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Talk about adventures!
The stator on my trusty Honda VFR800 motorcycle (part of the battery charging circuit) decided to completely burn out on the way to Adelaide, with the result that the internal battery was not being charged. The stator was generating just-just enough current to keep the engine spark going (at high revs!)… but not enough even to light up the speedo!
I managed to get as far as Terowie, having had a few jump-starts along the way when I was forced to stop (such as for quarantine inspection). In Terowie, however, the petrol station had no jumper leads, and I was afraid I’d just run into more problems the closer I reached Adelaide. Thankfully, the mechanic in Terowie helped me out by giving me a second-hand car battery and hot-wiring it into my bike, as seen in these photos. And that is how I arrived into Adelaide!
Fixing the bike over the Christmas/New Year holidays proved to be… interesting. No genuine Honda replacement parts were to be found anywhere in Australia (they would have had to be flown in from Japan, with at least a two-to-three week lead time). And the people who could rewind the coil were away on holidays! I did manage to get the bike fixed, eventually, after everyone had come back to work…
