Day 5 - Perm - Yekaterinburg

Day 5 Perm – Yekaterinburg

22716 - 23106 390km

Surprise surprise! The morning started with rain. But this time without any misdirections of Zumo. It might have tried something but I trusted more on Google Maps and that way I got out of Perm which is - by the way – quite a big city. I’d say the road conditions were good almost all the way to Yekaterinburg. Couple of construction sites but only with quite short 10 minutes stops. Three times… At some point I wondered that i haven’t seen any long distance busses here. Like Greyhound in the US or Onnibus in Finland. Well today one got into my tale and passed me pretty fast. It had huge labels ”Magnetokorsk Metallurg”. I think they are the guys that skate after that black thing on ice? KHL, was it? That was the highlight of the ride. The scenery became more mountaneus. Up and downhills of 5-7% were common.

During yesterday I noticed some missfires on the engine. Occationaly it skipped one beat. Today it got worse. And idle was lost almost complitely. Every time I stopped for a road work or traffic lights I had to use the throttle to keep the engine running. I had an address to a mechanic called Kremlin motorworks. I found the place and while looking for the right door couple of guys came and told me with hnd signals that they know a better mechanic. I just needed to follow them. So I did for a couple of kilometers. There, on a parking lot of a church or something I was ordered to follow another car with labels Motogarage66. At some point I was sure that there cannot be anything in the end of the road but then we came to an industrial area and to small storages, quite like the ones in tv-series ”Storage wars”. They even have a cafeteria as seen in the picture.

The man was Andrei. He didn’t speak any English but with the help of Google Translator we came into conclusion that the spark plugs need to be changed. But first we had to have some tea, bread and sausage. Then Andrei quickly ripped the covers of the bike and removed first three plugs with his self made tool. The fourth one which is in a tricky place behind the cooler was completely stuck. The tool broke, Andrei made it stronger and it broke again. Then he told me that someone will bring another tool. Lets change the rear shock absorber while we are waiting for the tool.

That wasn’t a hard work at all for such a pro. Then we continued with the plug. Or Andrei did. My job was to hold the light. A friend, Ivan, brought a tool which didn’t fit (note to Honda’s designers: there has to be a better way). After a lot of grinding and cutting the tool finally fit and the spark plug got out. And it was complitely black. The cylinder has been burnig rich quite a while i.e. too much gasoline compared to the amount of air.

The left one is like the tool originally was. The right one is the one that fits. Shorter, thinner and more aerodynamic.

The new plug found it’s way to the cylinder after Andrei fixed the ingnition coil cable (note to Honda designers: it can be fixed even though you didn’t mean it to be). After adjusting the mixture we were done – not!

I had mentioned unintentionally that the right hand side grip heater doesn’t work. After following the cable long enough Andrei found a block of relays controlling the heaters. It seemed one relay was dead - ”kaput”. We jumped into Andrei’s car and of we went to a car part store nearby. Welcome back to the seventies was my first feeling. Alternators, coolers, starters, caskets, whatever you need was on the shelves and hanging from the roof. A man behind the u-shaped desk found us the relay and what was the price? 80RUB i.e. less than 1EUR. Well, the reason for low price got explained when we got back to the garage. It was ”made in Russia” and it didn’t work. Super-Engineer Andrei opened it and ”tadaa!” it works now. After a lot of measuring and testing we were sure that the heaters are now ok. But still Andrei insisted that he will bring a new relay in the morning.

While Andrei was working with the bike I spotted a damage probably caused by the fall on Friday. My rear box had broke from it's bottom. I sealed it with a duct tape and secured the box from it's handles to the pannier frame.

At some point Ivan came and showed me some videos about racing on ice with side car motorcycle. What a great guy! He even spoke some words of English.

Finally at around midnight the bike was ready. Andrei had organized me a place to stay for the night. An old container with a bed. Quite a drop of level compared to yesterday but I don’t mind. It’s reasonably warm, at least in my sleeping bag. The bike is safe in the garage and here is video surveillance on the area.

I have to say that I was a bit worried in the morning because of the misfires. But as Andrei said: "a Russian will understand". Now everything is done and probably the bike is better shape than in years.

Tomorrow morning I will head to Yumen. Only 350km but that's how I will have a suitable distance to Omsk next day.