It seems like we’ve been here for months already. We spent a couple days now seeking parts for our bikes.
We changed the oil, cleaned the air filters, replaced the front tires with ones we’ve been carrying from Costa Rica, and did the usual bolt/nut tightening.
We’ve also decided to replace the chains and rear sprockets as they are showing more wear than we think is reasonable. The roads south of here are reported to be rough and the towns are smaller. Of course, there are no Suzuki dealers in La Paz – there are 3 Honda dealers and we’ve been to all of them – there is one Yamaha dealer and we’ve been there several times. And we’ve found a couple independent parts places.
Our bikes use a somewhat non-standard chain size – 525 pitch – most bikes down here use 520 or 530 pitch. So they have to order the 525 pitch from outside the country. Our man – Johnny Lion from Todo Moto had told us “tomorrow” for both chain and sprockets – so when we showed up “tomorrow” – he told us that it would be Saturday. What?! – of course no English is spoken so we are working thru the dictionary and trying to get it figured out.
We spent some time online, calling back home, etc. Matt @ CycleGear in Portland did some cross referencing for us to see if another bike used the same sprocket – no dice. So we elected to wait and hope ol’ Johnny comes through for us.
In the meantime, we have been helping Pete (the guy from New Mexico we mentioned in the blog earlier) with some of his challenges.
Cheers!
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