From My Notebooks In 1974: South Africa
5th April 2026 |
Leaving the hotel at Louis Trichardt I am hoping to get to Johannesburg, a good day’s ride away, but it’s not to be.
Thursday, February 21st
The unseen fate which has been working itself out inside my righthand cylinder since Alexandria, now manifests itself only 300 miles from Joburg where help is assured.
Just beyond Louis Trichardt the power suddenly falters, and an unmistakable sound of tinkling metal escapes the engine. The power picks up, but I stop to look. No idea what it is. Perhaps the chain has slipped over the sprockets. It’s very loose. Tighten the chain and drive on. Now power begins to fail rapidly until, after four miles, the bike simply stops, in first gear. There’s a strong smell of burning. Was it the clutch? It seems to have seized, because in neutral the bike won’t move.
[As I puzzle over the bike at the roadside, spectators start gathering round.]
Now I’m being really unimaginative, partly, I think, because of the supervision of two friendly Boers in the post office. I take the chain case off but everything is working just fine. Then it strikes me!! I forgot to readjust the rear brake. So, 3 hours later, I’m off again. But the noise in the engine is unmistakably unhealthy. Loud metallic hammering on every other stroke. Is it a push rod, a valve? I think of taking the top off right there. But the temptation to struggle on to Joburg is too great. At Pietersburg I stop again at a garage. Engine oil has vanished. I noticed it pouring out of the breather.
A big black garage proprietor says: “That’s a bad noise there, hey.”
Calls his foreman who identifies it straight away. “Sound’s like piston slap. The piston’s seized.”
“Can I go on with it?”
“As long as it’s not too far. You’ll use a lot of oil.”
It all adds up now, but I still don’t appreciate how serious the damage is because I don’t add the original breaking metal sound to the diagnosis. From Pietersburg to Naboumspruit is 34 miles. I stop to get oil but now the engine is too bad to start properly and I realise I must give up Joburg. It’s 4pm and too late to finish the job. I set up at the hotel and leave my stuff locked up in garage till morning.
Meet Keith Conway, a traveller in pharmaceuticals – small, neat man – could have been a grammar-school boy – bright enough (guess his age at 35). Came to South Africa [from England] ten years ago on contract. Stayed to form import business. Has house worth £34,000. Made up to 750 Rand [about the same in dollars] a month.
“I’d never have got there in England.”
Takes me to drive-in movie – “Jerusalem File” – Nicol Williamson stamping about making a fool of himself. Very low-grade experience. No sense of connection with the screen. Suburban anaemia. Convenience bleeds life grey.
A life of convenience, etc. Worth developing the idea.
Friday, February 22nd
Day spent replacing piston. It has shattered its skirt. Crankcase full of metal. Con-rod scarred. Sump filter in pieces – scavenge pipe seems off centre. Sleeve is ridged. Think of damage that might have been done in there. Now I’m grateful for that old re-conditioned piston. It ought to get me to Joburg. All goes well until I try to fit the gudgeon pin circlip. It drops neatly through the tappet hole into the crankcase. For the want of a circlip my Kingdom is lost. But the second flushing with oil brings it out miraculously through the sump. Next hang-up is refitting cylinder block. It won’t slide over the rings. At last I twig. Those rings from Cairo [I must have meant Alexandria] are oversize. Refit old rings and all’s well.
[There’s some confusion here. The cylinders must have been re-sleeved in Nairobi.]
Do it all up – without scavenge filter – and it starts and runs. Thank heavens I think to check on oil return. There’s nothing coming back. It’s 4pm again. Garage shuts at 6 for weekend. No petrol or oil in South Africa at weekends. Problem of getting into timing cover is too daunting. For one thing, I have to get auto-advance out – and I’ve tried and failed before.
Ring up Lucas and Tish Ord [Don and Tish Ord were friends of Tony Morgan in Johannesburg]. Lucas Managing Director is called Crane. Sounds like a thin version of Mike Pearson [in Nairobi]. They know all about me. Think I’ve missed my boat. Suggest I come in by train. Looks like a weekend wasted. I settle in at the ‘local pub.’.
This night I meet Mike Macmillan. Stout fellow with small, vicious-looking boy. The explanation comes quickly. His marriage is painful. He says he only maintains it for the kids. Has a daughter of seven he calls his doll. She likes his wife. The boy, aged 4, likes him, and he takes him (Ian) on his trips. Buys a bottle of wine at dinner.
Note: I want an auto-advance extraction tool, and a suitable drift for gudgeon pins.
Saturday, February 23rd
After a night’s rest my feeling about the bike changes, I decide to have a go. It proves much easier than I thought. With my “universal puller” I manage to get the auto-advance out. Timing cover comes off easily, and the scavenge pump has metal bits obstructing the ball vale – just as the lad at the Triumph factory said would happen. Put it together again and it works. (But I haven’t checked that the rocker feed pipe is clear. Will this be my nemesis?) Now my only problem is to get petrol – and oil if possible – before Monday.
[South Africa, at that time, was on a strict petrol rationing system during the week, and none at all on weekends. There was a universal 50 miles per hour speed limit.]
No company this evening. Restless, sleepless night, but not awful.
Sunday, February 24th
No breakfast till eight. Then boss’s son gives me petrol. Off I go, for a blissful twenty miles, then all hell lets loose. I stop to consider. Now the other pipe (from the new cylinder) is smoking, but there is awful rattling noise as well. Maybe just the piston again. So off with the pot again. Now I’m becoming quite adept. Takes me four hours including half an hour of sanding and scraping, but after all that the rattle continues. So it’s a bearing. I go gingerly into Nylstrom, six miles away, but Nick the Greek at the Park Café is very friendly and finds a fellow with a “bakkie” [Afrikaans for pick-up] to take me into Pretoria. – using my petrol.
First we visit his house – which he built himself, very much in the style and the finish that Bill [my stepfather] might achieve. He has also built up his own business as a butcher (after being a blacksmith) and suffered a terrible setback when his wife was crushed and near killed in another Datsun when wind blew it over on the highway. After three years she has recovered all but her left leg which is still bound up. She is most cheerful and content with her recovery, and both pleasantly mature people.
Pretoria makes a horrible impression. Mader’s Hotel on Kruger Street is like sleeping in a railway tunnel. No dinner or drinks after 8pm. I’m ten minutes too late and have to go out for fish and chips. But the lively waiter at the hotel has two beers for me, enough to get me dozy and soften the roughness.
Remember the shriveled couple. He in safari jacket and trousers. She in sleeveless blouse, skirt, black framed specs. He has a face mud-coloured by sun and alcohol, grey haired, stooping and slovenly. Beckons me over.
“She likes you,” he says, pointing at the woman. Then after a pause, “You can sleep with this woman tonight.”
I excuse myself. He wanders off. She says, “He makes my life a torment. He is still in love with his first wife. He’s my husband.”