Trujillo, 9-6-12

I've been making good time in Peru.  The dual carriageway has helped but I've been riding from the early morning until a couple of hours before dark in the evening.  I was aiming for Lima yesterday but was making good progress and enjoying myself I continued through the city (city traffic in Peru is mental btw) and on another 160km or so to Huacho.

Checked into the first hotel that would take the bike, out of my price range but I was seriously tired at that point, ate and got an early night.

I was up at the crack of dawn and set about setting the chain tension and oil level when a woman from a hotel room near mine got up and started shouting at me for making noise.  My "no habla Espanol" trick didn't work as she turned out to speak fluent English.  I moved the bike to the other side of the car park and finished the job.

The starter clutch is still playing up but so far I've always managed to get the bike started.  Another long run up to Trujillo.  Met a couple of English lads cycling from Ushuaia but no real events apart from city traffic until I started to look for somewhere to stay.

First place I tried wouldn't let me bring the bike in.  OK, no problema, move onto the next.  Except I couldn't get the bike going.  It would fire, a bit but not start.  I thought I'd probably flooded it so I pushed the bike 20m down the road to a bar where I could have a drink and keep an eye on the fully loaded bike.

After leaving it alone for a few minutes, I did get the bike started but something was horribly wrong.  It wouldn't tick over and sounded very sick.  I set off to find another hostel round the corner and the bike was definitely ill, I had to rev the bollocks off it to gather any power at all and having to hold it at around 3K RPM just to keep the engine going.  Also it was getting very hot.

I had just been thinking that apart from the starter clutch, the bike was running very well.

Fortunately the next hostal had somewhere to put the bike so I pushed it into the courtyard and unloaded my stuff.

Finding a mechanic on a Saturday evening or a Sunday isn't going to happen in Peru so trying to think logically, I removed the air filter to see if it was clogged.  Yeah, there's a bit of muck in there and it could use a wash but running without didn't make a great deal of difference.

Next I removed the spark plug to find the shittiest plug I have ever seen in my life.  A new one did the job and the bike is back to it's former self..

I'm a bit embarrassed about having left the plug for so long but I'm also quite pleased with myself for successfully diagnosing and fixing a problem.

Next step is to fit a kickstart kit, umming and ahing about fitting it myself.

Anyway, might hang round here another day and get some laundry done.  I smell.