Ah, the nightmare that is my relationship with this bike continues. Riding an easy Rallye Tunisie piste just outside Douz, I stopped in a very soft patch.

On restarting, it sounded like the bike had a really badly adjusted valve - with the old screwdriver-to-head trick I narrowed it down to the l/h exhaust valve.

Limped back to campsite (with a helpful quad doing route-finding) and opened the valve cover to find 5mm of play and a valve that looked stuck in the open position.

Spent the evening removing carb & cam cover. All rockers etc look brand new. Valve tops look OK. This morning I removed the head and the valve seat has broken, and chewed the ally and the end of the valve.

I reckon the valve is still straight, but I obviously need a new seat & for it to be reground, as well as more aluminium welding into the head and a new hole milled.

I`ve had the head sent to Sfax to be repaired today. Obviously I`m not happy but the guy has told me that they have to do this to old Peugeot lumps all the time.

There was nothing amiss with the engine before this - it was full of good European oil and only 4000kms old (since a full rebuild). I was not running hot - between 150 and 200 F.

Be careful folks. I can see no way I could have prevented this, and it may amount to a serious design fault, being such a new engine.



------------------
=-=-= ON THE EDGE! =-=-=
My XR650L Pan-Med Expedition Site!

__________________
=-=-= ON THE EDGE! =-=-=
My XR650L Pan-Med Expedition Site!