Saturday 5 July 2014

Day 7 Saturday July 5th mileage 1422, Ludza Latvia

Day of relaxing and sorting out minor problems with the bikes for those who stayed in Ludza, but a busy 340 mile return journey for Document Man!

Changed the coil and HT lead on Paul's bike, but when we examined the unit taken off we found the plug cap was not screwed tightly into the HT cable, and this might have been where the water was causing his bike to misfire. It was obviously somewhere where there is heat because once he stopped for a couple of minutes the bike would work perfectly for another 500 metres then the problem would repeat itself. Also it is only when there is absolutely lots of water and spray being thrown up.

Checked the oil level on Geoff's bike and cold it was half way up the dipstick, and when we checked the level in the crankcase it was correct. Then ran the bike for a minute and checked again and no level at all on the dipstick. Paul's bike showed similar characteristic. We went away and read the manual in detail and we think there are in fact two oil pump rotors housed on the one shaft of the oil pump. One pump extracts oil from the reservoir in the bike frame and sends it straight to the top of the engine to lubricate the rockers and camshaft. This oil then runs down the inside of the engine and collects in the crankcase. The second pump then extracts oil via a screen from the crankcase and pumps it up into the top of the reservoir and also into the gearbox to lubricate the gear train. Thus it's possible for the flow to and from the reservoir in the short term to be different and the level in the reservoir to vary depending upon where the oil happens to be. In the manual it does say to run the bike for 5 mins before topping up the oil to the final top mark and we are now wondering if this is to allow time for the oil to return back to the reservoir.

Walked around town and a group of people were gathered around looking at a beetle on a tree. Geoff went over to see what was of interest and a local old lady said to me without any preamble "this is very interesting and unusual. We haven't seen anything like this before here." I complemented her on her english but she just shrugged her shoulders and wandered off without offering any explanation of why she had such a good english vocabulary.

Here is the beetle.





YouTube Video

Visited a museum and also some old ruined castle walls in Ludza and practiced our Russian on the local population.

Here are some pictures.






































Now re-united with Document Man after travelling to Riga to meet his son with the necessary documents.
Less than 24 hours after we had been turned back from the Russian border, Joseph managed to book flights, taxis to the airport and accommodation at the " naughty squirrel" hostel in Riga. A big thank you for fetching all the necessary documentation! Especially from his dad on behalf of the anonymous muppet that left them at home!

TRR
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

6 comments:

  1. Thank God for that . Hope rest of trip goes smoothly!

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  2. Well done Joseph!.....ps. it looks like a 'longhorn' beetle?

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  3. Well done Joseph!

    Ps. It looks like a 'longhorn' beetle maybe?

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  4. You should rename him Voldemort!

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  5. can't get to grips with this blog thing think i am going to end up with comments everywhere c and a

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