So….Europe
The trip was coming to an end. In Turkey I had to change my rule of not spending more than £5 on a hotel room to a limit of £10 but now I was in Europe this basically wasn’t possible anymore.
So now I had to commence operation “Hedge”
This was now my kind of accommodation (look carefully and you’ll see as carefully disguised C90)
First I rode to the Captial city of Bulgaria, Sofia. I called into Danni’s bike shop to see if I could get a new chain for the 90. Once I’d introduced myself he litterally couldn’t be stopped from feeding me, fixing my bike and taking me out for tours around Sofia and showing me how Bulgarians party.
This is Danni with his 6-cylinder Honda Valkyrie
These are two of Danni’s mates. Their fashion sense may differ from mine but they sure know how to party haha.
And this is me having a meal the guys on one of the days they took me for a tour around Sofia.
As you saw from the pictures, little 90 wasn’t feeling two well.
This is the sprocket that drives the oil pump after she ran for 800 miles with no oil pump the first time. The cam chain ate the teeth that are missing.
So we did the most sensible option and got some new teeth welded on haha
I’m not too sure how long it lasted but 700 miles later little 90 had eaten all of the teeth this time.
On the left is the new sprocket from Honda (what it should look like), in the middle is the one that was
in the engine (definitely not what it should look like) and on the right is the metal paste that was floating
around the engine (what 90 had turned the teeth into).
Just to clarify, that means that little 90 had run for around 1500 miles with no oil pump doing 7000rpm.
She never missed a beat and always started first kick even though the engine got so hot through lack
of oil that the cylinder head changed colour from silver to gold!!!
This is what the camshaft ended up looking like after having absolutely no oil for 1500 miles at 7000rpm.
These engines don’t even have splash feed for the top end. When I removed the inspection covers, black dust fell out of the valves!
Anyway……after replacing the camchain and sprokets with genuine parts for £81 I then decided my final act in
Europe would be to take little C90 round the Nurburgring!
This is me screaming her round a corner with the pegs scraping on the floor and the old DC trainer stuck out to help me balance
I managed it in a time of 17minutes and 41 seconds and it was a little bit hair-raising having Porches and
Lamborghinis pass me at ridiculous speeds but it was an awesome little finish to the ride through Europe.
There’s still the UK update to come which includes my thoughts on the trip and I put the c90 on a dyno and see how much
power she lost over the 14,500 mile trip and with an oil pump for 1500miles…….
