Monday 28 May 2012

Another bonkers day today

This trip gets madder and madder. The non English speaking nice artist man came and collected us again this morning and we did another diesel spewing bus following session to some back street garage somewhere in Kastamonu, but the mechanic wasn't there.
 
 So we went to the main Yamaha dealer in town where to our surprise, the lovely men there were only too pleased to help us out and sort two manky and by now exceptionally filthy Chinese scooters.













They very quickly established that the main head gasket was at fault and that the exhaust was loose and  full of black oil - hence the mega smoking and loud banging. The cereal packet paper gaskets caught fire when I was riding it this morning too, so that didn't help on the smoke front.

So they changed all of that, replaced the seals, bought us tea, chatted to us about bikes, London, practised their English on us, introduced us to their families, produced some puppies ( called Lucky and Arsey) to amuse us, and then proceeded to go through both bikes looking for anything that needed doing, and doing it.



They fixed the brakes, sorted the chains, changed the oil, tidied up all the wiring for the 12 v sockets etc, test rode them and decided that the clutch plates were wearing so replaced the whole unit for us.




And all the time they kept giving us tea, and then lunch.
 
We spent about 4 hours with them and they were great, and the bill when it came was just £130.00 - £15.00 of which was the entire labour charge. Lovely people, and really cool. Thanks chaps!


So it looks like we'll be underway again tomorrow. We decided to stay here another night which was a good call as its  tipped it down all afternoon - big fat horrible rain which would have drenched us and we'd have had to find another place to stay anyway, so we decided it was best to stay put and set off early in the morning.