Day 12
KMS Mottorade Warmsen Germany
Not much to report today. I mostly hung out around the shop watching my bike being disassembled and trying not to get in the way. Achim’s techs took the trans out of the bike and then he took the transmission apart. Fourth gear showed significant wear and pitting so he sourced a new/old one from another Guzzi friend/mechanic of his who does a lot of work on the smaller engines. He also replaced numerous bearings in the transmission and on the bench everything is tight and smooth. Tomorrow his techs will be putting the trans back in the bike.
Riding up here I had the thought that being a mechanic on Italian motorcycles was probably a job reserved by the state for particularly depressed German engineers. I could just hear Gunther saying “Hey Franz come over here and look at what the Eyetalians did.” and then both of them laughing their Teutonic asses off. As it turns out Achim just seems to love Guzzis and Italian cars which may be cause for counseling in itself.
< Defenders of Italian Engineering can feel free to insert pictures of burning BMW final drives here >
As if being a Guzzi nut wasn’t nutty enough he also races Guzzi powered sidecars and does so quite successfully with a monkey named Hamster.
There are supposed to be some hack racing Swedes and a New Zelander coming by tomorrow with a barbecue planned for the evening so depending on when the bike gets back together I may be hanging out for another day. Achim also said he would take me for a ride in his racing hack on the local roads which is an opportunity to good to pass up.
At one point in the day I went for a bit of walk around the countryside and so I took a lot of pictures of German wheat fields which I’m sure you’ll find engrossing.
