Not Crossing the Rubicon


When mulling Option #3 from Wednesday’s post I thought, hey wait a minute, I know someone who has one, I’ll ask him. So on my morning walk on Friday I walked over to his house. I got a quick Jeep primer and then a surprise; he offered to let me have his for a couple days. Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I said, “Mmmm, OK.”

First off, this jeep is practically brand new, with a mere 9300 miles on the odo, and still has that telltale scent. It is also optioned very nicely too. With the hardtop on, the A/C on, SiriusXM playing and ensconced in some comfy leather seats you are in a very modern vehicle. Definitely not your father’s Jeep. Make no mistake, this is a very large ride. When in traffic you look down on cars and see eye to eye with today’s 4-wheel drive 1/2 ton pickups. In spite of the size it can feel very car-like in its handling though, with its fairly short wheelbase and 4,000 lb weight it feels quite planted on everything except very sharp corners.

Donna and I have put it through the paces. We tooled around some county back roads listening to Channel 14, The Coffee House from outer space for hour or so. We did our weekly grocery shopping in it, in the afternoon. We took the front 2 panels of the hardtop off, rolled down the windows, opened the back window and went for an evening drive. Not Miata-like, but it did feel fairly open and was an enjoyable ride. Probably a lot more convertible-ish if we could have taken the whole top off…

Today we went over to Goodwill to get rid of some stuff that has been collecting dust in the attic for the last dozen years or more. Almost all of it would have fit in the Mini, but two trips would have been necessary. The Goodwill folks didn’t want all of it, so we just drove the Jeep to one of the local County Drop-Off sites. Tonight we are going to take another opened up evening drive.

Tomorrow morning I’ll hose off the dead bugs, vacuum the dust out of the back and fill up the tank before returning the Jeep back to Crazy Dave’s Car Rental. We did learn that the Jeep really isn’t for us, at least not this Jeep, it is too big and too refined. If we do ever get to Oregon, we might get one from a couple generations back (a later year TJ maybe) when they were a bit smaller, then we can use it to bomb around on Forrest Service roads and get out in nature.

CTBNL Update

When they got around to looking at the car in the shop on Monday it would not start for them either. The first thing they did was take my trusty backup Cam Angle Sensor out of the trunk and put it in. What do you know, the car started right up. With the car not showing a Check Engine Light nor having a stored code in car’s Engine Control Unit the tech suspected it was the main engine relay or the ECU itself. Because the ECU would be expensive and a nightmare to replace they opted to change the hundred dollar relay first.

After replacing the part they parked it outside and left it running for about 30 minutes and it never shut off. Then in the afternoon the tech drove it around for 25-30 miles. It never quit. He repeated the process again the following morning with the same positive results. I picked up the car on Thursday afternoon and Donna followed me right home.

Since then it has been backed out of the garage and parked out under the awning twice. Once yesterday and once today because we had some looky loos visit the house and we wanted to make our paltry one-car garage look large. Full testing will be on Monday morning. After I do my morning walk, and with Donna at the gym, I’m going to take the car on an adventure tour of about 40 miles. she is suggesting that I just circle our one mile block 40 times, but I’m going to throw caution to the wind and venture out into Aiken County.

Even if it passes that test, both of us, one more than the other, will still not trust the car to get us to Hilton Head and back at the end of the month. There are just too many places while travelling through South Carolina’s Lowcountry where the road is two lanes with no paved shoulders, just maybe a half a car width of soft grass, bordered by water (and possibly gator) filled ditches of indeterminate depth.

We have started doing some of the pre-prep work on our alternatives, tune in tomorrow for details.

Alternative Daily, Alternative Daily, or Alternative Daily?

Ok, so what if we chuck the whole ‘has to be a Miata’ thing? Really, the biggest thing we would miss would be the convertible aspect. What other convertibles are out there that are around the same price as a Miata?

Option 1) How about a Mini Cooper? We’ve already own one, they’re small, fun to drive, good on gas, so a sort of known quantity. The least expensive model is called Classic and like the Miata’s Sport model only comes in roughly the same 4 colors; Pepper White, Chili Red, Moonwalk Grey and Midnight Black, with grey being the only color that doesn’t cost extra. Adding just heated seats and a wind blocker gets us to a list price of $28,500.

Option 2) Pony car maybe? This is a large car compared to the Miata, it is more than a half a foot wider, nearly 3 FEET longer and weights one and a half times one at 3,600 lbs. A Ford Mustang comes in 10 colors though with only 2, Ruby Red & Orange Fury, with a $500 up charge. I’ll take my Eco-Boost in Velocity Blue. Still, even with adding zero options, the car is listed at $32,385.

