In a car once again.

Day 17 - Edminston to Halifax - June 27, 2009

I woke up just as Woot was circling the trailer around. I'll call it good timing but for all I know he was calling my name for 20 minutes. :) We grabbed some breakfast at the Tim Horton's that was so conviently located in the same parking lot where I camped then took a required picture of my bike on a trailer. Having talked to Woot the night before and hearing about the weather there was a part of me that was glad that I was making this leg of the trip in a car. All the way through New Brunswick it was raining hard.

We stopped for lunch at an Irving Big Stop. Apparently these are the only truck stops around these parts but they're better than most I've been to. They had a proper restaurant and everything where the food wasn’t bad. I felt bad for the baseball team that was doing a barbeque fundraiser out in the rain…

We made it in to Woot’s place with daylight left and cracked into the bike straight away. From the work that I had done last night I was hoping the problem was a simple fix involving the California emissions system. We got the battery charged back up again and tried to start the bike. No go. The next trouble shooting idea was to check the valve clearance. If that was alright then it was a mystery problem. We got the bike into the shed so we could have more light and reduce the likelihood of losing parts. On the way to the shed I lost a screw from the fairing. Doh!

Lifting off the valve cover I heard an ominous clanking sound that was the cam chain dropping from its perch. On top of that, there were no rocker arms where they should be. All the arms were in pieces in the oil valleys in the head. So for whatever reason the cam chain and all eight rocker arms broke. The only potential cause that I can think of is a worn/faulty cam chain tensioner, a $30 part.

We called it a night there and I crashed hard on a very comfortable bed. That was a 32 hour day for Woot.

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