Sunday 17 August 2014

Every day is an Adventure

First stop at Berwick, still dry and bikes still clean

Mechanical Mayhem
The ride to catch the ferry from Hull was uneventful except for the rain which flooded the roads around Newcastle. The PO ferry from Hull to Rotterdam is much better than the DFDS Newcastle ferry and the alcohol is more reasonably priced so we took full advantage of that!
The run to Bremen was ok weather wise, some rain but uneventful, thank god for GPS as we would never have found the site otherwise. Once again great to meet old friends from all over Europe it really is an International gathering and really just an International drinking club.
Good laughs over the weekend and some sad news that Chris Norton died on Friday, Chris was the membership secretary for years and a nice chap, we raised several glasses to him on Friday night!
We left the rally today (Sunday) and were heading to se Tomas & Andrea in Frankfurt but about
120 miles South of Bremen my bike made a horrible grinding noise and lost its drive, not good when you're overtaking on the Autobahn! I got it into the side of the road and realised it was serious so pushed it to the nearest junction, we spotted a Service station so  pushed it to there, we tried towing but a combination of Alex's hangover and my thought of certain death saw that idea quashed. we took it in turn to push the bike (fully loaded) the just under 2 miles. This isn't a great hobby, bike pushing and I don't think it'll catch on.
We called Andrea to tell her we had broken down and found out Tomas's dad had just died so we said we'd visit again at a better time. I stripped the primary side and found the primary chain had snapped, its also wrecked the alternator and bent one of the chain tensioners. Tomorrow's task will be to order spares in the hope they arrive quickly and allow us to continue. With the Norton every journey is indeed an adventure! It could be worse, we have found a small hotel with a bar so life isn't all bad.

6 comments:

  1. Maybe a belt drive conversion should be on the shopping list....?
    Hope you get it sorted OK!
    best,
    Jake

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Jake, I have belts on a couple but the mk3 doesn't work so well

      Delete
  2. what happened to my Suzuki idea? More ride time. I guess bike pushing is more fun:)

    Kevin
    I am envious of the journey.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Kevin, a Suzuki might be an idea ha ha. Bike pushing is no fun!

      Delete
  3. in the islands we say auwe! (shit!)
    how the hell does one break a primary chain? 200,000 miles?
    I bet Mrs. Gino never broke hers!

    just having fun sir! good to see you doing well in spite of it all. finally got my gearbox done, went from 19T to 20... nice change

    cheers,

    Don

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Don good to hear from you, Nortons eh! I find a 21 to be better or 22 for highway riding.
      Mrs R has a lighter touch obviously :-)

      Delete