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
4-5 hours away.  So I filled the tank (the guy filled it with the lower
octane before I noticed) and spent the night there.

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
120 Pesos (about $12).

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