OLD BIKE, NEW TRICKS
Kiwi Ron Fellowes rode his 102-year-old FN over 9000 miles from Kathmandu to the FN factory in Belgium. Here’s a terrific excerpt from his book about the journey.
If you were planning to ride overland from Nepal to Europe, what bike would you ride? A 1200GS? KTM? Africa Twin? Ron Fellowes decided to use his 1910 FN, a veteran fourcylinder flat-tanker with no gearbox, though it did have pedals to assist on hills. Oh, and he was 68 when he set off. The following are extracts from his book about the ride...
Nepal
Before leaving Kathmandu, I needed to clarify the way to Pokhara. It was impossible to read maps on the iPhone, so I resorted to asking locals for directions. I figured I was on the right track when two people pointed me in the same direction.
Even with the luggage strapped firmly on, riding was difficult. Pedestrians and motorcycles darted in and out. I’d move a metre or two, then stop, move again, then stop... this didn’t sit well with the FN, and I hadn’t yet twigged the benefit of saving the clutch by turning off the engine and push-starting. I was about to learn the hard way.
Amid the mayhem – and with my nerves strung out – I felt the clutch slip. I pulled over to adjust it. That was when I discovered that the substitute fibre plates I was using were not up to the job. Wiping the sweat from my brow, I asked people gathering around if I could take the bike apart on the footpath. Everyone agreed, ‘Yes, yes, no problem.’ Of course, it was a problem for the owner of the shop in front of which I was doing my repairs. When he turned up, he told me to remove all the rubbish from his step and bugger off!
The parts were snatched and spread on newspaper on the dusty road, no longer in any semblance of order. Thankfully, Yogendra and Hari, two local mechanics who had helped me remove the motor, took the clutch plates away. They ground them on a piece of concrete until the steel was clear of fibre. The FN normally uses 15 steel clutch plates, and I had replaced six of these with fibre plates to create a softer clutch. I carried the original steel plates with me as spares, so all was not lost. I was back on the road within three hours. The two young men who had helped refused payment and waved me on my way...
India
The winding mountainous road to the Indian border town of Palpa was in good condition – well, it was good for this part of the world. Even with light traffic, it still took me nine hours to travel 100 miles. Over the worst sections, I pedalled and pushed up more than 20 hills. My head pounded in the thin mountain air, and my legs trembled with relief as we reached each summit. The FN valiantly took them all, bar one, in her stride. On that occasion, I paid a passer-by to help push the final 20m. It was money well spent.
With some of the world’s highest mountains as a backdrop, and a steely grey river snaking far below, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the stunning beauty around me. Pastel-coloured houses and neatly tended vegetable plots dotted the hillsides. As tempting as it was to take lots of photos, it was difficult to stop because there was rarely anywhere to park safely...
Each morning, I went through the same routine: stretch the inlet valve springs; check the tyre inflation; remove any grit and water accumulated in the carburettor bowl and jet. It was puzzling me that the contact points in the magneto were widening quickly yet reducing engine performance. This is the opposite of what normally happens.
And I had a funding problem. At first, I hadn’t realised it would be impossible to change foreign currency in small towns and villages. Therefore, I had to manage my ready cash so that, when it started to run low, I had to be within reach of a city – which meant I then had to struggle through seemingly endless traffic congestion to find a bank. In one city, just as I had negotiated my way around a moving truck, the engine stopped. Again! This time it was a broken magneto spring. It seemed that everything on the bike was going to need replacing at least once. Luckily, I’d foreseen this possibility and had brought along two spares fashioned from a hacksaw blade...
Before leaving Jodhpur I washed the panniers, cleaned my gear, stocked up on oil, and checked and tightened every nut and bolt. Devi Bhaan staff gave me a hearty send off as I began what turned out to be a monotonous ride through a dry desert landscape. I’d been told the road was sealed all the way, and I managed to cover 120 miles in good time. Then, just before Bikaner, the highway turned into a minefield of potholes. Just keeping the bike upright was a battle as I bashed and crashed my way over the lunar landscape. Then the pannier straps broke and the bike fell over. I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve fallen off the FN. This time, it was simply fatigue that saw me laying in the dirt and cursing the dreadful conditions. The mirror broke, the pedal was destroyed and
the pedal crank was bent. A constant rhythm told me all was well. If the sound changed, even slightly, I would adjust the throttle/air lever to avoid contamination in the carburettor jet. If the engine failed to respond, or hiccuped, I knew the inlet valve spring was collapsing.
I could gauge how much lubrication the engine was getting by the amount of oil flecks on my right boot. When I applied the back brake using the pedals, this put pressure on the brake pawl. Basically a ratchet for the pedalling device, the pawl soon wore out through constant braking, mainly as I negotiated my way through towns. I carried a spare pawl and, where necessary, had the old one welded. It was too scary to contemplate having to apply the brake in city traffic and finding it wasn’t working. Mostly, I used the decompressor to try to slow the engine.
The first time this happened I was cruising down a long hill. Alarmingly, I felt no resistance when I applied the brake. Every muscle tensed. Nothing was happening. Ahead, the traffic had stopped. But I was past the point of no return and, shaking my head in disbelief, found myself weaving along the nearside of the parked vehicles, all the while beeping the horn. Eventually, having managed to dodge everything, I brought the bike to a standstill. Heartbeat thrashing in my ears, I dragged it onto the footpath.
Once I got my breath back, it took 15 minutes to work out why the brake had failed. I tried turning the back brake, and discovered that the problem was the pawl. It was only a five-minute job to replace it...
Bone-weary, hungry and covered in mosquito bites, I was back on the road at dawn. I managed only a few kilometres before the remaining few unbroken spokes on the right hand side of the rear wheel collapsed. Things looked grim, until I tracked down a bicycle repairer who offered to fix them. I wasn’t sure that he could, but with no alternative, I agreed he should try. I removed the wheel, stripped it and handed over a bundle of new, blank spokes that needed shortening and rethreading.
To my horror, the repairer cut off the bent ends that go through the hub! Agape, I could only watch as he shortened the spokes and bent new hooks, successfully retaining the original threading on the other end. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief. The man was a genius!
Pakistan
Pakistan, like India, is full of colourful characters. One wizened old man in a red and green tunic sported, on the front of his bicycle, matching coloured flags and a large photo of the late Benazir Bhutto. Well before sunrise, when I broke camp to head for Sukkur, he was also setting out for the day, ready to extol Bhutto’s virtues to all and sundry. Wrecks litter the roads through Pakistan, and I saw many vehicles in which it was obvious the occupants had not survived. The further I travelled, the less I thought of Pakistani driving skills.
Motoring on across seemingly endless flat wasteland, here and there I passed clusters of drab mud houses. Vegetation was sparse, only tussock grass waving in the relentless sun. After again seeking shelter in a truck hotel, I returned from photographing an old stone bridge to be greeted by university students who invited me to share their dinner of vegetable pancakes and yoghurt in their rather cramped campus quarters across the road. I enjoyed the conversation, which made me realise that at times my travels, as well as gruelling, were proving to be very lonely...