When the next weekend arrived, it was the turn for the Africa Twin’s non-scheduled but mandatory servicing. I had forgotten how annoying to take the protecting bars and the bulky skid plate out it was, but I did it pretty quickly and almost by heart.
To get to the oil filter, though, I had to struggle with a ton of pasty half-solidified chain lubricant that filled the entire space around the chain sprocket.
You can see the place when it was already half clean, and when it was decent enough to grab the filter. Lubricating the chain every 500 km is a good thing for the chain, but not for Pairoa. Point for the cardan driven BMWs.
Whatever, I changed the oil, the oil filter, checked and cleaned and lubricated this and that and decided to change the chain and the final sprocket, but unfortunately I had only the chain at hand so I would have to order for the sprocket to be imported, which could take quite a while.
After reassembling, I took her out for a little ride, and it felt pretty good. I still love her rude ways and the pretty silent V2 engine.
Next Sunday morning I pushed myself and the dogs a little farther and added a few kilometers to the usual route following some of the mountain tracks up near San Felipe.
On arrival, they ate half-hearted and then slept for the rest of the day, all except for Buran. He is always full of energy, no matter how kilometers he ran.
The support, yes. Well, I gave it the final retouches, checked how it worked, and used every last microliter of the only can of paint I had left over to spray both pieces and the bolts and nuts.
Next day, I mounted the compressor and the support and tried to find the rope to help with the maneuver of installing it, with no luck. I then picked the heavy and hard to handle piece of steel and aluminium and installed it by hand. There was no way of bolting first the vertical plate and in a second step the compressor, saving weight and efforts. It was hard, but I did it with no problems, though.
I bolted and secured the support to the block and to the carter and then used the adjusting bolt to move the compressor up and down, smoothly as expected. Good.
This way, the whole thing looked and worked pretty similar to the systems proposed by Mercedes for these trucks and, definitely, it was more solid and firm than my own original proposal, and the V belt tension adjustement was by far more easy. Thanks Pirx for the picture and the idea.
Nothing is that easy, of course, and the upper slip was limited by the presence of the hydraulic pipes, which got as close as 3 mm to the compressor pulley. I had to move them from their position and get them towards the interior of the frame beam, which may sound pretty easy, but working under the engine in a quite uncomfortable position, in a confined space whether for the hands whether for the tools, is not easy nor amusing.
Anyway, after some contorsions and head strikes, the AC compressor was definitely in place. I announced the good news with drums and cymbals, but nobody judged it as relevant as I did. Felt pretty sad.
I got the shoe lashes from the old pair of blue shoes and measured the length of the V belt. Got my helmet and rode to the store where I got a brand new dented and pretty expensive belt. I went under the truck again just to find out that it was by far too short, and that the shoe lash measurements were worth trash.
Went again to the store and asked the guy for the two next longer belts, just seconds before he closed. Back at the shop, the longer one was still too short so I would have to wait for a couple of days before asking for the right belt.
In the meantime, at the next door, the Navara was at the ICU. One of the issues that had helped to lower the selling price was that the clutch was at its last breaths. It worked, but I preferred to replace it before it failed, and Don Pato was charged with the job of taking the engine bell housing out for doing so.
He complained that he had to disassemble half the pickup to remove the bloody bell housing, and I can give proof of that… but he is always complaining.
That was quite a weird moment, if you think, as the Merkabah, the Montero, the Terrano and the Navara, even the 6x6 Blazer, meaning all Pairoa’s cars, had no gearboxes on. Hmm…