We will be in the Lake Taupo region.

Conveniently, this small town has a track! Taupo Race Track

Now investigating the possibility of taking the car for the year. So far quotes are < 1/3 the cost of taking the dog.

 

...Wow.

Beer before you leave. I still have your pipe sitting on the fab bench. Its been making a good hand prop for some recent projects.

 

That really hurts man. Just think how happy your car would be with all the tracks here in TX.

 

California should be nice for the next year or so, I'd be happy to keep it out of all that Oregon rain for ya

But on a more serious note... why the HELL is a dog so expensive?

 

NZ is a remote island nation in the S. Pacific. Economy is primarily agriculture (sheep especially). They take the issue of invasive species/disease extremely seriously.

 

Well yes, I understand that part. More to the point how does it become so expensive? Permitting? Vaccination? Testing? Quarantine? I'm boggling that the cost to move a car on a ship halfway around the planet is 1/3rd the cost to bring your dog.

I'm off to go google some things...

 

You should go car part hunting and mail us back a bunch of 3.63 gear sets

 

Jesus, that's brilliant.

 

I'll nominate myself as the receiver of said gearsets

 

Richard, I'd be happy to store the car if I had the room. Poor smurf needs a garage badly. I'm almost considering renting a storage unit, Theres a few around Oregon city. Smurf, your car, and a bunch of other stuff could go in there.

 

Those units are sooooo expensive. When I was first considering the re-shell last March (just after I bought the first wrecked 10AE) cheapest I could find that would fit a Miata was still around $120/mo or more. Wow.

 

^^This, that is why 2 car garage is on my list of must have when looking for a house.

 

Storage units are not a cost effective option. And cars need to be driven every now and then.

The dog quote was so expensive because

• paperwork. NZ has no rabies, nor I believe heartworm, along with some other things we live with here. There are multiple veterinarian visits, lab tests (which have to be done at certified labs), etc.
  
• live cargo. They have to be shipped in stages, people have to check on them, etc
  
• they have to fly. Flights for the dog are no less expensive in base cost than human tickets
  
• the organization doing this for you puts a number of man hours in on both ends, which has to be paid

You do not want to get this wrong. If your animal shows up in New Zealand and the paperwork isn't done or isn't correct, they are quite likely to euthanize it.

Whereas a car, you just put it in a (nice, padded, etc) container and a ship brings it.

The initial quote for my dog was $10k. One way. Coming back is much simpler, but figure another $5k. Can't justify that for the dog.

Looks like the car would cost about $4k each way. Much more doable, but $8k ... I could do many gentleman driver activities at the Taupo track, in single seaters and V8 supercar replicas (yes!) and not hit $8k. And I wouldn't have to worry about breaking stuff, tires, tools, all that. These driver days. I'm thinking this is the way to go.

Anybody wants to visit and hit a day, let me know. I'm assuming our house will have a couch. If not it will probably have plush carpet for your sleeping pleasure.

 

Or you can snuggle with the sheep out back

Brilliant synopsis, I had no damn idea it was so complicated but I guess it makes sense. Props!

 

So exciting you are coming to NZ! Where in Taupo are you going to be living? New Zealand is an amazing place to live I'm in the south island so we probably wouldn't cross paths but the miata(mx5s over here) scene is definitely getting bigger although probably not in the sort you guys are interested in . You should join the nzmx5 forum lots of good guys to talk to.

James

 

We will be looking in the Hilltop neighborhood of Taupo, in the Hilltop school district & within walking distance of the hospital where Ms Mobius shall be working.

 

Got the roadstersport midpipe & muffler installed today. I like it. Significantly louder than stock but not Spec Miata. The days of my car sounding like "giant-b-movie-angry-mutant-bumblee-***" are gone. It has a nice mellow tone at idle/cruise and is satisfyingly loud when you get on it.

I should note here that when I went to take the stock midpipe off, it had again lost the two nuts holding it to the header. I had used simple jam nuts with lock washers. This time I used big stronk bolts, with big stronk lock washers, and big stronk lock nuts. Don't see how it can come apart this time.

Next track day is April 19th at ORP for the first real track test. I have high hopes this muffler will not need to be swapped out for the Enthuza in order to be audible under track conditions.

The Bad:

The midpipe is two piece, with a slip joint. By finagling that slip joint length and rotating things around one is supposed to get the exhaust to clear the diff. I was unable to finagle things enough so that I couldn't make it hit the diff with moderate side to side pressure. So I hose clamped a couple of the hangers such that they were longer and more stiff in the vertical direction, and then used another couple of hose clamps to attach it to the lower suspension pickup so that it couldn't swing inwards enough to hit the diff. Maybe ghetto, but whatever.

I'll do some gopro tomorrow with tunnels.

 

 

Bad news.

Car is destroyed. Exiting a left hand turn today, I tracked out under power onto a concrete apron on the outside of the track. Transitioning from the pavement to the concrete the tail snapped and sent the car hard left into the wall. The front/front right hit hard and the car then caromed sending the right rear into the wall as well.

Remaining body panels in good condition: Trunk. Hard Top. Possibly doors, there are some minor scrapes where the fenders pushed back but they both opened fine and neither hit the wall.

Front is completely, completely, destroyed. Left suspension/control arms should be ok. Right UCA is toast. Right wheel is destroyed. Right V8R LCA may in fact have survived by transferring all force into the subframe, won't know until we get the front cut off and can take a look at it.

The center of the radiator is now approximately inline with the rotrex. The swaybar was pushed back into the damper, stopping the motor. This then caused the rotrex pulley to unspin itself completely from the rotrex.

The oil cooler mounted to the back of the radiator was pushed back completely into the motor as well. Water pump is probably suspect. Edit: radiator and oil cooler are destroyed.

Front right Xida appears to have survived but won't know for sure until later inspection. If it survived it is entirely due to the gorilla strength of the V8R LCA.

Diff carrier snapped the right rear arm. Did the axle get shoved into and destroy my Torsen? Unknown.

Despite the severity of the impact, the windshield was undamaged, and both doors opened freely. Well done Mazda.

My car was trailered to CSTG by a track mate while I drove his Lotus, he then trailered his Lotus home. My tire trailer etc. were carted back to Portland by other kind souls.

At this point I only hope the motor is still viable. Otherwise, sadness.

All money that I spent on this car was free and clear, burn it if you want, play money. I'm not devastated by the finances or anything. But this ... sucks.

 

Oh no man, thats bad news. Are you and anyone involved ok? Always sucks to see this happen.