Can anybody advise a decent bike shop in Manaus? We're just about to head down there from Santa Elena and are going to need a new front tyre when we get there and, soon after, a chain. Bike is a 3AJ Tenere and I'm looking for Pirelli or Metzeler tyres, preferably. Cheers.

OK - what about Belem then?

Send an message to the HU community in Belem. Alex Reis there has a small bike shop (and probably a free place to stay). He should be able to get the necessary parts.
S.

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Nicaragua Motorcycle Rental and Tours

Hi grey nomads,

just a quick note to say that i put some contact details at the end of the other post about the road from santa elena by old toad. should help you as you travel down brasil.

one of those was about alex in Belem. he will help you find things and even has a small bike shop himself.

Manaus is a duty free port so might be cheaper if you can find things there. personally i didn't try. If you are going down teh river, i wouldn't take teh Cisne Branco boat if i were you. The captain is "difficult" or just plain rude and it is a smaller boat. my bike ended up in the hold, along with everything else. a coupl of the other boats have a lot friendly captain, and are bigger so makes getting the bike on and off easier.

cheers
mike

Hi Mike - Thanks for the info. Managed to get a tyre from F. Marques on Av. Tefe in Manaus. Interestingly enough at R$180 it was about the same price as in England and much more expensive than the rear Pirelli MT90 which I bought in Lima for $59. The guys at F. Marques were really friendly and helpful, despite the lack of English/Portuguese on either side! Fitting was free and the mechanic spent ages trying to sought out my broken speedo drive, albeit in vain, with no extra charge other than what I gave him.

Regards,
Peter

Hi there!

I am new to the HUBB... well, not exactly, I have been reading it for a while but just signed up to post - today I signed up to ask about the BR-319 but found a great thread about it and was side tracked to look for tires and found this post.

So I found this Marquez store and it's a chain of motorcycle shops. The one mentioned in this post I found at S 03 07.480' W060 00.111'. They did not have any tires for my KLR in stock but they referred me to another store (L Marquez) that had one 130 80-17 Pirelli MT60. Make a long story short, they are ridiculously expensive and if possible buy tires before you get here - I was quoted 450 Real for just the rear (264 USD)! I bought my last set (Metzeler Sahara 3) in Bogota for 273,000 Pesos (151 USD).

Just my thoughts and figured if someone really needs a tire the GPS coordinates may help. Another shop I found quite useful, and the guy spoke some Spanish, was a tire shop on the same street at S 03 07.460' W060 00.336'.

Good luck!

Cristian

P.S. If you're curious, I decided not to do the BR-319 since one tire costs as much as the boat (for me and the bike!) from Manaus to Porto Vehlo (R$ 450).

P.S.S. I'm in Cuiaba now and today I found out that tires are very reasonable at the Paraguay border. If going South to North you may want to buy them at the border; if North to South in Venezuela:-) A simple opinion that may save you some money:-)