Missions and the Art of Carburator Maintenance

There’s a dark side to the saying, “neccesity is the mother of invention.” Here in Tanzania, and elsewhere in Africa as well, you can get anything repaired… but most often, not quite right. Sometimes it’s the skill of the do-er. Sometimes it’s the tools available. Sometimes it’s a difference in the definition of “done”.

But there’s endless creativity, and in my experience vehicles are one of the prime museums of creative solutions. One of the difficulties of life in Africa is that it’s very difficult to keep things maintained properly. Parts are hard to find and often fakes even when they are found. The flip side is that people are infinitely willing to improvise. Take for instance, a carburator. There’s a thingy you can buy (and I do mean You) that is used every time you open a carburator in the west. It’s a little thingy that seals the two halves of the carb together, keeping the fuel in and the dust out. Nice little kit. Yeah. We don’t have ’em here. We do, however, have dirty fuel and lots of dust. The combination means that when your bike starts stuttering, or losing power at high revs, or just stops running when you’re five km downhill from home (that happened to Jacob, not me) – it’s probably the carburator. So you open the carb, and you clean the nozzle, and you pressure wash the pipes. Then you want to put it together again. You reach for the little thingy (someone help with the name of that thingimabobber), and you don’t have one. So, now you have two options!

A) Silicone

B) Shoe Goo

Each of these has a strength and a weakness. Silicone seals well, keeping fuel in and dust out, but it breaks down and guarantees that your carb nozzles will soon be covered in… silicone. Shoe goo doesn’t coat your nozzles, but it also has a really hard time keeping the fuel in and the dust out. I now have first hand experience with both.

A few weeks ago, my bike started just dying on me. I didn’t really think anything of it, just started it again and kept going – I was off road and not too worried about it anyway. But then Davin was riding my bike and it happened to him, and the bike wouldn’t start at all (better him than me). So he started looking for the problem. The next day he took the carb apart, checked the spark plug, and tested the electrical connections in the kill switch. The carb was clogged, so he cleaned it. The spark plug was totally gunked up, so he replaced it. The kill switch was flakey, so we pulled out the sandpaper, and cleaned the contacts and re-assembled it. It worked well enough for a week taking Jacob to school and back, but then I was riding in town and all of a sudden I lost power. I could accelerate up to a certain point (let’s call it slow horse), but then I was stuck… any more throttle and the bike would die.

Not fun.

The next day we had a visit from one of our ministry partners telling us that there was a bible school graduation up in Marangu (one of my favorite places to ride a bike, regardless of the event), and he asked if Jacob Mills and I would be the keynote speakers. That meant I HAD to get the bike fixed pronto, so I limped out to Per’s place at the pace of a tired horse and while his guys worked on the bike, I worked with him and his dad trying to pull a very stubborn piece of steel framing out of a fibreglass piece he was making for his windmill.

You guessed it. There was silicon covering one of the nozzles in the carb. And the spark plug wasn’t in good shape. And the kill switch was malfunctioning. So the carb was cleaned, and we cleaned the spark plug and put it back (didn’t have a replacement on hand – turns out it was okay), and we disconnected the kill switch. They used shoo goo to close the carb.

So I’m back to riding… but now I have to turn the fuel off when I stop or it just slowly drains onto the road (or whatever I’m on).

The trip to Marangu was awesome – riding up switchbacks up the side of Kilimanjaro is definitely my idea of a good time – the graduation was amazing and invigorating. I taught from Acts 8:26-31 and will post a summary of that message in a separate post. It was a wonderful day – celebration with 20 grads from 2 countries and the unveiling of a dream – those grads want to create 10 new schools across Kenya and Tanzania. I can support that dream, and I look forward to those graduations. But the harder issue is figuring out whether it’s silicone or shoe goo to use on that carb.