It’s long been our belief that two riders traveling together benefit enormously from using two identical bikes. Nominally, our bikes are both Yamaha WR250R. Not too long before starting the trip one of the bikes had an engine issue that we chose to resolve by upgrading it to the big bore kit with a 280 cc cylinder. We even went so far as to have it dynoed for peak performance. The throttle was so smooth, it seemed too good to be true. Well, after about 10k miles we had to admit that peak performance is not compatible with long term reliability, the engine was running hot and consuming oil, something that a Yamaha WR250R should absolutely not be doing under any circumstances.
We’ve been using these bikes for the past 8 years, and when the fresh stock cylinder and piston came in the mail to Anchorage, it wouldn’t be the first nor the second time we had taken this engine apart and put it back together.
There was one important detail to work out – where would we do all this work? After some searching, a very normal sounding person named Mike agreed to host us. He lived in one of the suburbs of Anchorage, and upon closer examination turned out to be a little on the crazy side. Take your KLR across the jungle of the Darien Gap kind of crazy. He lamented how the documentary that was made about it, Where the Road Ends, didn’t quite do the experience justice. I was just stoked that we accidentally ended up in the house of an adventurer of a whole other caliber and a bona fide movie star (we’ve actually watched that documentary a few months prior).
Many fun things happened during the following 3 days. We did successfully take that engine apart and put it back together. It was not an entirely smooth sailing, because we wanted to clean up the valve seats and cylinder head, which we were not replacing, and opening that up required special tools. Alex went on a quest to find a shop that had the tools, and after being bounced between one and another, he found one with the valve opening tool laying ready on the table. Except the mechanic said no, why use the fancy valve opening tool when the hammer was a thing that existed and it was clearly better at any task you throw at it. Alex’s powers of persuasion were strong, but the guy insisted on the hammer. After the first blow nothing happened, he tried again and the tiny metal keepers that hold the valves in place flew out and rolled into the depth of the cluttered workshop. It took 40 minutes of searching and a lot of eye rolling from the mechanic’s business partner to locate those tiny bits, each maybe 5mm in size. Was that all? No, the guy was not done helping. He also volunteered to clean the most dirty valve with his sandblasting machine. The little glass beads were completely safe to use on the titanium intake valve, he assured. Alex protested, but not hard enough. This will be a story for another day. We cleaned up the rest of the things carefully with a plastic spudgy tool, and once everything was back together, it fired up promptly, and did pretty well on a test ride to a nearby mountain lookout.
Another fun thing was a Brazilian rider, Gilberto, coming along for some TLC for his bike, and we all paused to admire just how thoroughly he used up his sprockets – it was equal parts fear and admiration.
Also, I killed a mosquito by smashing it with a mallet. The highlight of the day. Things that moved but shouldn’t, were welded together, and travel stories were shared. When the sun was no longer out, we drank tea and discussed classical Russian cinema and the enduring appeal of Mongolia. Ambitious plans were made.
A pair of 250cc bikes were ready to set out into the wild again.
