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| Fili and his wife, our favorites! |
After spending an hour with a mechanic who had a huge heart
and spoke great English, just south of Laredo, we gave him a $20 bucks and
walked away with 30 beers and a new spark plug hose that had a hole burnt
through it. Yes, we paid him twenty bucks and somehow walked away with 30 beers
and work having been done on our car. He explained to us how the beer was for a
party that nobody showed up to and he no longer drank, so he kindly gave them
to us for free. Not a bad deal, if I don’t say so myself!
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| Hanging out at Fili's |
Somehow we were able to make it back to the U.S. in a mere
36hrs, due in large to the driving champion of the night Mr. James Teeter, who
took the hard shift from 1-5:30am. After crossing back into the United States,
which was easier than getting into Mexico (go figure) we were off to Arizona to
meet up with some much beloved Grandparents . We were able to stop by Josh’s
Grandparents house in Yuma, Arizona for some much needed showers, date
milkshakes, and a tour of the local college’s solar project. After some quality
time being shown around and recouping from the all night driving session, we
were off again with the next destination, Elliott’s Grandparents house in Coolidge,
Arizona.
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| Grandpa Courtney and Joan with the Beast |
After driving all night the night before, and most of the
morning without a hiccup in the cars performance we all thought that the
experience the day before might have been a fluke. It wasn’t until the heat of
the day, driving along 80mph interstate 10, that the car finally croaked. As we
sat, with cars buzzing by us at astounding speeds, we decided to pick up the
phone and give our brainiac mechanic, Jason, a call. After explaining the
different symptoms we were having he came up with 3 different possibilities.
Letting the car sit for 20ish minutes to cool down, we were
off again with only 150 miles to go until we reached Mr. and Mrs. Fick’s house.
With multiple delays of stopping and letting the car cool down, what would have
been an easy two hour drive, quickly turned into a four hour drive. As we rolled
up to the Grandparent’s house much later than expected, the power steering hose
abruptly start shooting fluid all over the street. Exhausted as we all were,
this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Thankfully a plate of hearty
Midwestern style dinner, of pork chops, bake potato and corn, were we beginning
to see any kind of positive end to the rough past few days. It was time for a
FULL night’s rest, with stuffed bellies to boot.
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| With Grandpa and Grandma Fick |
The whole next day was spent with changing the fuel filter,
(the cheap and easy idea Jason gave us) identifying, and changing the power
steering hose that had caused an oil slick in the Grandparent’s driveway. It
took the whole day futzing with the nut at the end of the hose, because it
happened to be the most rare and illusive size in the mechanic world, the 16mm.
We were definitely the talk of town in the little community of Ho-Ho Kam, as
everyone kept coming up to us seeing what we were doing. At one point we had
five old men gathered around watching as we worked, each pitching their 65-80
year old two cents. Out of all the gummers coming up and giving their opinion,
there was one in particular who knew actually something about cars and was
happy to lead us along as we wrench on the car. A constant purr of golf carts,
and scooters, with oxygen tanks rolling behind them was the majority of the
activity we saw during the day while working on the car. A big shout out to
Elliott’s Grandparents! They fed, housed us, and even did our laundry over a
couple of days which is tall task for anybody. After much persistence and help,
we were off again with two gallons of freshly squeezed orange and grapefruit
juice thanks to James and Grandpa Fick. A quick stop at a mechanic to get a
tail light fixed, which cost us nothing beside the fin off the top of our surf
board (the mechanic got a little excited and drove our car under a low lying over-hang
and ripped the fin off of one of our boards) and we were on the road.
As much as we had hoped, it turned out changing the fuel
filter did not fix our problem of the car stalling out when it would get hot.
Even though the car was not fully fixed, we were all determined to make it back
to Mexico as fast as possible.
As we were on the cusp of leaving Arizona we once again
found ourselves hanging out on a road just off the interstate. Just as we
opened up the hood to inspect the motor, the most unique individual appeared
from the bushes. He quickly walked over to us and introduced himself as Scott,
and exclaimed “Bitchin motor!” We explained our troubles to him and he welcomed
us up to his house to change what he thought was the issue, the thermostat. As
we rolled up to his house, the four of us couldn’t stop laughing about Scott’s
crazy eccentric ways and constant use of the word “bitchin”. We arrived at his
place to find what was once a nice little house in the high Arizona desert, but
through years of neglect and not cutting the buffalo grass (that he mentioned
several times he refused to cut) it looked more like a crumbling old cinder
block compound. Come to find out, he had been living there without electricity
for the last year, had no running water, and hadn’t eaten in over a week. It
would be an understatement to say Scott had fallen on some hard times. Even
with that, he opened up his doors to help us solve our car troubles. We fixed
the thermostat and made a massive pot of spicy sausage spaghetti, fed Scott and
listened to his imaginative stories. We
had originally planned to spend the night there but the stories Scott was
telling us kept getting more and more, wild. They included him taking a bullet to the jaw, someone being
shot to death on his property, his time in prison, and how he had met us before
along the same interstate a couple years ago, it was then that we decided it
had best to thank him for his service and hit the road.
