What a busy week…! I managed to find oil for the V-Strom – and it’s Motul Semi-synth too. I tied to get the bike around the back of the hotel but the gate was too small so in the end I had to do my maintenance on the road next to the hotel – which wasn’t too bad. I had an audience some of the time and for much of the time I was left to my own devices.
I changed the oil and oil filter on my bike, and when I went to change the final drive chain I noticed that the front chain sprocket was trashed. I also noticed the rear one was pretty abysmal too. I had a spare front sprocket with me but not a rear, thinking I’d get enough mileage from the rear as it was a brand new when I left. Wrong…! What a job getting the front sprocket off. It was stuck-fast, and even swearing at it wouldn’t make it budge, so in the end I had to pack everything away and find an auto-parts shop to buy a bearing puller to get it off.
Going back and fitting the new sprocket and chain I then got the bike running and rode around the city, visited several bike shops to see if I could find a rear sprocket. I eventually got one from a KTM shop. The guy said it was for either a Suzuki GSX or a Kawasaki. So, back to base again and I changed the rear sprocket – but while I was out getting the sprocket I noticed a lot of oil leaking from the bike. Well, a flood of oil really…!
Leaving the bike overnight with some sheets of cardboard underneath to soak up the leaking oil, the next day I removed the sprocket housing and saw that the oil was leaking from the seal for the clutch push-rod. For the past few weeks there has been an excess of oil around this area, and when replacing the clutch housing I think I made the seal worse. Well, I could either order one from the UK and wait in Agadir for a week or two – or I could bodge it…
So – wearing my ‘Bob-the-Bodge-it’ hat I had a think about what to do and came up with a fiendish plan. Going back to the auto-parts shop where I bought the bearing puller I bought some rubber coin type washers, with the hole in the middle a few ‘thou smaller than the clutch pushrod.
Going back to the hotel I removed the seal from the engine crankcase, cleaned it and then superglued the rubber washer to the back of the original seal and then coated the whole thing in gasket sealant. An hour later I fitted the seal into place, refitted the clutch housing and went for a test ride. And it worked…! It’s dry as a bone, which means the journey continues…
