The Miata experience: his and hers.

In reply to G8MikeGXP :

SV feels alot like Prescott did 15-20 years ago, with less of a 'cowboy' vibe.   Not that we minded it, but we won't really miss it either.  Too many people moving to town and playing cowboy, looking like something out of 'City Slickers'. 

On another note, I talked with the previous owner of the house (we are the third owners) about the history.  The guy who built it restored classic Mustangs, and the guy we bought it from does dirt track and off road racing, so there is a solid gearhead history there.  We will continue that tradition!

I caught the spray curtain and was wondering . That explains it.

In reply to TurnerX19 :

I was wondering as well before we had that conversation.  Apparently the guy didn't do full paint jobs, but sprayed engine compartments, trunks and did some priming there.

It may see similar use in the future...  

The NA and NB joined the Capri at the new house this weekend....

There might even be room to park the NB and E36 nose to tail in the garage...

Our dog also made her first trip to the new house, where she promptly went to sleep on our bed.  Which she always has to do, even if the bed is an air mattress, temporary until the furniture arrives.  As long is it's our bed... 

Speaking of furniture, we ordered some.  A lot actually...  I think I've got less $$$$ in our NB.  

Another week, another load of stuff moved...

The NB joined the NA and Capri in the garage for a while.  Still need to organize a bunch of the parts I brought down.

Beautiful morning!

Went to the local Cars & Coffee... much smaller than what I'm used to, but a bunch of interesting stuff showed up.  The 70s Celica and Delorean the NB is parked between, and you can just see the nose of the new Z car on the left.  The pic only shows about half the crowd... I should have taken more, but I got busy talking.

There was also an early '00s Audi Avant, 240Z with a 280ZX turbo engine, '60s Falcon drag car with a big Windsor and several aftermarket turboed imports.

Did a little fabrication work for the K swap in-between moving projects this week.

The K24 is a bit lacking in lifting points, so I needed to come up with something.  There's a large cast bracket on the 'front' of the engine (pax side? in its native FWD orientation), which I removed, and I fabbed up a lift point to replace it.

At the rear, I can use a Miata bracket bolted into one of the existing threaded holes on the head.

This will probably be the last little bit on the K swap until I have all the parts and my tools relocated.

Threw together a transport stand for the K engine this morning, mostly because I want to protect the aluminum oil pan when I move it.  Beats the heck out of using an old tire... 

New tires on the motorhome today...  I don't think I'll ever again bitch about the cost of race tires. 

The frustrating part is taking off great looking tires with lots of tread... but they had 2017 date codes.  So far, we've only done relatively short trips, and I was keeping my fingers crossed.  Since we have a long trip upcoming, and considering the consequences of a blowout on this rig, it was time to bite the bullet and get new rubber.

Still moving... ugh.

Kona is starting to get used to the new place, but it will be better when we're there for more than a couple days at a time.

Most of our new furniture has arrived, so it's nice to have stuff to sit, eat and sleep on.  I've got quite a pile of parts going in the new shop.  I've got a storage solution in mind for this stuff, but it will have to wait until the move is complete.

Last trip, I hauled down the K engine, hoist and stand (among other things), but I forgot the bolts to mount it on the stand.  This time I remembered them, so it's back on the stand ready for more work whenever I actually get around to it.

I've also been working on another fab project to facilitate moving my gun safe.  It's a big, heavy, 1000lb bastard.  After getting a couple of quotes on what it would cost to load it in my trailer at one house and unload it at the new house, I've decided to move it myself.  I need to buy a pair of hydraulic furniture movers (much cheaper than the quotes from movers), and I need a heavy duty dolly to facilitate transitions over doorway thresholds.  Looking at the costs of HD dollies, I decided to fab it up myself.

I started with some heavy wall 1" square tube, 1" heavy angle, 1/4" plate and some heavy duty casters rated for 1800lbs off Amazon, cut it to size, squared it up and welded it.

Still needs some paint, and a 3/4" ply top...

Got the dolly painted, just need to make the top.

Do you have a concessions stand in your new garage? 

In reply to wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) :

No, but I was thinking about adding one of those popcorn maker carts... 

