Hi Dom,

I'm happy for you mate, also looking forward to more blogs through Africa too!
Do us a favour will you?
Can you post a quick report on your battery/fuel pump issue so that train spotters like me can read about it and maybe learn something too?

Safe travels
Oh and send Tracy our regards eh?

Anything for you Nevil,

Once I'd got the bike out of the crate I connected up the battery (which I'd bought new just a few hundred miles before - but it had been sitting on the bike for 2 months.) I expected it not to work.

I turned it on and all seemed good. I hit the ignition switch and it turned over but no fuel was getting through. I tried this for some time. Eventually I decided that perhaps I didn't have enough fuel. I had only 10 miles left on the indicator, perhaps 1 litre. So I found a guy who went off to the petrol station to get me 5 litres. He can back (an hour later!) and I put it in. Nothing had changed and now the battery was getting flat. So I called the BMW garage and they sent a guy out with a trailer. He picked me up and we went to the garage.

They thought the battery was flat and that was the issue. (True enough by now the battery WAS flat). Very kindly (It was now 4:40 pm on a Friday before a long holiday weekend) they changed batteries with a newer one, agreed to charge my battery and said I could come back in a couple of weeks when I wanted to change it again.

The bike now started fine. I put my jacket, gloves and helmet on and was just about to sit on the bike and it cut out! The mechanic came over and said it was probably because the bike was on the side stand and the fuel intake is on the right side, so we put it on the centre stand and it worked. I was alittle dubious about this as it had never happened before I was also so excited about actually having a working bike again that I just got on it and headed off.

I stopped to fill up and then headed off round the wonderful Cape Town coast road. I'd gone 9 miles and it just cut out. I phoned the bike shop, it was now past 5 p.m. and the guy came out on his bike with a spare fuel pump. We changed it over and the bike worked fine. The old fuel pump (original one?? - bike has now done 67,000 miles) was chipped at one end. I'll take a photo of it and put it on my blog Nevil.

So basically I think the fuel pump was the issue all along. I now have a second hand fuel pump and I think I know how to change it (quite easy isn't it) and I will make sure I buy a new one before setting off.

The guys at Atlantic Motors Cape Town were absolutley fantastic and I have a three day weekend to ride around Cape Town and the local area. So in the end just another eventful day on the road and another story that means Nevil owes me a pint next time we meet!

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