Day 3.
Day three saw us only doing 107kms.
We decided to do Bastervoetpad without our luggage, have lunch at our place of stay and then leave for Lady Grey via Otto Du Plessis pass. That would leave Jouberts pass for Monday morning when we return home. That was the plan anyway. :deal:
We woke to the brightest day.
All our clothes dried out during the night in front of the heaters and we seemed to have forgotten our ordeal from the previous day. We were ready to tear it up!
My boots were nice and toasty and at least dry.
The beemer peeking out of the garage door...
We took tar in the direction of Ugie, turning off towards Gatberg.
Still wondering why it is called Gatberg? ;D
I saw a guy on a GS do this once... >
Apparently it's BMW assist has expired just two months before, so we tried to recover it, but were unsuccessful. :mwink:
Continuing our journey with Gatberg in sight.
Red Bull Racing?? :ricky:
Stopping to get rid of the warm layers as the temperatures start to rise quickly.
And then we join the road from Ugie onto Bastervoet.
Riding through the plantations. It seems that Fanie had some issues with the mud and water, trying to avoid them. :biggrin:
Me? Naaahhh, I was having fun!
Interesting formation..
The fan never stopped working for the remainder of the day on day 2, so I decided to put the temp sender switch back in the fan circuit. It would seem that the problem returned, as I noticed my bike reaching 5 bars with no fan running. So we stopped and fiddled and then fiddled some more. In the end we again jippo’ed the switch and managed to gather that the fan connection to the wiring harness was the culprit. So I knew that the fan should be running all the time, and when it stopped, I had to stop and usually on the first tug on the wire from the fan it would start up again. This would happen a few times during the day, but at least I knew where and what to look out for. One of the things on my to-do list when I do an inspection of the bike after its first long trip after I worked on it.
Stopping to inspect the fan, we had a nice view at least.
Then we were off again. (Only once Fanie pointed out to me that the fan would not be running since I had the jumper wire in the wrong place, but luckily before I started to take off the tanks!)
The day turned into one of the best riding days one could ask for.
The weather was perfect, the rain had subdued the dust and we were without any heavy luggage.
And the views were spectacular! :drif:
Bastervoet had some technical sections, but most of them were easy to traverse if you just chose your line careful.
Stopping at a section to wait for Fanie to pass and take a picture, he gets next to me and I hear him shout something in his helmet and reach for the kill switch.
Now what?
The radiator fan did not come on, but the oil light was flickering and a warning light lit up on the dash of the beemer while idling.
atch:
We inspected the motor and no oil was leaking and all the oil pipes and filters etc were all in place and not damaged.
It seems that the mud from the previous day was causing problems with the oil cooling, or so we hoped.
We removed as much of the mud as possible, even sacrificing some of our drinking water to try and get the oil filter and cooler as clean as possible. In the end this did not help much, as we assume the cooling under the motor was hampered by the mud taking up all of the space there, and we had no way of removing that.
Not in the mood to call in help and end our trip we waited a bit for the bike to cool down. Started it up and no oil light. :mwink:
Shot.
But after the next climb the oil light flickered again.
Aaarghh! :dousing:
Waiting for the bike to cool off.
In the end it would seem that our suspicions were true. After each climb we would stop and let the bike cool off. We had to do this all the way out of Bastervoet, so this took most of the rest of our day, with us only reaching Elliot again after 4 in the afternoon.
Once we reached the open road, and for the rest of the trip we never saw the oil light again. (When enquiring about this afterwards with our local BMW dealership they would not believe us that the F658 was taken up Bastervoet without any damage, as they only organize trips up there for 450X clients... :
)
Anyway, more pictures of Bastervoetpad.
Another cool down stop...
And off we went again.
And eventually we reached the summit. From here on it was downward and onward, so that was the end of the cooling issue for the Beemer.
We arrived at our place of stay, and decided to rather stay another night as daylight was running low. We opted to leave at sparrows fart the next morning to do Otto Du Plessis and Jouberts Pass on our way home.
So we opted to give the bikes a slight wash to get rid of the mud accumulated and now baked onto them, and then take it easy for the remainder of the day.
