Friday the 13th. We awoke, somewhat bleary eyed the next morning to an
excellent breakfast. We had warned him that we didn't eat as much breakfast
as Romanians seemed to, but it did us little good. After breakfast the
others dithered a bit, and I went for a bit of a lie down. They eventually
woke me up and we left, with me feeling remarkably improved. Again, the
bill was entirely unreasonable in its cheapness.
For a bit of variety we let Ian lead, but when, at the second junction,
he spent ages looking at a roadsign, then at the map, and at the roadsign
again, when there was an enormous yellow sign saying "SZEGED!!!!!" Jeremy
lost patience and set off in front. To be fair to Ian, no other signs had
been yellow in Romania. It was raining by now, quite heavily. I haven't
really mentioned rain much in this account, but it rained almost every
day, some days _really_ hard. Not what you expect in southern Europe in
August.
We arrived at the Hungarian border and sat around in the rain for a
while while some who had stopped to buy roadside tea towels as souvenirs
caught up, then somewhat longer when a phone call told us that Jim's Sprint
had overheated. The fan had been staying on for a long time for days, but
we had assumed they were all like that. Jim eventally limped in and
we went through customs, only to stop again within a mile at the other
side as the Triumph overheated once more. At the side of a major road,
in the rain, with muddy verges, seemed like a sub-optimal place to look
for the problem, so Jeremy went of scouting and came back shortly with
news that there was a garage round the corner. With a roof over the pumps.
We parked up at the garage (buying some token petrol) and proceeded to
investigate.
Checking the thermostat seemed like a good start, so Crispin boiled
some water as we dismantled the bike. When we eventually found the thermostat
it began to look like it wasn't the problem, as its removal was not accompanied
by the expected gush of coolant. It worked perfectly in the boiling water
too. We reassembled the cooling system, topped up the coolant and then
had a good look around the bike to see where it was leaking out. It wasn't
hard to see, the radiator was cracked and a number of pinhole leaks were
squirting water backwards towards the engine. We had some epoxy putty,
and found a product which looked like Radweld in the garage shop. Well,
it was a small plastic bottle with a small picture of a radiator in the
corner of the label. Jim rang his dealer to make sure there was no warranty
problem with the use of Radweld, and he and others set about stripping
the finning from the offending radiator tube before applying the epoxy.
The epoxy proved to be, at best, a partial success, as we seemed to have
missed a number of holes, and some water oozed out round the patch. Fortunately
these quickly subsided as the Radweld (or whatever it really was) took
effect.
Jim contacted one of his international web of contacts and arranged
for a new radiator to be fitted in Damstadt in Germany, as he was leery
of the idea of doing the Nurburgring with a dodgy rad. I was grateful that
the FJ is air cooled, though for the remainder of the day, riding along
major Hungarian roads, it was as water cooled as any as the rain continued
to fall.
The roads had deep grooves in the tarmac formed by lorries, and these
were full of water making for 'interesting' riding conditions. We arrived
in Budapest and tried to find a hotel, but had unfortunately miscalculated,
everywhere was full as it was Formula 1 Grand Prix weekend at the Hungaroring,
just outside town. We eventually (after much getting lost in Budapest and
asking in tourist information places) found a campsite. No thanks to the
traffic which was amongst the most frightening I have ever been in. We
found the campsite to be full to bursting too, but the chap in charge of
space allocation took pity on us and said that we could sleep in the seating
area outside the snack bar if we moved the tables and chairs, as long as
we put them back in the morning. It wasn't a spacious area, and we had
to tessellate the tents quite carefully.
I went for a wander up the hill and found that the campsite was actually
quite large, and had a bar and restaurant bit. Sadly this had stopped serving
food. I went back to the others with this news, and some of us went to
the Bar, whilst Jim, most graciously, offered to go in to town and find
food. McDonalds it was, which wasn't very ethnic, but it was quick, easy
and we had had a long day. The bar kicked us out (closing surprisingly
early) and after negotiating some takeouts of remarkably foul dark lager
(which I don't think got drunk at all) we repaired to our campsite and
ate the McD nosh. I suspect that Jim had misunderstood our instructions
to buy 'lots of food', for whilst there was a sufficiency I was rather
hoping for a surfeit. We all got lots of change though, apparently the
McDonalds Index of currencies, like the Fanta Index, differs markedly from
the official exchange rate. I tried to stay up and drink the strange dark
brew, but it's dubious pleasures soon paled in comparison to bed.
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