Hi there, I´m just taking my trustworthy CX500 (& girlfriend) around northern Spain, heading for Santiago de Compostela and onwards to Lissabon... But it looks like one of my head gaskets is giving way - got a somewhat overheating engine in city traffic, and a bubbly radiator. It is keeping the temperature on nominal while moving (so far), so I´m still mobile. The thing is: I did bring a spare gasket with me, and a few tools (bad experiences) but am lacking a few things: compression gauges to figure out which side, oil pan, fresh coolant, torque wrenches & feeler gauges to get the tappets adjusted afterwards. I´ve changed the gasket before, but would be looking for either a place where I could get a hand with the compression test, and some time to fix it myself, or a mechanic who would let me do the boring disassembly job, or at least not charge huge amounts and experience on older bikes... any ideas? Going to be in Santiago de Compostela tomorrow evening with a bit of luck, and would aim south into Portugal afterwards... got another 14 days to go. Thanks for any pointers, Wolfgang
I service my bikes (BMW and Yamaha) at the triumph dealer in Lugo: Rúa Alexandre Bóveda, 44, Lugo http://goo.gl/maps/4qjXe nice competent guys and reasonably priced, good luck
thanks! gasket got worse before i saw that, so istopped at arandom place. got good assistance for the replacement. the bad news is that the overheating damaged the waterpump seal, and the spare i put in only lasted seventy kilometers... so now i am stuck in penafiel, h portugalave to be in bilbao spain by monday evening to catch the boat and probably cant get a spare seal. any hints for renting vans (one way) or other ideas? that cx really doesn't like southern europe, this feels a lot like greece last year.
Hi Not in that area of the country, will try to see if some other motocyclist friends in that area can assist you good luck
Finally got home. If you ever need a helpful hand in the Penafiel area in Portugal, go to <cite>moto3tempos.pt. </cite> They invested a lot of time in finding a fix for the broken water pump seal, until I ended up with a macgyvered solution that is still holding up 1000km later on, and might be good for a quite a while. Due to the language barrier I'm not entirely sure, but I believe they went through their entire collection by hand to find something fitting (and failed), then took apart other water pumps (new ones!) to get the seals out (failed...) and in the end dug up a sort of compatible seal from god knows where. And in the end they didn't even charge me the full price for the part, or for the hours of working time. Big thumbs up! On the other hand, if you find yourself in Tarouquela, you might be better off pushing your bike away as quickly as possible, unless it is a Zuendapp or a chain saw. Or air cooled. (I'm being unkind here - they were really keen, helpful, friendly and in the end brought us in a van to Penafiel (25k?) and refused any payment - but they did put copper washers in places on the bike where there just shouldn't be any when I wasn't looking, and insisted on poking the seal with screwdrivers... So yes, friendly and helpful, but..well... Good times!
Good news that you're on travel again. But, that Penafiel is in Portugal, not Spain (where's another Peñafiel - worth a visit) http://goo.gl/maps/SKPLS
Both of these experiences are very much par for the course in Spain - great service but sometimes you can be killed by the kindness*! Glad to know your back on the road. Regs Simon * for our Spanish speakers: this phrase means that someone's well intentioned help is too much and maybe cause unintended consequences - the Tarouquela workshop is a good example! Does anyone have the Spanish equivalent?
Sorry - was so focused on getting across the border that I got mixed up. :) Lots of fun anyway, Wolfgang
