CJ Mexico trip (long)

Been away from this news group for a while, as the only access to this group I have now is via the web (switched from Mindspring to Charter). Guess I'll be using web access from now on.

I spent a couple of weeks driving around Mexico in my '82 Scrambler. This included a three day stint of crossing the Sierra mountains between Culiacan, Sinaloa and Hidalgo Del Parral, Chihuahua using trails that are on no map I could find. I thought there might be some interest in this group of the portion of the trip.

The Scrambler has stock Goodyear Wrangler Radials, no lift (factory springs still), a Warn winch, the Mopar MPFI kit, a T-5 transmission, and a 3.73 rear end. I brought along a basic toolkit (wrenches, sockets, etc...), some extra water, some snacks, extra coolant/fuel/oil/grease, octane boost, a Garmin 60CSx GPS receiver with the Bicimaps of Mexico, and some rusty Spanish. Some of the referenced towns can be found on maps of Mexico. Others don't seem to be mentioned anywhere or by anyone but the locals.

Day 1 I leave Culican with an intent to reach Copper Canyon in two days. After losing an hour due to there being two route 24s within about 20 miles of each other, I leave the paved road just northeast of Badiraguato. At this point, I drop from doing 60 MPH to about 20 MPH. I encounter the occassional car going the opposite direction, mostly pickups but also one old Volkswagon Beetle. I'm still mostly able to stay in 2nd gear, but the going is definitely not smooth. I'm keeping a close watch on my fuel gauge, judging my turnaround point based on the last seen Pemex station.

At one point I cross a modern looking bridge, surrounded on both sides by a dirt road.

A Mexican Army HumVee full of guys with M-16s passes me, which I subsequently pass when they stop for a toilet break. They then pass me again, the HumVee's brakes making a squealing noise that I first feared came from the Scrambler.

I stop in Santiago de los Caballeros to top off the tank and check the oil. No premium fuel there, so I add some of the octane boost I brought along. Oil's doing well, so I head off toward Tameapa. Along the way, I confirm with the locals I'm going the right direction. At one point in La Pitahayita, I can't tell which way to go to reach San Jose del Llano. The local says I went the wrong way and need to backtrack. Given my poor Spanish, I think I went back too far. Or maybe not. Anyway, I'm now on this trail where second gear is out of the question. The road (I use this term loosely here) was washed out and all the rocks that were either dug up by the bulldozer that made the road or that fell on the road from the last rockslide are embedded in the road. At this point the ride is officially "bumpy". It is also nowhere to be found on the GPS maps.

I smell antifreeze coming from the Jeep, so stop and open the hood. All the bumping is splashing antifreeze out of the overflow. Another wonderful design.

I cross and drive up several wide, shallow streams following the road, none deeper than than five or six inches. And as a confirmation I'm going the right way, I get stuck behind a bus. It's going slower than me, but not by a whole lot. The worst part is sucking down the diesel fumes.

I arrive at San Jose del Llano at about 4:00 Central, with about 2 1/2 hours of sunlight left. After talking with the locals, there's no way I'm going to reach Copper Canyon by tomorrow (my original goal). This is due to both the roads being bad (my plan needed an average of 20 MPH or so) and crooked. They also told me the next town with a hotel was

The Padre spoke English, so we talked that evening and he drew me up a map with the help of some of the locals. My plans to hit Copper Canyon crushed, I planned instead to cross the Sierra mountians to the next town with a hotel. In this case, Dolores, Chihuahua. Per the locals, there are two routes to this town - one long and one short. The short way sounded better, until he brought up two points. First, there were a lot of turn-offs, and I'd have to make sure I followed the right ones. But with the GPS receiver, he said that shouldn't be a major problem - just keep heading toward Los Zapotes. The second point was that it rained for three days straight last month and they've been having to float their quadrunners across the river. Not bringing my cans of spinach to pull my Popeye act, I told them that I should probably take the longer route.

Day 2, I leave San Jose del Llano as soon as most of the mist has lifted. The first part of the journey through Copalitos, Tecuxiapa, and Sausito were pleasant. Once leaving Tecuxiapa, the trails are no longer on the GPS receiver. I even got back into second gear for a while. My tailpipe falls off around Copalitos, but my muffler and catalytic converter are still both fine. Lots of room in the back for it, so I figure no harm done - just a little louder. I hit Potrerillos and most of the road through the town is via the stream that runs through the middle of town. Rocks painted white guide you along the road to the other side of town.

At this point the road changes. To say it is bumpy is to miss a perfectly good opportunity to use the phrase "bone-jarring". First gear high is out of the question. 2-LO gets used first, shortly followed by 1-LO. This is no longer a road but a trail suited for quadrunners at best. The trail is steep and lined with unfriendly rocks. The hardtop lets out squeals that make me wonder if it's going to crack in half.

I pull into Carricitos about 11:30 AM or so, making OK time. This is right on the state border. At this point, I accidentally start going up some guys driveway. There's no turnaround, so I start a three-point turn. In the middle of this, the clutch pedal goes to the floor and does not return. Crap. I shut off the engine, and the owner of the house sends for the local mechanic and invites me in for breakfast. The eggs and milk were definitely fresh from the animals.

The mechanic shows up with his "toolkit" - a bag smaller than a shaving kit, containing about eight tools. So I move the Scrambler to a shady spot and we crawl underneath. Fortunately, my worst fears were not realized - the problem was not with the clutch itself. Instead, the clutch belcrank had popped off the pivot stud on the clutch housing side. He takes things apart and finds that the cheapo plastic bellcrank bushing (about two years old) has shattered. After fashioning a new bushing made of some tubing, and tieing a piece of innertube to the body side of the pivot stud to take up slack, I'm back in business. He wouldn't take any money, so I gave him a one-ounce silver coin.

