BajaXL Day 4 - Bahia De Concepcion to Las Cruces
Day the band split up
We needed to fully inspect the poor oil pan and see what else might have been bent, broken or missing. Time to break out the tools, sand ramps and make a few new friends. Nothing terribly exciting, but it wouldn’t be fair to hold up Chad, Trevor, Keith and Julianne. We all knew they would be getting distracted and losing time without me needing to spend more of it. We said good luck and they were on their way.
Other reason for calling it an easy day….lots of rocks… apparently it was the some of the roughest stretches of the trip. Not a great idea for wounded Miata’s.
A bit of details on the oil pan “repair”. I was going to try JB Weld or even RTV, but neither of them would setup fast enough before the mild pressure from oil created a bubble causing it to fail. I wish I had some super glue to quickly close the crack then cover with JB Weld, but not in my pack of stuff… In 2021 another competitor limped their way into town after meeting a rock on the same stretch of sand we hit. They drove into town with a pan made of Gorilla Flex tape, like the entire bottom was patches of shattered aluminum glued together with two layers of it. Insanity…. However on the morning of my investigation, that same individual walked over and handed me their roll of that tape and said clean it well and it will hold. Zero questions and I was doing exactly that. Only challenge for me was the location of crack on a seam made stopping the seep very hard. I ended up smearing dirt on it then slapping the patch over. Fired up the motor to slowly warm up and cure and we were good to go.
Hitting the Road
After resolving the oil leak we were ready to pack up and spend the day tagging along with Craig and Tate in their Orange Jeep. Time to make some miles! Overall the day was very uneventful. We stopped in Loretto for lunch, which is a very nice smallish town. Worthy of a visit, mostly because they have some attractions as well as an airport.
One of these is not like the other. Can you spot the one that doesn’t belong?
Chad and Keith
While I was using lava to get to camp, they were actually off-roading. They found doggos because of course they would. It is their goal each day and Baja delivers. Wish I was able to have joined, but my day was nice to recollect thoughts before more chaos.
I don’t know their stories, but they clearly found interesting places and were able to deliver toys to some remote kids. Being good stewards of Gambling.
Camp (Beach)
Hey look, Miata made it to another campsite!
Every evening we were usually late and also welcomed by everyone as the underdogs. I decided to drift around the beach for a bit until of course I got stuck and thus found our campsite. So much fun to play on the sand and I also need more experience to keep the drifts going through deep sand. Perhaps more power???
Until manana mi amigos!
