Well, this last weekend started out rough. Friday I had a fuel spill on the side of my house. So much gas on the concrete it reflected. Not safe, and not fun to clean up. Then I had to figure out what to do with 15-20 gallons of bad gas. The dump will take it with an appointment, but you can only drop off 5 gallons at a time. What to do? Craigslist to the rescue! Within five minutes of posting ‘Free Old gas’ I had 8 calls about it. I wouldn’t run the gas in my car or my bikes but it runs great in the lawn equipment. That put me behind schedule loading up for Mexico. I should have seen it as a sign. We got down to Puerto Nuevo around 9 PM but had some excellent food. Crashed out at Bill’s place and got up the next morning early. We left Puerto Nuevo and went south to Santo Tomas. Nice little town renowned for its wineries. There’s a campground there that charges $10 per day to park your vehicle. Not a bad deal, they have showers and a really nice swimming pool.
The ride started out with my Husky not wanting to start. Tried to crank with with the electric start, battery finally got low so then I started kicking. It ran ok but as we got further it started running rougher. Stuttering at low speed and backfiring at high revs. It would blow black smoke like a diesel on the top end. This erratic engine problem made it pretty difficult to navigate rough terran as the bike would wheelie then dive in the whoops. About 45 miles into the ride we hit Erindira and filled up with gas. I checked my air filter, made sure I didn’t have anything loose, and it all looked fine. Started the bike up and it ran even worse. I let Bill know that I was gonna bail out to the road and down to San Quintin as it would be easier to retrieve me on the road than down the beach somewhere. I spent the next two hours limping it down Highway 1 to San Quintin, then another hour trying to find La Pinta. Once I got to La Pinta I pulled the bike apart to see if I could get into the carbs. No luck. I was missing a 3mm allen wrench and a 17mm allen wrench. So, I took a nap in the grass for about 4 hours until the chase truck arrived. When the chase truck arrived I started pulling my carbs apart and they were a bit gunky, and one of the jets was nearly plugged. I figured “AHA! This has got to be it!” I put it all back together, no dice. The bike started once, blew black smoke all over the place and died. Bill finally said “You’re missing Margerita Ville! Its done, have a drink!” Had a few drinks, got a shower, and had a decent dinner.
Next morning we got rolling, I helped Jim change a tire on the trailer. I learned a new trick! If you need to set the bead on a tubeless tire. Get some flamable liquid like carb cleaner, spray it inside, and little on the outside. Light it, kick the tire, and BOOM! The tire pops out and sets on the bead. I’ll post a video later. We had to use this trick two more times on the way back as the trailer ate tires. My bike got loaded into the trailer and I rode one of their bikes up the road with their eldest son. Their oldest could really ride. Most of the ride back was on the road. Not too fun on a YZ400. Seemed like I was always flogging it, and I hit the rev limiter a few times which freaked me out cause its pretty rare to do that on my Husky.
We got up to Santo Tomas around noon. I took a nap in the back of my truck for a few hours until the first group showed up. Hung out with them until around 5 or so, when Rob showed up Solo. Guess he lost his group! DOH! About 5 minutes later everyone else showed up. I guess Tuesday I’ll take the Husky down to GP and tell them “Make it mo betta” and hope it doesn’t cost too much. If its more than 1k, I’ll just part the bike out and get a new one next season.

I’ll post a video for the bead sealing technique.