"You want us to open up the engine?" he said bewildered.
"Ah... .yes... please" I said, a little perplexed, wondering how I could have been any more explicit. "But what if we find something wrong?" he shot back.
"What do you mean?" I said - a little exasperated. "My clutch has been re-built with scrap metal by a little Chinese man who lives in a closet and works on the pavement under a beach umbrella. I've ridden thousands of kilometres across deserts, along rutted mountain tracks, through rivers and been bogged knee deep in sand dunes. My bike needs to be examined and repaired properly! That's why I came here!" - I was ranting now.
The office manager listened politely and with great restraint, sensing my growing frustration, and said calmly, "Well, you know, the clutch, it is a complex piece of the motorcycle."
"You're telling me... I stuck a wrench in there two months ago and almost killed myself!"
"You know, it is illegal to ride bikes larger than 250cc in Iran; we have never actually serviced a bike like this before..." he confessed. The Mexicans looked away.
"But I saw a bike like mine in your showroom!"
"Shipped here in error... it's only on display because we have nowhere else to put it and can't afford to return it. We don't know how it works."
"No problem, just do your best," I said cheerfully.
The Road Gets Better From Here Adrian Scott p363