15.04.09 – Yalta

This was the second day of the trip with no miles to  cover.  The bike was with master off road mechanic Valeri, and I was going to help, film and generally get in the way.

First up was to remove the front forks, and service them.  While doing so he noted a lot of dirt had got under the dirt seals and was scratching the chrome on the forks.  I had planned to fit some socks / gaiters anyway, but this convinced me it had to be done now.  The only pair Valeri had around were KTM ones.  I had no choice it had to be done.  I now have KTM socks on my BMW.

Next job was to fit the Touratech handlebar risers.  Every other set of bar risers I had seen are neat little extenders that are a 2 minute job to fit, but the ones for the XC require fork removal.  Ever since laying eyes on them, I had shoved them away in the bottom of my bag (the “too hard” basket) for a time when the forks would be out.  That time had come.  It was also a chance to straighten my handlebars.  The only dropping of the bike so far was gooning around in Romania, crossing a bunch of railway tracks with Safran.  I fell at the final hurdle, and broke a pannier mount, a brake lever, dinged the front rim and ended up with non-straight bars.  Not really worth it for the few seconds of cheap thrills.  the brake lever was no drama – it broke after the useful bit anyway.  The pannier mount was fixed with a custom steel part in Odessa, and now in Yalta I could straighten the bars and sort the rim.

Front and rear tyres came off, and Valeri attacked the rim with a mallet and makeshift anvil.  He was stunned at how soft it was.  3 bashes and the rim was good.  He said if it was an Excel rim, he would have been bashing for 10 minutes.  And after schlepping (along with Jonathan and Marcin) my two Mefo tyres round Europe for over 2 weeks, I finally put them on the bike and ditched the original fitment Metzeler Saharas.  I have a new set of tyres waiting for me in Almaty, Kazakhstan, and the Mefos will get me that far no problem, so no point carrying them as spares any more.

Next job was to shorten the sidestand.  Valeri welds steel, but the sidestand is alloy.  We cut a slice out of it and jumped in the van for a drive to the nearest argon welder.  10 minutes (and 3 EUR) later, and its job done. While out in the van we went down to the Livadia Palace, a former summer playground of the last Tsar, but more well known as the place where Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt met in 1944.

The air filter came out.  I had  changed the standard paper one for an oiled sponge type filter before leaving England and it was getting pretty dirty.  Insects and dirt were all through it.  Out came the hot water and detergent and the filter was cleaned, dried and re-oiled.

Final job for the day was an oil and filter change.  Having not done one on the XC, I decided to sit back and watch and learn from Valeri, who also had never done one on an XC either, but totally knew what he was doing.  The first problem was oil.  Valeri recommended his favorite synthetic oil that he used in his KTMs, just a slightly different temperature grade for the BMW.  It was the most expensive oil I had ever bought.  We went down to the oil retailer, who had just about every high perfomance oil under the sun, for cars, trucks, bikes, whatever.  The stuff I needed was 19  EUR a litre.  And I needed almost 2.5 litres for the XC.  I would have to buy 3 containers and it would add up to 80 USD.  But at least the bike now has the very best Motul synthetic oil.

Draining the oil made me happy I watched Valeri do the first oil change.  Valeri removed the sump plug and wailed.  The oil was as black as the Ace of Spades.  After draining the oil from the sump he immediately looked puzzled.  “Its not 2 litres” he said as he looked for a second drain.  Finally he found it.  The XC is a dry sump bike meaning there are two oil drains.  The main one at the bottom of the engine, and the reservoir drain tucked away on the side of the bike in a hard to see and harder to get to place.  Glad I saw him figure that one out.  If it had been me I would have ended up changing only half the oil … basically wasting new oil and a new filter.

While I was ready to test ride the bike and fill it up with fuel, a guy rode in an a newish Yamaha R6.  He was from Feodosia, 150 km away, and had popped in for some mechanical advice from Valeri.  Seems Valeri is the top bike mechanic in the whole of Crimea.  I found the right guy.  The young guy on the R6 introduced himself as Yuri and invited me to stay with him tomorrow night.  As I am headed that way, I took him up on it.  After spending 80 bux on engine oil, I could use a little hospitality.

Finally with all that out of the way, I headed into town to find internet.  There was allegedly free wi-fi internet at McDonalds, but I couldnt get it to work yesterday, and I noted that the fancy hotel at the other end of the esplanade was sending my wi-fi phone into a frenzy, so I popped in for 2 EUR an hour high speed wi-fi.

Had a few requests for track data.  I have it all  (apart from the 75km leg from Balaclava to Odessa when the GPS mysteriously stopped working … maybe the soviets left some electro magnetic GPS disabling device at Balaclava.  Or maybe Garmin is just not what they are cracked up to be.)

I have sent the track data  to Jon “Baltic Extreme” Fox who is almost back in the UK … he will look at ways to get it up on the website.  – Probably in the data section (which is blank at the moment – while we work out how to populate it)