Daring to dream ...

Hope to see one of these guys for the first time!
Having banged on about the CARNETs we can now report they have arrived. We are good to go! We also have flights booked so maybe we can start to dream just a little more about the journey ahead...we are heading for this place and it does look beautiful ! The route takes us through Kenya and Uganda and then on to Rwanda and then the long N.Tanzania leg. Job for this week...try to create manageable "legs" for the whole journey from our map collection.

The unbearable excitement for us is that we will be in this extraordinary continent of Africa with its incredible people, smells and sights. And able to just be there!

You can see Lake Victoria so clearly here...

I am hoping to see these guys again..in the Wanale region of Mount Elgon!

Midnight manufacturing and deadline disaster

Blimey! The Bikes have gone to the shippers two weeks early! Some serious crating, cutting, sawing and preparation was in order until the small hours of the night to get things ready. BIG THANKS to Paul Sands who sorted Martin's bike (Dakar I) with new bits and bobs at less than half what BMW would have charged and to the highest standards. THANKS PAUL.

Looking workmanlike with accomanying grimmace

Proper worker, no grimmace

As you can see from the pics Paul D and Martin W worked seamlessly together to get stuff ready. Martin was outclassed in the tools and high speed re-shaping of crates department but at least he had a garage to do the work in and was not short of things to whinge at Paul about and to say that he was still worried about.



Now of course, he's worried about the bikes and whether we will ever be reunited with them in Mombasa...keeps him busy!

Final Crated item. You cant tell but that is Dakar II in there!

El bloko arrived to get the bikes with woefully inadequate tools and a stray push bike. Hope that is not what I get when I arrive in Mombasa. Good effort though mate under difficult circumstances and Paul basically saying the whole situation was ridiculous. It was! But we got them on in the end. Nice one!

Water pump woes!

Bearings arrived and have duly been changed.

Whilst I was at it I decided to change the water pump as this is a notoriously unreliable component, and from what I can make out, has never been changed on this bike.

Originally I had been planning to simply take a spare and change it if it failed when we are out there.

How glad am I that I didn't - one of the studs retaining the water pump cover had seized and simply sheared off when I tried to remove it (very common on these models).

Fortunately it was not too much of a job to get it out using plenty of WD40 and a large vice but had this happened in Africa, trying to repair it in the middle of nowhere with limited tools would definitely have been a test of both ingenuity and patience!!

Cut-down Crates and Broken Bearings.

As Martin has said, the crates have arrived, courtesy of Vines of Guildford. These are standard crates that BMW use to ship all their bikes - one size (namely large!!) fitting all.

Because shipping costs are based on volumetric weight, it is essential to make them as small as possible. So 2 hours work with a hammer, saw and tape measure has seen our 2.2 m³ crate diminish to a meagre 1.4 m³. Result!

Taking off the front wheel makes the crate even smaller and while I was there I had a look at the wheel bearings.I was already 99% certain that I would change them as a precautionary measure as, from what I can tell, they are still the originals.

It therefore wasn't a big deal when I found them to be a bit "notchy" and in need of replacement anyway. While I'm there I'll replace the back ones too.

A quick search on Ebay and I've found just what I need at almost a 10th of the price BMW wanted. It's now just a matter of waiting for them to arrive and fit them.

So we're nearly there! bikes, crates, carnets - all the hard work is over. This really could happen!!

The Big Crate Kahuna!

Crates have arrived! Thanks Paul! In the garage awaiting deployment soon!