a good thirty minutes of amusement for them.

no joy

I forgot to mention that we were up at about 6600 ft, it was freezing cold and blowing a gale I’m just surprised it wasn’t pissing down with rain as well. We can look forward to that next time.

We decided to limp back to Zacatecas instead of heading to the next major town which was a long slow and very tense trip but finally got back to the hotel that we had left four hour earlier.

I started pulling bits of Kitty apart in the hotel foyer, as you do. Now I have to make admission of guilt. One of the things I had been meaning to do for quite a while is to adjust the valve tappet clearances (for all the non motorcycle people out there, a routine maintenance procedure. Look, I’m going to start talking like a geek for the rest of this paragraph and the next two paragraphs so feel free to skip these, just assume that I did something bad) so I decided to check this now and I discovered that one of the cylinder head nuts had come loose and the valve gear was not working properly hence no power on that side.

Cylinder head bodge fix in Zacatecas, Mexico

While not checking the tappets was a bad thing I soon discovered the reason that the nut had come loose was that the cylinder head stud had come loose inside the engine block. This is a very, very bad thing that will involve removing the entire cylinder and installing a heli-coil for that stud. This is a workshop job, the nearest workshop to us is in, you guessed it, in Mexico City 700km south of where we are now. Bugger.

The major problem we have now is that the stud could come out completely while we are travelling down to Mexico City and strand us in the middle of nowhere but I have a cunning plan that involves jamming the end of the stud against the inside of the rocker cover using a spare bolt that I was carrying and filing it down to fit. That will be tomorrow’s fun and games. Here ends the geek talk.

Bodge repair

We still have the fun and games of finding a place to stay in Mexico City and waiting until the workshop reopens after the Christmas and I’m not sure when that is. It has been a challenging day.

This means we will be having a Zacatecasian Christmas which is not that bad as it is a beautiful city.

On that note we wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, May all you troubles be non (BMW) mechanical.

All the best

Ian & the Beloved