Miata Moves

Christmas Eve Pizza Run & Shakedown Drive

We planned on pizza for lunch and when I called our usual place around noon no human answered the phone after about 10 rings. This is not unusual as they can get busy at lunchtime and sometimes I hang up and call again and someone will answer almost right away. As I was about to try this strategy when a machine picked up, they were closed for the Christmas holiday and would reopen on Tuesday. Dang.

Plan B was implemented. I called Papa Murphy’s, a take-and-bake pizza place, and they were open. We have used them a couple of times before and while they are no comparison to Rodeos, this seemed our best option. I opted to take the Miata because the roads were finally almost entirely clear of snow and ice from our post Thanksgiving storm.

Plus I wanted to test my fix for the front tires scraping when making sharp turns. Yesterday I had finally decided to see what the tires might be hitting. Turns out it was just the driver side and it was hitting on a bent down area on the inner fender liner. It was missing one of the plastic twisty fasteners that held the front part of the liner to the middle section. I didn’t have an extra one, so I stole one from an area that had a couple close together.

This helped, but did not solve the problem totally because the plastic liner pieces were still bent down enough to hit the tire on full lock, so I let loose my red-neck engineering side. I drilled an eighth inch hole inside the engine compartment through the inner fender and through the liners. I found a small flat head screw and screwed it through the liners from insdie the fender to hold them tight against the fender. Then I sprayed both sides of my “repair” with some black Plasti Dip to kind of seal it from the elements.

Success, no more ugly sounds when making sharp turns.

Times Miata Driven since 10/28/22: 3

 

Miata Moves

Eleven months ago I created a tag called “Miata Moves” to mark when ever the Miata was driven. Because it was wintertime it driven very occasionally and the battery would be dead or nearly dead when we got in it to take it for a spin. I used it to keep if it hadn’t been driven in a week because that was the amount of time the battery needed to drain down so it wouldn’t turn over. I record every drive faithfully and even kept up with it once the weather warmed and it got driven more regularly. But I tired of keeping track and stopped in July with this:

171.2 miles on 5 drives since last Monday.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 52

 
Well, it is that time of year again, so I think I will resurrect the tag and start using it again. But, I won’t record the mileage because that is irrelevant, I just need to get it up to operating temperature and drive for a 15-20 minutes to keep everything loose. Unlike last year though I have learned that the best thing to do with the Miata is to just go ahead and hook it up to an IV of electrons all the time. This way it is ready to roll when a 40° day with clear roads appears.

Today was one of those days. Because the weather has been kind of awful already this year this was the first time the CTBNL moved since the day I mounted the Mini’s all-season tires on it back around Halloween (40 days ago) and then took it around the block to make sure they still fit okay.

Times Miata Driven since 10/28/22: 2

 

Aaah…

…I had a few ideas for posts this last week but I never got around to actually writing them here.

Because I haven’t written anything and the Miata has been driven a few times this week I lumped them all together below. As you can see the CTBNL went significant miles for the first time since last year and over two thirds of that number happened yesterday.

Took a nice drive early, to beat the heat, and did a quick backroad loop to a couple of small Oregon towns to take pictures of their post offices, Sprague River and Beatty.

171.2 miles on 5 drives since last Monday.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 52

Gas Mileage

Monday’s drive was just to go fill up the Miata. We had 700 points (or 70 cents off a gallon) that expired in three days and we didn’t want to lose them. Stats: 198.6 miles traveled, 7.869 gallons at $4.879 per (instead of$5.579) for an average of 25.24 MPG.

For whatever reason this fill up was marred by the fact that the pump kept auto shutting off like the tank was full. After it happened the first time at 3 something gallons the poor guy had to just stand there and actually man the pump. He was hesitant to keep feeding the car fuel because he didn’t want to over fill the tank. I told him it should take about 8 gallons, so he just kept squeezing and waiting for it the shut off, repeating it numerous times, maybe five times until it got close to eight.

24.3 miles between drives on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday & Today
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 42

 

Busy Weekend

Today was both the big downtown show for the Kruise of Klamath and the Klamath Kinetic Challenge along the Link River Trail. I only took a few photos of the cars in downtown because it was hard to capture nice pictures of the cars as they were jammed in, in the intense sunlight or half in and half in deep shadow, plus lots of people.

Its summer so the Miata is getting a “workout. Last night we went over to Moore Park to see some of the cars from the Kruise for 11.1 miles and today we went 8.6 miles to downtown to see the car show and up to the lake to watch Kinetic fun.

Tomorrow we’ll probably take the Mini because the Kinetic folks do their water course just before lunch and by then it will be very warm out.

19.7 miles in the last two days.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 38

 

Moore Park Monday and OC&E Trail Tuesday


No Snow Plow Needed

Today to celebrate the first day of summer we rode our mountain bikes 9 miles1 on a section of the OC&E Woods Line State Trail, a 109-mile rail to trail State Park. We have walked or rod bike ridden the first paved 10 miles of the trail before, but this is the first time for riding on the first bit of the unpaved 100 miles section going east out of town.

Yesterday we did our usual walk along the trails of our favorite Klamath Falls park for Moore Park Monday.

7.3 miles to Moore Park for Moore Park Monday.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 34

 

Lowered Miata

When we bought The CTBNL it was lowered on a set of Racing Beat springs along with a set of Koni Sport yellow shocks. When a car is lowered the spring rate needs to increase, otherwise the shorter suspension travel will bottom out on sharp road imperfections. The Racing Beat springs were around 20% stiffer and that would have been great is all the roads we traveled were fairly smooth, but in the real world it seemed like were hitting the bump stops way too often.

Our previous Miata was lowered on a set of Flying Miata springs with those same Koni Sport shocks. So, not long after we bought the current car we swapped the Racing Beat springs for Flying Miata’s almost 100% stiffer units. No more hitting bump stops.

Flying Miata says that after their springs are installed the ride height, measured from wheel center to the fender lip, should be 12.5″ in the front and 13″ in the rear or an even 3/4″ lower than stock. When I measure the ride height on the CTBNL now it comes in at the advertised 13″ in the rear, but the front measures just 12″.

This extra 1/2″ lower ride height comes into play rarely and only when really pushing the car the car through a very sharp turn. The tire will scrape the inner plastic fender liner. This is especially prevalent in the winter when I have the taller Mini Cooper all-season tires on the car.

I don’t remember these stiffer springs feeling this harsh on both the last car and on this one when we were in South Carolina. There is probably a reasonable explanation for this. It could be we are getting older and less tolerant of being jostled. It could also be that we used to drive the Miata a lot more back east so we were used to be jostled around. It could possibly be the roads out here are worse than in South Carolinas. Or it could be a combination of all three.

I have been considering swapping out springs back to stock to maybe mellow out the ride some. Also, because of that whole aging thing again, it might be nice to get that 3/4″ of ride height back. A set of used springs are fairly cheap, around $100, but the labor to swap them out will probably be 4 times that. After the swap and alignment would be needed. With what little we drive the Miata anymore, 238 miles in the last 6 months, I’m not sure it is worth it.

17.1 miles to the Running Y Ranch for a walk.
Times Miata Driven since 01/01/22: 33