We woke early the next day just around dawn. Their were some farmers walking the fields, so it made it difficult to get out of the truck and do all of our clothes changing etc. so we just crawled up to the cab and drove off in our pajamas. We had a long drive ahead of us so it was good to get on the road before 8am. We ate apples and almond butter for breakfast while driving, one of my most favorite snacks in the whole world.

We were having some problems with the veggieoil- we were losing power on the highway and could only go about 60mph tops with a noticable lag. It seemed that there was also a little lag on diesel as well, which I thought might be air in the diesel line. But then I read my troubleshooting guide from thedieselpages.com and was concerned that we might have a timing issue. So I decided to replace the diesel fuel filter. Go Figure.

I think I was trying to eliminate the air leak or something. But I forgot how jury-rigged the last one was; since the water-in-fuel sensor was broken, I had shoved a screw into one of the ports in the filter, to keep fuel from leaking out where the sensor had gone. A washer acted as a spacer to keep it all pressed in.

Anyway, I had to re-do this set-up on the new filter. When we got back on the road, I had forgotten to prime the diesel filter and get all the air out, so when we were laggin on the vegge-oil side and I switched to diesel, we stalled! So I had to pull off onto the Mexican shoulder and purge the air from the lines. We got the truck started again and drove off.

But the next time we switched to diesel we stalled again! This time it was a worse shoulder, and the truck was all at an angle with semis flying past. But it was broad daylight, and not on a turn and people gave us room as they passed. I think the Mexican drivers are just more used to this kind of situation. Anyhow we got the air out asap and got back on the road. We made a pitstop to figure out what was going wrong. I removed the washer from the fuel filter, and I think that gave us a better fit.

Also in this process I was able to monitor the vacum guage on the Vormax filter for the veggie-oil and saw that it was all the way in the red! hat would explain the lagging! We tried driving with the backflush option valve switched (which sends deisel fuels from the return line backwards through the vormax), but that didn’t seem to do anything. I think the Fleetguard FS1000 filter might have a backflow prevention valve? (Phil are you reading this?) Something I didn’t look into before leaving.

I didn’t want to have to change the filter, since we only have one spare. I guess I thought they would last more than 1800 miles! So we experimented. When the veggie-oil system started to lag, we would switch to diesel for a five seconds, then back to veggie-oil. It was like getting a turbo boost! And it seemd to allow the veggieoil pressure to catch up. But this was really a hassle, and it would mean burning more diesel, so we decided to do what needed to be done and change the fleetguard filter on the vormax. Hopefully we’ll find some more spares in Mexico City.

Changing the filter turned out to be a messy pain in the butt. With our gravity-fed roof mounted tanks, when I tried to drain the filter, it kept filling with oil. When I tried to unscrew the filter it was a diasaster, with an untold number of pints of veggie oil spilling all over the concrete of the Pemex station before I could squeeze the line and shove a bolt in the hose.. A man came out and I began appologizing in spanish and trying to say that it was just veggie oil and we could clean it up. Well, he seemed more curious than upset, and was actually really friendly.

He even put the last tightening turns on the new filter since my gloves were too slippery all covered in oil. We tried to communicate in spanish, even looking up words that weren’t in our dictionary. He said his name was Francisco. Another man walked up and Francisco explained to him that our truck ran on vegetable oil. He looked at me for confirmation and I said “Si! Aciete vegetales usado!” (used vegetable oil) and he seemed impressed in a cool macho mexican kind of way.

It was getting late in the day and we hadn’t covered as much ground as we would have liked. But we read in our nearly useless “Footprints Guide to Central America” guidebook that there were undeveloped beaches just north on Mazatlan that we could camp on. We figured that we could probably find the beach in the dark, and decide to keep driving a couple more hours past sunset to get to Mazatlan.

We took the very first Mazatlan exit that said something about Playas and a tourist road, and then took the first right turn down what looked like a fancy hotel’s long driveway, but we passed the hotel and then were on a dirt road. We soon found a camping spot, despite the rusted official looking signs of Mexican authority reading “publico prohibido pasdo” etc etc. We had found beachfront property in Mazatlan, who cares about supposed Mexican rules!?!?!

We were way too tired to set up a stove and make food. So after a brief discussion we decided to drive into town to look for a restaurant. Our first taco stand only sold pork tacos (we discovered after sitting down). So we ate a couple anyway and then went searching for some fish tacos like the ones we had in Guyamas.

We found a cute looking place that was still open. Kris had some shrimp tacos and I had a chicken gordito and a potato enchilada and a Mexican vanilla soda. It was all good and inexpensive, and after our meal the waiter (who turned out to be the owner), sat down with us and chatted in english about the recent cold weather and other topics.

Then we drove back to our undeveloped beachfront home and it was “Buenas suenos” for the weary explorers.