I was on the autopista headed for Comitan near the Guatemalan border. I was just cruising and enjoying the scenery. The previous day I was headed for home and was abandoning this trip because I didn’t want to spend all my savings. Now I was headed for South America as soon as I could and was going to spend them anyway. I had been cruising for about half an hour when I saw a single white light on my side of the road. Slightly confused, I slowed down as I approached it. I then realised it was a motorbike facing me and there were several other bikes and people behind it. Something must have gone wrong. As it was other bikers I stopped beside them to see if I could help. That’s when I saw the problem. One of the bikes had a large pool of oil underneath it. It was a KTM Adventure, identical to mine. I’d never heard of a such a failure that dumps all the oil on the ground. What had happened? As I looked at the engine I soon saw the reason. The left hand crankcase cover was no longer attached to the rest of the bike. It was hanging a few inches away. There were no bolts left in any of the holes. They had all fallen out. Who ever put put the crankcase on cannot have tightened them at all. He was really lucky he was being followed so some one could warn him what was going on so he could stop before the engine seized. The guy’s bike who was behind him was coated in oil. It looked like some one had just used a watering can over the front of his bike. His visor was similarly coated. I’ll be checking a lot more bolts at my next service.
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