Wednesday 21 March 2012

We had a couple of days rest in Puno for me to try and acclimatise to the altitude. After a day off we loaded the bikes and pressed the starter switches. From mine there was absolutely nothing except a click from the starter solenoid. Bugger! I had a look at the obvious things but all to no avail. Time for a mechanic. The guy on reception knew of one and he arrived after an hour. He got down to work and quickly assessed that the starter solenoid was defective. That he removed and took away for a local shop to repair. It turned out that he had to take it to a nighbouring city for the repair and was consequently gone for over 2 hours. During that time I enquired about the mechanic's credentials. It turned out that he sold bottled gas for a living and his knowledge of bikes came from repairing his own 200cc Chinese thing. Oh oh! I started to have a bad feeling. But on his return I gave him the benefit of doubt and let him continue. The repaired solenoid did not solve the problem so without a multimetre or test lamp he decided that there was a break in the +ve line from starter switch to the solenoid so he used some wire he found in the back of his tricycle to wire the solenoid straight to the battery and put in a new starter switch. To my horror and before I had realised he had cut through both cables to my original starter switch. WHAT!!! Fortunately the bike started since I had decided not to let him continue.
So Daisy was running with dodgy wiring and having had her guts messed around with. At least it would allow me to get to Arequipa and try to find a proper mechanic.
My new starter switch along with dodgy white wiring.
Puno rooftops.

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