Miata Mileage

2000 Cars In A Minute

On Sunday I drove up to Granite Falls, WA to visit the other family that makes up the Pacific North West Chapter of the Morrison/Bogardus Club. On the way up I noticed a very interesting town name and filed it away for the drive back.

Vader, WA – 98593

“Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy.”

This morning, while returning home along I-405 going south, if I could have pulled over and counted cars going by every second, I would have tallied 33-1/3, or 2,000 a minute. The New Miata rolled by 2,000 miles just after crossing back into Oregon.

The Man Of 11% Of A Thousand Post Offices

And also, the man of 29% of the 385 Oregon Post Offices.

Yesterday evening the weather forecast called for rain overnight, turning to just cloudy during the day today. So, I mapped out about 8 post offices to go get photos of in the morning only to wake up this morning to find it raining and now it was going to continue raining for the whole day.

I briefly considered calling the drive off, but I now know from living here for over a year, that even if the forecast calls for rain, that rain, more than likely, will be just off and on not a steady downpour. I jumped in the Miata and headed south.

It did rain pretty steady for the first 25 minutes on my trip down I-205, but it did become sporadic once I started driving on B roads going through the Post Office towns. My second planned Post Office was in West Linn, but when I got to where it was supposed to be, it wasn’t there, it was a paved parking lot for what looked like a new supermarket. Guess it moved to somewhere else. The address I had was from 5 years ago when I first compiled the list. I really should check these on USPS.com before I go out looking.

The convoluted post title was because a few miles from home on I-84 heading west the New Blue Miata hit the 1,000 mile mark.

82,000 Points on a Chart

We are only a little over two weeks away from 7 years of ownership of the CTBNL and in that time frame we have driven it almost 35,700 miles. If you look at the chart above you will notice that there is a really noticeable change in the trajectory of the mileage numbers between the left side of the red line to the right side. During the first 38 months of ownership we put a good portion of 30,000 miles on the car, so that works out to an approximate average of 790 miles per month. That red line indicates when we moved from Aiken to Klamath Falls. Since then in 46 months we have added just under 6,000 making the average around 130 miles per month.

There are several reasons for the decline in miles for the Miata. First up is winter, in Aiken it got driven practically year round while here it is luck if it gets driven every 10 days or so and then for just a quick local spin. But probably the main reason is that we no longer take real road trips in it anymore. Since we have been here we took one 3 day trip to the coast in it. We’ve almost aged out of road tripping in entirely.

Now when we go somewhere we usually take the Mini. For comparison, during those same 46 months here in Klamath Falls the Minis have travel 19,000 miles or over 400 miles a month. That could have been higher too because we made three trips (2 to Santa Fe & 1 to Granite Falls) in rentals for various reasons.

Yesterday on a 30 mile morning drive, the CTBNL it rolled past the 82,000 mile mark.

81,000 Data Points

When we bought the CTBNL in August 2016 it had a little over 46,000 miles on the clock. Yesterday, June 2022, it hit the eighty-one thousand mile mark.

Because every time the Miata hits a comma and three zeroes mark I post about it and I add the tag “Miata Mileage” to it, so I decided to track down all those posts, get the dates it happened and create the nifty chart you see above.

I think I could have made it fancier in Microsoft Office, but all I have to use now is the free office program, LibreOffice, and I can’t figure out if it possible to get something nicer looking.

We are fast approaching 6 years of ownership and in the first 3 years we drove it almost 29,000 miles. Since then, in 5 years and 10 months the CTBNL has only added another 6,000 miles. There are a couple factors involved in this decrease of Miata mileage. First is that in the those beginning three years we were participating in those Moss Motoring Challenges, which caused us to drive around a lot locally and to take some long road trips. Secondly, we moved to Oregon where our convertible driving weather is in much shorter supply than it was in South Carolina.

17 miles on an evening drive last night & today’s pizza pick up run.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 36

 

10011100010000000 Miles

For our 101101th1 Anniversary we decided to throw caution to the wind and take a little 3-day mini trip to the Oregon Coast. We had a free night at a Holiday Inn so the first leg (80 miles) of the journey was just over the mountains to Medford where we spent Sunday Night. The second leg (215 miles) was to our next overnight stay in Gold Beach. The last leg (226 miles) was coming straight home. To make the drive a bit more interesting we opted to hunt out some Oregon Post Offices along the way.

Sunday instead of going straight to Medford we went an alternate route so we could start in Ashland and work our way north the short distance to Medford with stops in Talent, Phoenix, Jacksonville & Central Point.

Monday we headed north and west to get to the coast. The shortest way to our destination would have been to go south to Crescent City in California, but we were saving that for our return trip. I added all the Post Office addresses for the rest of our loop to the car GPS and because we abhor Interstate travel we selected “avoid highways” in the settings.

This worked out well for the first few Post Offices because they were close to OR99 which parallels I-5, but once we got to Merlin the GPS could not find a route to Wolf Creek, turns out from here the next 40 miles OR99 combines with I-5 because of the mountains. Donna looked at the map and realized there was a loop of 35 miles, instead of the direct 15 miles, that would get us to Wolf Creek with out using the Interstate.

Not being in a hurry, we headed west along a two lane road that ran along the Rogue River. It was very scenic and we passed several little county parks for the first 20 miles. Everything was fine until we crossed a bridge over the river to head east to our our next Post Office. The road got a little narrower, almost 1-1/2 lanes instead of two and clung to the side of a mountain on the left and a steep drop on the right with no guardrail. Our forward progress slowed considerably, hoping that some large truck wouldn’t be coming our way around the next corner.