Option 3) If we do end up living in Oregon, how about something more attuned to the open spaces of the wild west? Maybe a little 4-wheel drive action to handle the 12″ of snow they average in January? A Jeep Wrangler is the answer. It comes in 11 no cost colors, I’ll take it in Bikini Pearl thank you very much. Adding only the black tubular running boards to the Sport model brings the list price to $29,935.


–I’m actually starting to dig this option–

Daily, Daily, or Daily?

Ok, here is where we are at, the CTBNL is still in the shop. I don’t know if they are still trying to fix the ‘I don’t like to run in the heat’ problem or they just haven’t got to it yet. Either way, with Donna’s complete lack of faith in the car and her vow never to get back into it, what am I to do?

Option 1) I have actually been given permission to go ahead and price a shiny new 2019 Miata. A base car runs around $27k and comes in 4 “colors”; Black, Ceramic (a semi shiny really light gray), White and Red ($600 extra.) My thoughts would be to get the white and add some stripes, similar to the CTBNL, only red instead of blue. The little negatives are no glove box, unusable cup holders and the droopy looking rear view. The BIG negative is a $400 car payment for the next 5 years.

Option 2) Buy a used NB. There was a nice 2003 Shinsen Edition for sale in Huntsville, AL on the M.net Forums, but between when I looked at it this morning and now, it must have sold. Should I try to recreate the Emperor? There is a very stock looking 2003 Garnet Red for sale in North Carolina on the forums as well. Only $5k. The big negative with this one is it has 108,000 miles on it. But if the ad is to be believed it has been very well taken care of.

Or Option 3) Just keep the CTBNL if the fix turns out to be another bad Cam Angle Sensor or another random $100 sensor and slowly try to get Donna (and me too) used to trusting the car again?

3 Strikes and You’re Out?

Strike 1, Two Months Ago – A Cooked CAS Sensor and Smoked Pig Butts
Strike 2, A Week Ago – Was That Money Well Spent?
Strike 3, Yesterday – Someone was coming to look at the house between 12 and 1 so we hopped in the Miata to vacate the place. We didn’t really have a solid plan on what to do to kill the roughly 1-1/2 hours we needed to stay away, but one was, unfortunately, thrust upon us.

We were a mile away from home, waiting patiently for the light to change and give us our left turn arrow and I noticed a minor roughness in the car’s idle. When the light changed I eased out the clutch and as soon as I depressed the gas pedal the car died. I briefly thought perhaps I had stalled it, but it didn’t feel like that, the car just shut off. When I went to restart it, it wouldn’t. Great. We were first in line with about four cars behind us, talk about major embarrassment.

I hit the flasher button and started waving people around me. We were in a nose up attitude because of the slight incline, so if everyone would clear out behind us we could possibly coast back into the parking area of the corner quick stop. Those behind me all made the light, but the lane to the right of me didn’t fully empty before the light changed back to red. At the next light change there were fewer cars behind us and they all made the light, so I let off the parking brake and starting coasting back. I was almost completely into the lot when a white pickup truck decided to exit the lot. He hit his horn, but I kept backing up, so he stopped moving and I managed to get the car 98% off the road. He rolled down his window and when I told him why I did what I did he mellowed out and backed up a bit to allow Donna and I to finish pushing the CTBNL into the lot.

So, first, a quick update from Strike 2: I took the car back to the shop and they ran their code reader on the car and received no fault codes either, the only questionable reading they got was a slightly elevated charging voltage. So I told them that I would just order a new Cam Angle Sensor and see what happens. The new one arrived on Wednesday afternoon and I had been driving with it in there several small trips (all longer than a mile!) and the car had behaved fine. It also ran fine with the back up CAS in it from Saturday to Wednesday.

Because it was midday this Saturday, the repair shop was still open and they have their own tow truck, so I gave them a ring and told them my tale of woe and where we were. They promised to send the truck right over. While we waited Donna went into the quick stop and bought us each an ice cream bar to enjoy. Just as we were finishing our treat our knight in shining truck arrived. After the car was loaded up he offered to drop us off at home as he took the car in. We declined because we still couldn’t go back there for at least 45 or 50 minutes.

There was a Zaxby’s a couple hundred yards further down the road, so we told the driver that we were going to get lunch and when I got home I’d drive over and talk with them. When I arrived at the shop the head mechanic was eating lunch in the front lounge area and I asked him what he’d found out. They had plugged in the code reader and once again there were no stored codes. They were in the middle of finishing up some promised jobs, so he promised to do some troubleshooting on Monday. He also said that if the car started and ran fine on Monday, he would take it for at least a twenty minute drive in the heat of afternoon before he gave it back to me.

At this point, even if he finds another sensor or something bad, Donna has vowed never to get in the car again. She won’t trust it to get to the store and back, let alone an evening drive, or a day trip or a weekend get away. It has now left us stranded on the side of the road three times in the last 10 weeks. The next time it happens it may be in a place or time where or when we don’t want to be. Frankly I am quite near to that point myself.