I wish I had taken a set of sprockets with me when riding clockwise around South America. A tooth on the front sprocket chipped off in Brazil. The recommendation was to replace both sprockets and the chain. The bike had ~20,000 miles on it, so I did it. Got a new air filter and had the road tires I was carrying on the back of the bike mounted, swapping out the off road tires. Total bill ~$1000.00 at a BMW dealer in Sao Paulo (w/ 10% discount.) Foreign parts are hit with hefty import duties in Brazil. And BMW dealers generally get it right the first time and charge a premium. I just wrote up this one to the cost of adventure. Now I'm home and looking at sprocket prices and realize if I had carried my own spares, I would have saved several hundred dollars and simply paid for labor.

Limits and space restrict how much you carry. There are hundreds of trade off and decisions. I left with street tires on the bike and a spare off road front and rear tires across the back seat. I switched these tires out a few times, depending on road conditions. In some countries it was absolutely cheap to have the tires swapped out. I also carried spare inner tubes. On my LAST riding day in Mexico I ran over something and punctured the rear tire. At that point I had ~30,000 miles on the tube and replaced it instead of patching.

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Peter B
2008/09 - NJ to Costa Rica and back to NJ
2012/13 - NJ to Northern Argentina, Jamaica, Cuba and back to NJ
2023 - Peru, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia...back to Peru.

Blogs: Peter's Ride