15th April 2015 – Zacatecas to Chihuahua

We leave our hotel at 6:00 am this morning as we have an 836 kilometer drive to Chihuahua today.ÿ It’s dark as we leave with our packed breakfast and work our way out of town onto the motorway heading north west. Just after the sun comes up Blue B makes a call on the radio that his ignition light is on and he’s pulling over. So that’s Shiraz, Casper & Blue B now that have electrical issues. Blue B is diagnosed and the problem is tracked down to a loose connection of wires behind the ignition switch, which is rectified. All the bumpy roads we’ve been over have worked a few screws loose. However the problem still exists, so Blue B is hot wired and we get back on the road as we have a lot of kilometers to cover today and this problem can be fixed tonight at the hotel.As we drive the road deteriorates and there are pot holes everywhere, they’re very hard to avoid. Also Shiraz has a re occurrence of electrical problems, the motor cuts out all the time and if it doesn’t restart on its own, Michael has to turn the key off and on. The problem gets worse and it’s happening all the time. Once were back on the smooth road the problem improves but it’s still there, so it seems there is a connection somewhere that is breaking when we go over bumps. When we stop for our lunch break, Michael pulls out the ignition switch from the dash, (fortunately he can get into it through the carbon fibre panel above) and discovers that the main cable from the switch has melted and there are only about 4 wires making contact. He repairs the wires and he still has time to eat his tortilla before we have to leave, all done in half an hour. We’re back on the road and the car is running beautifully. This afternoon the motorway follows the dramatic craggy mountains as we bypass most of the towns working our way to Chihuahua. Although it’s a long trip today it’s an easy drive the weather isn’t too hot and apart from the one bad section of road the motorway is good and we can comfortably cruise at 105kph.