Day 3 Tuesday July 1st. Mileage 659 miles. Swiebodzin Poland

Today started as a difficult day. We had breakfast and then decided to inspect Geoff's bike to see of we could see why it had gone through 700ml of oil.
We took the seat off and straight away discovered that the 2 inch long piece of pipe that acts as a breather for the crankcase and should be connected through a tee piece to a sealed drain pipe and also into the air box was open ended and oil had been sprayed out of this pipe. So with a cause for the oil loss we reconnected the pipe and put everything back together and on checking the oil level again were disturbed to find that it was below the minimum setting and needed another 1 litre of oil to top it up.

We then set off and within 200 yards the bike was stuttering and misfiring and blue smoke coming from the exhaust.

Now worried that the bike had a possible terminal problem we checked inside the air box to see if somehow oil had been sucked into there, but this was clean.

We went back to the hotel where we had stayed and they helped us find the address of a local Suzuki garage, and also Honda garages in Hanover.

On the ride to the local Suzuki garage the bike seemed to work ok without misfiring, but was still emitting blue smoke when the throttle was opened.

The garage said they were fully booked and couldn't work on the bike, but the man there phoned the honda garages in Hanover to see if they could help. No luck all were fully booked. We asked him if we could borrow a compression tester to see whether the engine had damaged the rings to the piston. He came with a professional looking device, but it only had a rubber push fit connection that you had to hold over the spark plug hole. This is not easy on the dominator because the access is very poor, but eventually he had a reading of about 5 (units unknown) and he said it should be about 10.




He then said he had a mate who has a small village garage about 10 miles away and gave us the address.

We duly set off and when we arrived there was no sign of a garage. We measured the oil level again and it had not changed!

So after a brainstorming session where we considered even turning back to England and repairing the bike back at home it was decided to press on and to see how bad the oil consumption problem really was.

So in the end we did nearly 300 miles of motorway travel and the oil level has not fallen at all, and the bike has performed beautifully.

So friends back home please answers on a postcard for why the bike behaved as it did.

(John at Autotec Keighley any ideas??)

So after a worrying start to the day we are now back on plan for the journey !

Going across Germany we saw huge wind farms all with red and white striped blades turning in sync.

Also whilst travelling in convoy fashion a car right in front of us veered slowly onto the hard shoulder and then onto the verge wiping away plastic bollards. If he had not woken up at that moment he would have gone into the adjacent ditch and had a major incident. All this was happening at about 60mph.

More later
RR

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