There's no government presence in this area. I saw people with pistols tucked in belts and guys on quadrunners with M16s. Definitely drug growing country. But they were always friendly. Note that I didn't try to take pictures up there of people. And I always stuck to the trails (which are very obvious) and obvious habitations.

The trails through El Frijolar and El Saucito De Araujo are not quite as brutal, and I'm able to stay in 2-LO most of the time, with only the occassional drop back to 1-LO. At one point I hit a dead-end, and it turns out I needed to open a gate to get from El Frijolar to El Saucito De Araujo. The locals were more than happy to help me out.

At last I see the bridge in El Cajoncito, another modern looking bridge with dirt roads on each side. This is the last town before Dolores. The Padre in San Jose del Llano says these bridges save the locals 10 hours or so, versus cutting down through a nasty valley. As I'm heading down the hill toward the bridge, my engine vapor locks. Dang. I figure my dropped tailpipe is coming back to haunt me - the exhaust has just been aimed mostly at the gas tank. This, tied with the very low speed, is probably heating up the fuel quite a bit. I remove the gas cap, and there's a lot of pressure inside.

After crossing the bridge and heading out of the valley, I see where there's been a rockslide across the trail. My concern wasn't that the Jeep couln't make it past the rocks - my concern was that rocks on the trail may not be stable enough to hold the Jeep, and may slide me off the trail and over the cliff. Here's where my brain is worn and I do not make the proper decision. At a minimum, I should have put the winch cable around a tree. Instead, I get a running start and angle it inward toward the mountain wall, figuring momentum will take me over. Fortunately, it does - I don't even significantly disturb the rockslide.

After that, the vapor lock gets worse. I can only go a couple hundred yards at a time, then have to let it sit for five to ten minutes. It's getting late in the day, and I'm questioning whether I'll make it to Dolores before nightfall. I may be tired, but even -I- am not stupid enough to drive at night on a trail like this. I hit the top of the mountain just as it vapor locks again, allowing me to coast down the mountain.

I start seeing pedestrians on the trail, and the run down the mountain plus the cooling temperatures help stop the vapor lock. At one point I ask a woman if I'm on the trail to Dolores, and she points me up this stream and says it's less than five minutes ahead. I follow the stream, and the tree cover over the stream gets heavier and heavier. At the point where I'm questioniong the woman's directions and it's dark enough where I need headlights, I see a cement road come out of the stream. I head into Dolores and get a room for the night.

There's an older woman in Dolores who speaks good English, and she tells me tales of other Americans who have come through. One included a tale of someone trying to bring a low-rider Suburban through there. They ended up having to flatbed it out of there.

Day 3 I re-attach the tailpipe. I leave Dolores afterward and head toward Guadalupe y Calvo. What I meant to say is that I meant to head off toward Guadalupe y Calvo, but instead headed in the wrong direction toward El Arenal. The locals corrected me after I hit an intersection where neither seemed to head toward Guadalupe y Calvo.

I'm making good time, even shifting into 3-LO for a while, and never having to shift back to 1-LO. At one point cows are blocking the road and am forced to wait as they mosey out of the way and I slip past them. Then the Jeep vapor locks again. So it wasn't just the tailpipe falling off. It's the cheapo Mexican gas. I check the pressure in the tank, and there is none. Odd. I smell raw fuel, and see gas leaking down the left side of the tank. All lines and the sending unit are less than three years old.

I get started again and pass a couple of logging trucks, a lumber mill, and a couple of lumber semis. I know I'm getting close to a paved road, and can finally see it off in the distance at Aserradero El Pinito. I see the pavement and shift out of LO and into 2 HI and head toward Guadalupe y Calvo.

At one point I stop and unlock the hubs and a clicking noise starts coming from the left front wheel. So I pull into a Pemex and jack the left front tire up into the air. There is a -lot- of play in the front tire, and I didn't bring the socket to tighten the spindle nuts. So I take it to the local shop, and I work with the guy to take the front hub apart, re-seat the inner seal, re-tighten (torque wrench - what's that?) the spindle nuts, break free one of the plate bolts that's been frozen since I bought the thing (took a blowtorch), and tighten the screw on the hub lock (the source of the clicking noise). Chared me

I spend an uneventful night in Guadalupe y Calvo and I leave in the morning on a paved road, with my Scrambler somewhat worse for wear:

- Patched together clutch belcrank

- Leaking gas tank

- Questionably torqued spindle nuts and possibly ruined bearings

- Transmission grinding when going between higher gears

- Occassional vapor lock, even at high speed

- Some valve rattle

The valve rattle and vapor lock stopped completely after about three tanks of US gas.

Overall, it was a good way to shake out any weak points in the Jeep while having a bit of adventure. I'd recommend it for anyone confident in their Jeep and in their ability to handle themselves well in any situation.

I'm going to replace the mechanical clutch with a hydraulic setup. As for the transmission, it still grinds a bit when shifting down from 4th to 3rd. It's done this before after an extended period of disuse. I just need to shift slowly. I'll try to find a better grade of line (or whatever failed) for the leaking fuel tank. The bearings will need to be re-packed before I go home to Ohio (from Texas) for Christmas.

I've got the GPS waypoints saved away if anyone is interested.

-- Michael White "To protect people from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools." -Herbert Spencer