Finished up the dolly with a 3/4" ply top with some satin polyurethane for protection.  Should do the job.

Some RV maintenance today.  The tag axle has wet hubs, and I wanted to change the hub oil before our upcoming trip since I don't know when it was last changed.

Good news was that both sides had oil.

I used my fluid extractor (these things are awesome!) to pull out as much of the old fluid as I could.  There's a drain plug on the hub, but it's difficult to access without removing the wheel and hub cover.

For new oil, I'm using Lucas Hub Oil, which has a little more 'stick' designed into it as compared to gear oil to keep the lube on the bearings.

Filled and capped.

I was a little worried that this was going to be a PITA, but it was an easy 20 min job.

More fab work for our moving adventure...

First up is a lever to get under my safe and lever it up so I can slide 2x4s underneath to get it onto hydraulic furniture movers... 1 3/4 DOM rollcage tube with some 1/4" thickness angle for the 'shovel'.  Should be stout enough.

Next was a 'hat' of 2x2 heavy angle iron that will fit over the top of the safe, sized to allow moving blankets between it and the safe.  This will provide tie down points at the top to stabilize the load in the trailer since I can't tie it to the side like in a moving truck.

In reply to Rodan :

TIL, that there is something called a wet hub. 

Another weekend of moving stuff...

When I built the tool 'receivers' into my fab bench, I didn't plan on using them for tie down eyelets, but it sure came in handy...

Trailer loaded, and 8002 tie downs used to keep everything in place...

I sometimes feel like I'm using the trailer inefficiently for some of these loads, but the truck bed was also full, so it was plenty of stuff to load/unload in a weekend.  And stuff like workbenches, tubing benders and welders don't pack efficiently.

Sunrise arrival...

The shop is starting to fill up...

It's kind of a mess, and a lot of the parts will be moving out of the shop when I figure out an additional storage solution (probably an 8x20 shipping container) for parts and stuff that doesn't need to be in the shop.

For now, it's just nice to have room for everything at home.  No more storage unit rental costs.

The wife's Jeep gets to stay in the garage with the NA, and I think I can still get the BMW in there too.

Room for both trailers on the property.  

The dog was very tired after watching us work all weekend...

One annoyance of moving...

I needed to drill a hole in something I'm working on today.  All my drill bits are in the fabrication bench, which I just moved to the new house.

Well, it's been a month, and there's been zero progress on any projects.

The reason is that we've been on the road for most of it.  We had originally planned this Fall's trip around visiting friends in Wyoming and family in Wisconsin, with my wife returning to work after the trip, and retiring in December.  At the end of July, my wife decided to retire before we departed on the trip... her last day was the day before we rolled out.  

So this trip became a number of firsts... our first non-'race weekend' trip in the motorhome, our first extended trip in the motorhome, and our first trip in retirement.  A little over 4000 miles in the RV, and several hundred in the Jeep... lots of new places, and some good times spent with family and friends.

Preparations were just a little crazy in the midst of moving our stuff to the new house, but when it was time to leave, we were ready and hit the road.

Our first stop was Bluff, UT, just north of the UT/AZ border.

We did a little dark sky star watching near the Natural Bridges Nat'l Monument... unfortunately none of the pics came out.  I'm still working on my long-exposure photography.  The next day we wandered in the Monument, and drove down the Moki Dugway into the Valley of the Gods.  The Moki Dugway is a 3 mile, unpaved road that descends 1000ft from the top of the mesa into the desert.  It was originally built to move uranium ore, but was eventually added to the UT highway system, but never paved.

I rode down it about 20 years ago on my motorcycle, and it's a lot less hairy in a Jeep!  Then we drove through the Valley of the Gods before heading back to the RV park.

After Bluff, it was north through UT and CO then into Wyoming.

Once out of the busy areas of Moab and I70, the drive through CO and southern WY is pretty desolate.

A quick pit stop at a roadside historical marker in Northern CO...

We spent a couple of days in Rawlins, as it was kind of conveniently located for some of the things we wanted to do.  We spent a day in the Snowy Range, aka the Medicine Bow Nat'l Forest.  This is an area of incredible beauty, and I've been through several times on motorcycle trips, but this was the first time my wife had been there.

