Knackered in Nicaragua

Don’t get me wrong – it’s a great country. We are loving Leon especially – not too large a city and lots of cool folk here doing neat things. Like fellow New Zealander Conor fromGisborne who right now is running this not-for-profit tourist operation, the profits from which are spent on the disadvantaged kids of this town. Hey – they need more volunteers to help run this show, here’s the website, get over here and help out. You’ll love the fun of it.

Anyway one of the tourist things they offer is volcano surfing, something we were keen to do before two interventions discouraged us. It’s bloody well 38 degrees already without driving your brain into heat overload trekking up the scorria side of a volcano for 45 minutes to get 50 seconds buzz sliding down (we picked the wrong time of the year to think about doing this but they offer cool treks as well that are more tolerable this time of year) but secondly we have a broken down bike to attend to, so that takes priority.

As Jo has alreadu intimated my bike is refusing to start. Fuel, electrics, compression – which is it? Easy to theorise but given on this modern machinme it takes an hour to undress the bike sufficiently to even reach the spark plugs, there is somewhat of a barrier to getting far on diagnosis on the side of the road in a sweltering, dust-laden environment as we are now in. So we need to find an operating theatre – aka a motorccyle workshop where dust and grit is excluded. Easier said than done given that all the 125cc bikes here remain the simple carberator jobbies that increasingly are but a memory back in NZ.

So we’ve decded to truck the bike to the nearest surgical theatre – 70 kms away in Managua where there’s a Harley shop. Yes they do fuel injection too these days so we’ve been promised will at least have the expertise to identify which component is stuffed. Meanwhile I’ve been calling on the expertise of our WorldbyBike team of experts at home – Chris, Brendan and Tony in particular – to come up with smart suggestions of what we might try to sort the issue out. They in turn have pulled in Sebastian from Experience Motorcycles on the NorthShore, Michael from Motorad in Wellington and John Galswell from BMW NZ – that’s a lot of firepower!

Anyway arriving in the Harely shop in Managua where Giovanni Mora – the only guy for miles around acquainted with these modern bikes (yes Harleys have fuel injection too remember) operates, is like having an audience with GOD. He has the bike stripped before I’ve have got over my truck ride frm Leon, sorted that the electrics are fine and the issue is fuel.

In a jiffy he determines the fuel filter has fallen off the fuel pump and is swimming around in the fuel being useless. Further, he detects a it of shit in the fuel has entered and blocked the pump. Result – fuel starvation. Within a jiff he has it air blown, filter reaatched and then it’s just an hour to screw all the plastic shit that envelopes the modern BMW assembly of wires and sensors.

After a couple of days debilitation then, tomorrow then we want to get high in Honduras. Yippeee

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