Yet another welding

The road up to Maweni is mostly hair pins. And what happens then? Of course I have to go as fast as I can, race the poor retirement-ready bike so the sidecar lifts in the right curves and it slides through the left curves. Not too funny for a 74 year old heavy loaded bike, but to big amusement for me.

Besides the normal broken spokes after the stint, it followed a big bonus. The prime Russian/Colombian/Paraguayan weld under the steering head gave in. How that bird-shit looking solid piece of weld could give in is hard to understand, but it did.

Anyhow, to find a really good African welder (I only stick to the really good ones) working on boxing day didn´t prove too easy so I had to idle 50 kilometers before I could find one. But he did such a beautiful job so it will at least hold up to North Kenya. Now I´m only missing to get this particular weld job done in Australia, North America and Europe, then they all have gotten a shot to fix the same thing. All the king’s horses and men, couldn´t put Humpty back again…



Tormod

Endnu et stelbrud...

Vejen op til Maweni består mest af hårnålesving. Og hvad sker der så? Selvfølgelig skal jeg tage den så hurtigt jeg kan, pine den stakkels pensionsmodne motorcykel så sidevognen letter i højresving og den skrider med bagenden når vejen drejer til venstre. Ikke så sjovt for en overlæsset dame på 74, men jeg har det skideskægt.

Udover de sædvanlige knækkede eger efter sådan et stunt, er der denne gang bonus i form af endnu et stelbrud: Den fine russisk-colombianske-peruvianske svejsning under styrhovedet opgav ævred. Hvordan den enorme klump mågeklatter kunne knække er ikke til at fatte, men knækkede gjorde den.

Nå, det viser sig at være svært at finde en god afrikansk svejser (jeg holder mig til kun at bruge de rigtig gode) her lillejuleaften, så jeg kører de næste 50 km i tomgang før en af slagsen dukker op. Han lavede til gengæld så fint et stykke arbejde at den nok vil holde helt op til det nordlige Kenya. Nu mangler jeg bare at få samme sted svejset i Australien, Nordamerika og Europa, så alle får chancen....

This is the nice kind of curves to stress your frame and break spokes

Yes, finally again. Note there’s traces of previous welding jobs if you look carefully at the picture

A big crowd of competent advisors is required to the job well

And here we go. This repair will at least last up to North Kenya, another amazing job done!