A mile or so in, rounding a corner, we came upon another Miata coming our way. I don’t know who was more surprised, us or them, but we squeezed on by with a wave and kept on going.

A couple of miles later our 1-1/2 lanes dropped to a solid one lane. Now it was getting scary, but even when the road did widen back to a lane and a half there was still no way to turn around and go back. For the next 10 miles the width of the road varied back and forth and fortunately the only other car we came upon coming at us it was on one of those wider spots. What would taken maybe 20 minutes on I-5 turn into over an hour of white knuckle driving. After arriving in Wolf Creek we took off the “avoid highways” setting and we vowed to not do that again. We’d stay on back roads when they stayed close to civilization.

As we were getting closer to the coast and having already photographed 15 Post Offices, by mutual agreement, we opted to not do the last few on the way to the hotel and not any along the coast at all. This would be saved for a weeks vacation either next spring or fall where we’d get all the Post Offices along the entire Oregon coast.

Because I had the odometer to trip so I could see tenths of a mile as Donna called out mileage to my next turn, I didn’t notice that the CTBNL had gone past the 80,0002 mile mark.

About fifteen miles from the actual coast the cooler misty weather made us put the top back up and when we did get on US101 the fog/mist/clouds made actually seeing the beach impossible.

Tuesday morning in spite of the off and on light rain, we did walk down to the beach and take a fairly short out and back walk because, after all, we drove all this way to see the ocean.

On the trip home we did stop and get the remaining four Post Offices on US199 from the border back up to Grants pass. Bringing our total for the weekend of two dozen or about 6% of the total of around 375 Post Offices in the state of Oregon. All in all , even with the white knuckle side trip and cool misty weather, we had a pretty good time.

79,000 Drops of Something or Other

A couple of weeks ago when I pulled the snow tires off the Mini the inside of the front wheel on the passenger side was all coated in a icky gunk. Back when I had put the snows on, I put the Mini wheels on the Miata and I certainly didn’t see anything like that on any of the wheels. This leak issue has to have come about in the last 3-1/2 months.

My first thought was an oil leak. When I looked at what I could see of the engine and suspension bits they appeared coated in the same grimy stuff as the inside of the wheel. Now I can do some minor car repair stuff on the Miata, but the front wheel drive Mini is a nightmare for the novice me. The engine, all its related subsystems, and transaxles are stuffed into an area the size of a Navy seabag, meaning you would probably have to remove the entire front body works to do any repairs. I decided to call for professional help.

The local place we have used before is very busy, so we had to wait until yesterday to get the car in to have it looked at. We dropped it off after breakfast. Donna drove the Mini and followed me in the Miata so we could leave it with them for as long as needed. The folks at the repair shop didn’t call us back yesterday, but we know it is a popular place and figured they just hadn’t got to it yet.

They did call back this morning and apologized twice. Once for not getting back to us sooner and second for not wanting to fix the problem. From their troubleshooting they determined it wasn’t oil leaking, but coolant coming from around the the water pump. The one guy who was the real Mini expert no longer worked there and the other mechanics there were as excited about tackling the job as I was. They recommended a place over in Medford that was better equipped for Mini work, John’s Auto Care Center.

I called and made an appointment to drop off the Mini next Wednesday. Medford is 75 miles away, so we won’t be doing the follow the leader thing over, we’ll drive the Mini, drop it off, pick up a rental car to have for a couple days. We used to drive 50 miles one way to get the Miata worked on back in South Carolina, so this is not too big a deal, plus this will give us a couple of chances to eat in some chain restaurants that we miss and don’t have here in Klamath Falls.

So the 79,000 drops of what I thought was oil was actually a mixture of coolant, brake dust and road dust from the traction stuff they put on the roads around here in the winter. On the way back home yesterday we stopped and filled up the Miata with gas and when I went to reset the trip odometer I noticed that the main odometer read 79,001.

78,000 Dead Little Bugs

While reading over on the Miata.net Forums to keep my Miata knowledge up to date I found a post that peaked my interest on LED headlights. Turns out they have now crept down to plug and play at affordable levels. Some one posted a link to a set on Amazon that was a mere $40. I took the bait and ordered a set. They arrived yesterday, so I spent 20 minutes in the garage putting them in.

This called for a drive in the dark, so a few minutes before the sun would set (which put it behind the Cascades, so no late evening glare) we backed out of the driveway and made a nice little 20 mile loop, around the south end of town through farm lands and along a bit of the west side the Upper Klamath Lake. The new headlights were not a holy sh*t, these are a fantastic upgrade, but the whiter color light was pleasing and they did seem marginally brighter. Maybe I’ll go ahead and get the high beams as well.

I would swear I’ve mentioned it here before (I looked and couldn’t find it), but I wish we could have the Masters Miata Club’s Bug Splat Rally here. Every time we take any kind of evening drive here, the front of the car returns literally plastered with bug carcasses and this would solve the usual lack of insects we experienced back in the south. Of course the bad thing would be picking out the car for the most bugs prize. I bet when we got home last night there were 78,000 splatted bugs on the nose of the Miata.

Coincidentally, the CTBNL’s odometer turned over 78000 somewhere on our drive.