Friday 28th May
Suprisingly after the amount I had to drink the previous night, I didn't have a hang-over, and the people who know me will know that is something of a miracle!
I checked on the bolt and it looked secure - so I started fastening the down-pipes back on. Unfortunately as I tightened the nut onto the bolt, it just pulled the e-metal out of the hole. We were back to square one.
Harry, Daz and I had a lengthy discussion about what to do. I had contacted Adrian, who I work with, who had some industrial strength e-metal that he reckoned would do it and I asked him to post it to me. The problem was the post to Greece can take anything from 3 days to 3 weeks.
We discussed many different options - including using chewing gum to secure the bolt believe it or not! Eventually Harry had the excellent idea of trying an anchor bolt. This is basically a bolt in a sleeve and as you tighten a nut on the bolt, the sleeve expands, gripping the hole the bolt is in.
Amazingly the local hardware shop had the ideal anchor bolts for our needs - with a little bit of modification. We had to drill the head a little to clear the hole and make it a bit deeper - this was a very worrying time for me! Eventually we managed to get a bolt to hold firmly in the hole.
We tightened the exhaust onto the bike and it really did seem to be holding very well. I started it up and there was very little if any blowing coming from the exhaust!
I took it for a test ride to the other side of the island and everything seemed hunky-dory. As there was very little else I could do to check the bike and also as the roads on Kos were just the same as mainland Greece - i.e. very slippery and full of people who can't drive - I decided to simply chill out for the rest of our stay on Kos and avoid riding the bike where possible.
