Who needs breakdown cover?

Oli and I made the Turkish border after a good motorway blast on Sunday and after an hour of formalities were eventually in Turkey. We decided to push on south to Galipoli from where he could head straight home and I could backtrack to Istanbul making it our longest riding day of 550km.

Turkey at last

In the morning we split off after visiting one of the memorials. After 30km my bike decided that it wasn't happy and promptly lost power and died. I pushed it back to some shade and set to work. I knew that It was the intake valves which were probably slack again and found that one of the valve nuts had worked loose and disapeared into the rocker head. Bugger. I tightened up the other valve and loctited them in place. All i needed was enough power to make the 300km to Istanbul.

Roadside maintenance

Managed to ride without problem mainly sticking to motorways. I encountered some dodgy looking Turkish chav at an automatic toll road ticket dispenser who demanded 20 Lira to Istanbul. I told him to bugger off and got a ticket. I thought It was a pretty good scam but the carrier bag in one hand gave it away.

Istanbul.

After some hectic riding through Istanbul I arrived between the two mosques at Sultanahmet where George met me where I got a couple of photos before being moved on by the police. George and I rode on to the Orient Hostel after a quick shortcut through the pedestrianised square between the mosques. Rules of the road here include making ample use of the horn together with finding a gap, and making it big enough to get through. Kicking helps. Being on offroad bikes means that we have a trick up our sleeves whereby we can avoid traffic jams by blasting along the pavement and jumping off the kerb which can be a good foot and a half high.

Yesterday we tried to find a garage location I had in my GPS with no look so I spent a good few hours sorting out the bike. Things on my todo list include:

Brake Service - done
Oil & Filter Change - Going to a Turkish BMW R1200 riders garage today for some free work space - beats taking the bike apart on an Istanbul backstreet.
Spark Plug Clean - done
Valve Check - done (found the stray nut in the engine but dropped it again so am hoping it bounces its way back to where I can grab it so only running on one intake valve - small loss of power)
Sort out chain oiler - done
Weld Sidestand after it broke in Greece - I have now figured out how to jump on and off the fully loaded bike without dropping it.
New screen after my toll booth barrier encounter - the stupid thing came down just after I had paid and was going through.

Had an evening wander around the European side of Istanbul. Am hoping to cross the Bosphorous on the bike to the Asian side - a symbolic event.Am spending 2 more nights in Istanbul and will hopefully be able to sort my Iranian Visa.