2006

2016

2023

After hiking around a few of the alpine lakes, we drove into Laramie for lunch and then back to Rawlins.  Rawlins is looking pretty sad these days... many of the businesses in town were shut down.   The energy business is important in WY, and the last few years have not been kind.

Next we were off to Cody, WY to see some friends.

Lunch stop along the Big Horn River south of Thermopolis, WY.  One of the really nice things about an RV is any place you can get off the highway is a full-featured rest stop.

We stayed in Cody for a couple of days and hung out with good friends.  It wasn't our first trip, and we've seen most of what Cody has to offer in town, so our friend recommended a trip to the mining 'ghost' town of Kirwin WY.  Kirwin is a little over 30 miles out of Meeteetse, WY in the Absaroka mountains of the Shoshone Nat'l Forest.  About half of  that distance is unpaved forest roads, with a few water crossings.  We were a little concerned about conditions after heavy rain the previous day, which included snow at the higher elevations, but the Jeep did fine and nothing other than the water crossings was even a challenge.  It's a beautiful drive and even a more beautiful destination.  Apparently the gold here was simply too expensive to get out of the ground and transport to town to make the site profitable.  And conditions in winter would be spectacularly harsh!

An interesting side note is that Meeteetse is where black footed ferrets, thought to be extinct, were discovered in the 1980s.  The entire current worldwide population of black footed ferrets is the result of breeding programs with ferrets captured in the area.

Once we packed up in Cody, we headed East, and crossed the Big Horn mountains on our way to Buffalo, WY.  This was our first real 'mountain road' with the motorhome, climbing over the 9700ft Powder River Pass on US 16.  Although going was slow due to the twisty road, power was never an issue, though I did use the turnouts a few times to let traffic by when there weren't passing lanes.  The two-stage exhaust brake was a huge blessing going down the east side and I rarely had to use the service brakes.

We overnighted in a nice RV park in Buffalo, WY.

From here, it would be I90 through the Black Hills and into Wall, SD...

If you're going to be in SD near the Black Hills, you kind of need to stop at Wall Drug...

It's a total tourist trap, but the food is pretty good and the coffee is excellent.  We stayed at an RV park in town w/in walking distance of Wall Drug.

The main reason we stayed in Wall on this trip was to see the Badlands.  We started the day with breakfast at Wall Drug.  The food was as good as I remembered, but the prices were definitely higher!

I can remember when that same breakfast was $4.99!  At least the coffee is still cheap, and very good.

Then it was off to Badlands NP.  In the past, if you paid to get into one National Park/Monument, any parks you visited within 7 days were covered by that fee.  I was a little irritated to learn that this is no longer the case, and unless you buy the annual pass, you have to pay the admission for each park.  Fees have also increased from $20 to $30/car for most parks.   Had I known this, I would have bought the annual pass in Utah, but now it would end up costing more.  

In any case, Badlands is pretty amazing...

From Wall, it was North in to ND and Medora, a place we stayed a couple of years ago to see Teddy Roosevelt NP.  TRNP has two entrances... we had been through the South section, but didn't have time to make the hour drive to the North section on the last trip so this trip we did the North.  And it was spectacular!

We were a little on the early side for the changing leaves, even this far north, but it was chilly out.  Found this guy trying to warm up in the morning sun when we drove into the park...

From there, it was a long day into Wisconsin where we stayed in a State Park and visited with family for a week.

Coming home, we had planned an interstate grind, as my wife was going to need to be back to work on October 9th.  Now that she was retired as well, there was no rush.  However, reservations had already been made for most of the trip, and it was too late for refunds.

So we stayed in Missouri

And Oklahoma

We added one day because my wife wanted to stop in Roswell, NM.  There we toured the UFO Museum.  Kooky and hokey, but still interesting... LOL.

Roswell was on the way, as we were returning to the new house to leave the motorhome there.  Plenty of room for parking next to the shop, and I'm glad to finally be done with all of my off-site storage costs!

Interested to hear your thoughts as you get into and through the K-Swap. We just finished one and are putting it on track with AER later this month. 

First test drive indicates some good power but I'm excited to see what it's like when I'm really on it.