Third day - Saturday Motorcycle Repairs and Service

This continues the series of my Motorcycle Adventure travels getting from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth which is the first goal, over a two day period. Now in Port Elizabeth on Saturday before flying to Durban for Goal two next Tuesday. Details of the whole trip here.

The state of my Shock seals when I reached Port Elizabeth

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The whole way on the journey to date I'd noticed the worsening leak of oil from the shock absorber seals.

When I got to Port Elizabeth we decided to sort this out before the trip to Lesotho which would require heavy use of the shocks due to the rough roads.

We were also told not to tie the bike down from the handlebars to the trailer as in this picture because that is the primary cause of the shock springing leaks. We live and learn!

Rob is the chap who had organised this trip to Lesotho. He has been going there for years both on business and for pleasure.

He was going to tow my bike up to Paul Roux on his trailer with his bike, so that when I completed my Goal two (Splashy Music festival), it would be there ready for Goal three (Lesotho Trip)

Rob being his usual cheerful self

Rob was supposed to be heading up this morning, to a place called Paul Roux, from where we were going to base out ride into Lesotho. But when he came to hitch the trailer to the car, he discovered trailer wiring loom had had the "Africa installation" treatment during a recent sound amplifier install. We discovered they had simply put a massive screw to hold the amplifier in place, right through the wiring loom's circuit board! Rob couldn't travel without any trailer lights so had to get it sorted out. Fortunately the dealership admitted they had "screwed" up and fixed the problem.

This meant that we had time to get my bike sorted out before he was going to leave the next day.

Both our Bikes on the trailer off to Alan's Motorcycle Workshop

We went round to Rob's mates place called Alan Lewis. Alan had kindly agreed to fix the fork seals and service the bike on a Saturday late morning into the afternoon. He has a home based workshop which i found really impressive.

Alan working on my bike

Alan's bike sales area.

Rob jibing Alan, just before we got kicked out for disturbing the master at work

Needless to say, he sorted the shocks, did the 20,000km service and all for an excellent price at that. Anyone in the PE area, I would highly recommend him and his services. www.bikealanpe.co.za 
We were able to get away pretty much on time with a very happy bike and owner. Where else would you get such outstanding service so quickly?

But wait that's not all! He has another string to his bow. See tomorrow's Blog to see what it is.

More tours on our list of tour route summaries are available, where we explore these sorts of motorcycle adventure tour routes. Just choose one of our events and reserve yourself a place on one of the future motorcycle adventure safari events.