Cheap products.

Monday, I slept through my alarm and Bob came to my door at 10:20 to see if I was okay. He thought maybe I was feeling sick but I explained I just didn’t wake up. He just kind of laughed. No big deal. I fixed a leak on the carburetor on the orange Mitsuba, took it for a test drive for not even a minute and the chain fell off. I took the rear wheel off and found A) the bolt/nut holding the rear wheel on wasn’t tight at all. In fact, it had about an inch of play where I could slide it back and forth. B) one of the wheel’s ball bearings was extremely loose and needed to be replaced. And C) The eye-hook that applies tension to the chain was stripped and not holding up at all. These extremely cheap bikes always have problems with them. It’s like as soon as you fix one thing, three other things go wrong. I don’t understand how a country with incompetent motorcycle engineers could control most of America’s debt but somehow it happened. I guess if you make large quantities of cheap products, your customers just have to keep on buying more cheap products when their first set of cheap products breaks. Did I mention this bike is not even a year and a half old? I asked Dayyibu if it was maybe under a warranty and he looked at me kind of puzzled. I explained what a warranty was and he kind of just laughed and shook his head. By the end of the day, I was so mad with Chinese made products. I don’t think I’ll ever buy a Chinese made motorcycle or car. What a headache.

Tuesday, Dayyibu and I went into town to get parts for the Mitsuba, some new spokes for Bob’s Jialing motorcycle and some lighting fixtures for Dayyibu’s house. We’re currently in the process of switching it over from the 12V solar power system to the 220V electricity coming into my house. The fixtures all need to be changed over to ones that can handle 220V. We had to go to about 5 motorcycle parts stores to find the parts we needed and we still couldn’t get the spokes for the Jialing. They’re not very common around here. Most motorcycles you see are either made by Mitsuba, Daylong or Carter. You occasionally see a Honda or Yamaha but it’s really up in the air as to whether it’s a legitimate Yamaha or Honda. (See my blog from a couple weeks ago explaining knock-off brands around here.) I switched over all the parts for the Mitsuba, got it back together and the rear seems to be working great. Dayyibu took it for a test drive and he said it did well. It was parked for about twenty minutes and then the stupid carburetor started leaking again! I couldn’t believe it.

I called it a day on the Mitsuba and started to take a look at the diesel powered air compressor. I read the owner’s manual on the compressor and engine before doing anything. I gave the engine a try and it started up on the 8th or so pull. Pretty good for not having run for over a year. It sounded pretty strong and compressed air really fast. It seemed like the tank would fill in just a couple minutes. My compressor at home takes about 5 minutes to fill. Admittedly, this is a 10hp Yanmar diesel powered compressor, whereas my electric compressor at home is I think rated at 4hp or so. It had a leak in the air pressure regulator so I took it apart to see what was wrong. A rubber gasket wasn’t sitting in its spot right, so I adjusted it, put it back together and there is just a little hole in a pipe.

Bob’s friend Abdu is going into Bafousam, the third largest city in Cameroon and can pick up some parts for us. Hopefully he’ll be able to find new spokes and a few gaskets for Bob’s Jialing motorcycle which has an oil leak. Also, hopefully he’ll be able to find new fittings for the air compressor, a hose, an air gun, and a tire inflator. That would really make the compressor very useful. He’ll be back in a few days I think, so we shall see.