Laguna Diablo to San Felipe
44.3 miles
TIRE DEFLATION
-(a quick side note to myself in 2013)
Hey Sean, remember to deflate your tires. Don’t just think about it or just let it cross
your mind but do it. 15psi.
At the start of stage 2 we broke two rules. The first is “never pass gas in Baja.” Pemex stations are far and few between and
sometimes they don’t have gas at all. Obviously,
second, deflate your tires. We would
learn these rules from Dan the sweeper about 37 miles into this 44.3 mile
stage.
Rhonda started at the wheel and before the battery died our
hero camera recorded about 5 seconds of it….enjoy
Laguna Diablo is a smaller lake that Laguna Salada but it has
the same amount of silt. It was two deep
troughs that the truck sort of sat it.
The Fj40s wheel base was much narrower than the modern race cars so it
was a bit challenging to keep it in the groove.
Twenty miles into the stage we left the lake bed and went
through an elaborately decorated cattle guard and the GPS went out. This wasn’t good. I wasn’t great at navigating with the GPS and
without it we would be lost. I grabbed
my multi meter and tested it – no power.
I rewired it to one of the flood lights and we were on our way. That’s when I noticed all our gauges were
out.
Luckily there was a Mag 7 pit within a quarter mile. We pulled in and told the guy what was
up. He popped the hood and said “there’s
your problem.” A wire had come loose
from the battery. He fixed it, gave us
some water and we were on our way.
Thanks Mag 7!
After that the course got sandy and we started getting
stuck. The first time we powered
ourselves out. The fj40 doesn’t have
lockers, so when it get’s stuck one front wheel spins and one back wheel spins
(next year lockers).
We went a bit further.
Avoiding whoop dee doos Rhonda got off course and wound up in a
wash. We really got stuck and we hadn’t
seen another car for miles.
Out of nowhere there was a handsome guy, his hot girlfriend
and their nice truck. They seemed to be
locals but were way too clean for the silty mess of Laguna Diablo. They agreed to help us but as we were getting
the tow line hooked up a military hummer arrived. They waved the cute couple off and pretty
easily pulled us out. We gave everyone t-shirts
and were on our way.
I had wound up behind the wheel and that’s when the fuel
issues kicked in. The truck started
lurching. The last time I’d filled up
was in Calexico but I had a 35 gallon tank (Two days later we’d learn it was
the fuel filter that didn’t like having about 10 gallons in the tank). We lurched on and about six miles from San
Felipe started hitting whoop dee doos.
That’s when we met team Brutus.
We’d both gone of course to find a smoother route and both
got stuck.
After trying to get our own
cars out I decided we should team up and help each other. Jason and Matt are good guys and we first
tackled their front hubs which weren’t locking.
Everyone was tired and a bit addled.
Then Dan the Sweeper showed up. Dan drives a stock 2 wheel drive Tacoma and sweeps the course for NORRA picking up all the straggles. Thank you Dan!
One of his first questions was “how much air do you have in
your tires?” My stomach dropped and I
immediately remember the error of my ways.
My dad had always harped on us about low tire pressure. Dan recommended 15psi (which is lower than I
would’ve gone) and we went with it. It
took what seemed like forever to let that much air out of the tires but once we
were done the car easily crawled out of it’s hole.
Then is was time to help Brutus.
We were ready to pull them out but Brutus wouldn’t start. They’d lost a transmission line (?) and coated their engine
with fluid. Eventually their distributor got cleaned out, we got 5 gallons of gas from Dan and we were all on our way
to San Felipe.
the day continues here
the day continues here
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