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| Looking at our BITCHIN' motor |
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| Getting our hands dirty |
Though valiant in his effort to help us, fixing the
thermostat was not the solution to our problem. At this point we were all tired
and wanted to just get back to Mexico. So we babied the car, and through tons
of patience and late nights sleeping next to the interstate, we made it back
into Mexico in only two days. We crossed back in, in Laredo, Texas. We spent
several hours at the border checking and re-checking to make sure we had all of
the necessary paperwork to spend the next few weeks in Mexico. To say we had
learned our lesson about not getting the proper tourist paperwork would be an
understatement. Exhausting as the last few days had been, we were finally back
in the wonderful country of Mexico. In a stop and go fashion, we made it all
the way to Monterrey, Mexico before we decided we better look into the other
options that Jason had given us to try and fix.
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| Playing football on top of the dump |
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| Powerline party zone |
The lines literally electrified our car! Watch THIS!
After sleeping in a
dump and under some high voltage power lines that electrified our car (not the
best camp spot choice), we decided to head into Monterrey to look for an auto
store. While sitting in an Autozone, a
store that we had all come to be too familiar with, looking for new injectors did we stumble into
a mechanic. He told us to take our car over to his shop and he would help us.
$150 dollars and a whole day spent later, we had a new fuel pump. We were all
skeptical of his proposed solution as I had just installed a new fuel pump
before we had left Oregon. Alas, we thanked him for his service and moved on.
 |
| Massive Monterrey |
 |
| Huge mountains in Monterrey |
Just south of Monterrey, a massive city of 5 million
citizens, we were once again stalled out behind a little diner and a barn where
coffee was ground and roasted. Even though we were once again stuck in an
unusual spot, the beauty there was absolutely stunning. There was limestone faced mountains jetting
straight up to several thousand feet, dense green grass and a wide array of
colors and smells coming from the vast amount of plants in bloom. The gentleman
that worked at the coffee roasting barn knew had a friend that was a mechanic
in town that we could take our car to and see if we couldn’t get a new ignition
coil. $10 bucks later we had a new ignition coil off of a car that was sitting
by the mechanics shop and away we went.
Cruising down the highway 40ish miles south of Monterrey,
the jerking and loss of power were once again upon us. Quickly pulling off the
road, Brian and I played hot potato with all of the injectors to see if one was
faulty. Basically when the car is acting up, by pulling out the injectors one
at a time and replacing them so only one is out, if the car sounds better then
you know which is the faulty injector. Even though we came to the conclusion that
all of the injectors were fine, we still wanted to use a voltimeter to test the
ohms of each of the injectors just to be sure. For this task we headed to our
trusty auto parts store, AutoZone.
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| AUTOZONE! |
At AutoZone in Linares we met the best store manager any of
us had ever met. With slicked back hair and a bigger build, Pedro was
just the man for our problems. We told him our car symptoms and what we had
suspected the issues could be. He believed we were on target and began to draw
us a diagram. We went down the different levels of the diagram until we came
upon a question mark with the distributor. Out to the car we went and a began
tearing into the distributor to locate the ignition module. As we were working
away in the parking lot of AutoZone, we began to realize we didn’t quite have
the tools for the job. Good thing we were in Mexico with a great guy like Pedro
looking out for us. He quickly assured us that we could take pretty much any
tool we needed off the shelf and use it, and when we were finished with it to
just “return” it. With sweat pouring out of us, lots of cussing, a couple of
nicks in our hands we finally got the ignition module and coil out of the
distributor. The ignition module checked out good, but the coil was corroded
and needed replacing. We did good in taking the distributor and such apart, but
it took knowledge beyond any of ours to put it back together and get the cars
timing back. This is important as the distributor sends the spark for all of
the spark plugs and with the timing off it can cause the gearing to begin to
erode. Once again Pedro had our back and got on the phone with one of his
friends, Mario, to come and finish the job for us.
 |
| Hmm, past our expertise |
Mario spent several hours trying to pry out a brittle old
pin that had froze into the main drive shaft coming down from the distributor. As
Mario beat the living shit out of the shaft with every kind of hammer he could
find, multiple times did both James and I look at each other and smile, both
joking that we hoped our car would ever start again. Once out, he quickly
assembled it back into place and aligned the timing for us. With cheers from
us, friends and his father we negotiated a price and called it a day. The real
saint of the day though, had been Pedro. Our last dilemma was where in the
world were we going stay seeing how it was 7:30 at night. Our concern was
erased when Pedro said we could sleep behind AutoZone and that not only would
it be quiet but also SAFE. With the sudden relief, out came the pigskin and we
were having ourselves a great game of catch in the massive parking lot, singing
Pedro praise. We would soon be traveling
thousands of miles without another car issue…
With all of the struggle and hardship we faced in dealing
with forgotten tourist papers and a multitude of car issues, it all made us
stronger people and helped us came across individuals with massive hearts that
we are all very thankful for
Best,
Josh Courtney
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