Having conquered
the road to Semuc Champey and avoided a journey ending injury on the river I turned my mind
to a growing concern about Ziggy. The oil problem had to be looked at. Usually
the only three reasons an engine will use oil is an external leak, leaking past
the piston rings or leaking past the valve seals. There was no external leak
and both other options had dollar signs attached. I couldn’t believe these
things would be worn at the mileage I had done but I had no other explanation.
I made my way
back to Guatemala City and stayed again at Quetzalroo. I booked Ziggy into
Bavaria Motors the next day after explaining the issues with one of the
non-mechanic guys. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in passing the information
on second hand to the mechanic and the guy’s English was ok but not really good
enough for what I needed. The next day they had the bike for the full day and I
was told by text message at 5pm that the rattling sound was due to low oil and
they wanted to top up the oil.
I had a bit of a
text dummy-spit with the poor guy, saying that it was unacceptable because the
low oil was a symptom not a cause. I was conerned they would put mineral oil in
again etc. So I told them to do nothing and I would come down in the morning.
Fortunately I had previously met the rider trainer Jose, and he spoke perfect English. Jose helped me out the next day and
surprisingly I had a discussion with the head mechanic and the technician for
almost an hour and they allayed my fears.
The story goes
something like this. I have been using synthetic oil in the motor for 40,000kms
and it builds up a coating over the moving parts to form a buffer that stops
wear and tear. When I was in Mexico I had an oil change at Guadalajara through
the BMW dealer. It is normal in this part of the world to use mineral oil (the natural stuff) not
synthetic so he didn’t think to ask. I only realised after he had changed it and I
had some concerns at the time.
Now mineral oil
is made up of molecules that are different sizes, some small and some large. It
is a little more abrasive than synthetic oil that has exactly uniform-sized
molecules. It seems that using mineral oil after long term use of synthetic oil
can scratch the coating created by the synthetic oil. When I changed back to
synthetic oil, the smaller molecules travelled through the scratches created by
the larger molecules, accessing the combustion chamber and burning.
Hence a higher consumption of oil.
Now this was
explained to me by the mechanics so I ran the explanation by my Australian
mechanic who I use as my BMW guru. He agreed that it was a plausible and likely
explanation. All agreed that a few thousand kms using synthetic oil will seal
up the ‘scratches’ and the oil consumption will reduce, hopefully back to where it
was, which was nil.
At the same time
I had been having a periodic loud noise from the front of the engine when I
start it. It has happened five times. To my surprise and relief the mechanics
found a faulty timing chain tensioner that was replaced and now is running normally.
So with luck
these were causing all the problems and so far Ziggy is feeling back to normal
and hasn’t used any oil yet. Once the work was done, I went for a Saturday
morning ride with Jose (the instructor from Bavaria Motors) and twenty other
riders, from the city to Lake Atitlan.
It is awesome riding with a large group
and it made a big impact on the little towns that we visited on the way.
We stopped for a nice breakfast along the way.
Then stopped in at San Marcos at Lake Atitlan.
I
stayed in San Marcos with my now good friend Cisco at his waterside house. It
was a nice relaxing weekend sitting and staring at the volcanoes across the
lake.
A very tranquil place near where I started my journey in Guatemala but now I was in my last weekend, getting ready to ride to El Salvador. But Guatemala had one more challenge for me. First the driveway,
which I negotiated without a hitch, but the steep twisty road to this view
saw me fall for the fifth time in Guatemala, this time on the tar. El Salvador beckons.
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