Trip to Baja Sur and Norte , Agau Verde, helped fix a tire

Route from home to Baja (Norte & Sur)

San Jose to Nippomo
Nippomo to San Diego
San Diego to Tecate
Tecate to Puertecitos
Puertecitos to San Ignacio
San Ignacio to San Juanico and then Mission La Purrisima
Mission La Purisima to Ciudad insurgentes and on to Agua Verde
Agua Verde to Loreto(lunch/shopping) and on to Mulege
Mulege to Vizcaino(broken brake assembly)
Vizcaino to puertecitos
Puertecitos to San Felipe
San Felipe to Mexicali and on to San Diego
San Diego to Home today.

About 2700 miles total.
And some Mezcal.......

On our last trip to Baja, March 2-15 2024, we crossed at Tecate, got our FMMs, and gassed up to spend the first night with my buddies girlfriends mother in Puertocitos.
She cooked us a wonderful diner and we got a soak in at the waterfront.

Next day we headed out to Guerrero Negro for lunch and camped in town at the newer RV park San Ignacio(the one where you can walk a few steps to town.).

In the AM we decided to take the coastal dirt road to San Juanico so off we went Southbound.
When we reached the ocean and turned left for a drive through the desert to San Juanico we immediately found an old Nissan Pathfinder in the middle of the dirt road, wheel/tire off and a local guy and his old mother working on the car.

We all stopped and got out to look and what the situation was and see if we could help.
He had the rear brake flange all buggered up and bent into the brake shoes because the tire had come off during the drive on the rutted dirt road.
Lug nuts were long gone.
I thought ...we can straighten up the flange and rob a lug nut from each wheel.....

As I walked around the old beat up Nissan I noticed that all of his wheels only had 3 lug nuts on each wheel.
So....he had already thought of that before

So off I go to get out my SPARE parts... and in my lug nut bag I found some spares to get him back on the road.

VetXsquared(marine/veterinarian) bent the flange back and we put the wheel/tire back on his rig and tightened down the 3 lug nuts I brought for his tire.
Why only three you ask? well that was the number of studs that had threads on them.

We got him back on the road 10 miles from the next village(he was going the opposite way) and he said he would look his rig over to make sure everything was ok.
We knew that he would just drive the rig until it failed again (not our problem at that point).
It was a 2 hour stop and we did not get into San Juanico until around sundown,.

Did I have spare studs? yes, only 6 but we were at the start of our trip and we had 3 Xterra's to take care of for the remainder of our trip.
Did we do enough to get him back on the road and to safety? yes we did.

What else did we learn?
One guy learned that his electric jack worked fine for this situation.
I learned that my spares came in useful and the other guy was damn lucky he was driving a Nissan with matching lug-nut sizes or he would have been chit outta luck.
If that had happened I probably would have given up 3 of my spare wheel studs and lugnuts(if they fit the hole diameter).

That's my lug-nut story and why I now have the "lugnut kit"

Oh and lastly.... our team was almost "Giddy" while breaking out all of our equipment to work on this guys rig.
We do so much planning for breakdowns and eventualities and its nice to be able to actually use the tools and parts that we carry and know they work or what we might wanna have on hand for the "Next" event.

we got to San Juanico rather late but had /lunch/diner there and the gal at the restaurant called ahead to La Purisima. They had rooms for us and we took the shortcut dirtroad. We did not arrive till around 9 or 10 pm but were welcomed and given our rooms. We went out to the patio and had mezcal with some Canadians on vacation.

In the morning our hosts told us the dirt road to Mulege was not passable so we drove to Cuidad Insurgentes.
we gassed up there and had lunch.
after lunch we headed out highway 1 to the turn off for the short road to Agua verdes. We spent 2 days in Agua Verdes, camped on the beach, lounged around and had drinks at the center restaurant/palapa.

We then headed to Loreto for Lunch, supplies and made it to Mulege where we got rooms at the local hotel in town. Dinner was at the Mulege brewing.

Next day we planned to drive to Vizcaino , gas up and take the dirt road to Rancho piedra blanca, we made the turn went about 10 miles and my brakes turned to mush.

Pulled over right rear brake bolts had both fallen off and the left side had one out and the last one loose. we did a temp fix, crimped the line and drove back to Vizcaino while VetXSquared drove to Guerrero Negro to check for a new brake assembly.

They did not have one there or in Vizcaino. but they did have one in Santa Rosalia, so 3 of our rigs got to a motel in Vizcaino.(hotel Kaddekaman). VetXSquared made it back from Santa Rosalia around 11pm. We drank mezcal for a while and decided to fix it in the morning.

Fixed in the AM and one of our crew left early to make it back to the US.
3 rigs made it to Puertocitos where we spent anoth night with VetXsquared girlfriends mom.

And a soak.
Morning we drove to San Felipe and met up with a couple of other fellow off roaders who were just starting their journey South.
Spent 2 days in San Felipe and then headed back to the US Via the crossing at Mexicali.






[Edited on 8-11-2024 by chrishaynesusa]

[Edited on 8-11-2024 by chrishaynesusa]

[Edited on 8-12-2024 by chrishaynesusa]

Quote: Originally posted by bajaric

Nice report. Too bad the brake issue apparently nixed the offroad adventure to Piedra Blanca, and I assume north to BOLA. I have made it to El Arco but never went all the way through to BOLA.

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