Succumbed tonight to a night under bricks and mortar after riding through some of the worst summer storms locals tell me they have seen for years – the bike is tucked up in an underground car park and everything I have is laying around me dripping in an attempt to get it dry before the ride to Austria tomorrow and through my window I can see dancing shards of lightening over the old village of Bergamo. Rode the Col De l’Iseran today and although it was warm when I left I predicted snow at 9,100 ft and I was not wrong. Seems odd to be grabbing extra layers and using heated grips when 16 hours earlier I was riding with jacket open in the evening sunshine.
Tag Archives: Roadside Repair
The book has left the building…
In the late spring of 2013, I left my home, my wife and my family to complete a solo motorcycle expedition – no substantive planning, just my old BMW R1150 GS Adventure, a tent and sleeping bag, a handful of spares and some cash. I only had one fixed point on my itinerary and that was a return ferry ticket 98 days later. Today I finally managed to upload to my publishers the first draft of my pictorial journey of the expedition – a representation of the challenges, situations, peoples and landscapes I discovered over that inspirational period. I travelled over 24,000 km, exhausted five tyres and only had one puncture… I came back a changed man and for those of you who look at this and wonder if you can complete a similar undertaking, all I can say is ‘do it’ – I promise you will never regret it.
The GS is finally home
So my GS is finally home – been a long time coming with a rebuilt gearbox, new clutch plate and third input drive shaft. Its a real shame that this design fault still remains, its a non service item but really would benefit from routine lubrication but with complete gearbox removal and bike strip down required its a difficult and long job to do. At the same time a new clutch hydraulic slave cylinder has been installed, which I know was leaking. The story is that when BMW introduced the hydraulic clutch design they miscalculated and inadvertently moved the clutch disc 8mm further forward towards the engine and off the transmission splines, this results in the splines of the clutch disc falling short of the input drive shaft hence the wear. Apparently Brunos Machine and Repair have a fix so I am on the case now for the new shaft design.
