Near death mechanical breakdown I tell you!!!

Finally, the work week complete, we were able to get out of Guerroro Negro and start an adventure that we had no clue even existed in Baja until recently. Seriously, there is a mountain with a peak over 10,000 feet. On that mountain is a National Park – Sierra de San Pedro Mártir National Park – where there are a few California Condors, camping under pine trees, and even snow!

But first we had to get there, which turned out not to be the easiest feat. First, we had to navigate the massively pot-hole’d stretch of road between Guerroro Negro and San Quintín. This roughly 200 mile stretch is what is now left of the “fuel gap” (where there were no fuel stations). Fuel was not an issue for us thanks to Big Blue’s massive 35 gallon tank, but the pot holes finally got us. Even though they were much less harsh than memory was telling me, the knockout punch came right at the end with a couple stealth pot holes. Big ones too, long after we passed all the others, and sitting in the shadows at the top of a rise so they could not be seen until the very last second. Too late to respond when traveling at 50 MPH in an old Dodge van, so we hit them hard. Not once, but thrice! We hadn’t noticed it until the another hour down the road, but Big Blue was crying a whole new sound from the left-front wheel area…

Too late in the day to do anything about it, we had camped that night not too far off the main highway but back on the ocean beaches. The dogs loved the wide open space after the week being chained up in a gravel lot, and Kerri was all too pleased to smell real ocean air. I took this time to crawl under the van to see if anything stood out… nothing did. So we ate dinner, had a few drinks while having a great night talking with each other about anything and everything but politics.

The following morning, after returning to the highway and pointing North, the sound returned… louder. Before leaving town I pulled over and began taking the left front wheel off to find the culprit, and even before I could loosen all the the lugs I was able to spot it; the upper ball joint on the left front was punched right out of it’s perch which allowed all the grease to ooze out and expose the joint to the sand and salty air. It was done, and it was done in by one of those final pot holes. Nothing else could have caused it, and we were extremely lucky to have not continued on as it would have eventually been a catastrophic failure. All right, I may have exaggerated the blog title a bit, but it could have been real bad if it weren’t for my trusty van…

A post shared by Kerri McHale🌲🌵🌊🇺🇸🇨🇦🇲🇽 (@asolojourner) on Mar 4, 2018 at 9:13am PST

Once again, Big Blue has proven to be very helpful in where he chooses to have these little breakdowns. Only a mile up the road was an American chain auto parts store. I walked in with my service manual opened to the page about ball joints, pointed to the part I needed, and the guy behind the counter handed me a box with the part I needed. An hour and a half later, and $60 lighter in the wallet (parts and tools needed for the job), Big Blue had a brand new ball joint installed and we were back on the road, heading for that National Park and some pine trees. I love this van!