Picked me up a new daily

The first part of my trip to SoCal was great. Got to spend time with my brother and friends. Got some good food, went to a swap meet, and visited UCLA. The second part was.... an adventure. I made it to Vegas and ended up staying there about 3 hours longer than planned. One rear fender was about 1/4" above the tire while stopped and the other was literally on it. The previous owner gave me a jack but the Racelands have so much travel, the wheel wouldn't leave the ground. I went to Home Depot and bought a few 2x4's but couldn't get them to work. I ended up pulling the wheel into a gutter in the middle of the parking lot which let me get the wheel off the ground. The lugs were torqued on so tight I couldn't get them to budge with a tire iron so I had to raise the coil through the wheel/wheel well. I raised it about 2 inches on the coil which added to about 1/4" wheel gap when compressed. This a shorter version of the Vegas story.

I get back on the road and about 4 hours later my battery light starts flashing. The car starts bogging down and the lights flicker. I pull over to check the battery and it turns out the alternator ground split in half (I found that out later). I'm on a fairly small highway an hour south of Ely,NV. It starts to rain and is getting dark. I call my dad and he offers to drive the 8 hours from Boise to pick me up with a trailer.

I'm 15 miles south of a small town (Lund, NV) and in a dirt lot. I decide to try and bump start it. I end up about 300ft off the highway (the small highway), in the dark, in the rain, on a dirt road. One of the hardtop latches is broken and it doesn't fit right so the doors won't open without the windows cracked. I decide to flag someone down to help me bumpstart it because I almost got it to start last time. The first guy I flagged down said he wouldn't help me but he would give me a ride. He seemed extremely sketchy so I didn't go with him. I go back to my car and realize that this sketchy old man told me he would send someone my way and I'm not visible from the highway so I start getting a little paranoid. I decide to flag someone down to help me push it back onto the highway because there was a little traffic flow, I felt it was safer that way. This guy pulls over and we try to push it up the dirt road to no avail. He was nice and offered me a ride to Ely. I accepted after calling my dad to let him know I'd be in Ely.

We get into Ely and I book a $35 room. It was nice to know I didn't have to wait in a miata for 8 hours while getting rained on in cold weather on some sketchy dirt road. I got a warm meal at a nearby diner, took a shower, watch some tv and get a good 2.5 hours of sleep.

My dad gets there and we head for the Miata and it takes about 3 hours to get it loaded up. We tried jumping it and of course it dies after idling 30 seconds so we tow it back up to the highway because there's an incline that will make the trailer more level. The trailer isn't exactly slammed car friendly. We end up getting it loaded by (carefully) pulling the miata with the van and a tow cable up the ramps.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. We had breakfast and then he slept while I drove home. We picked up an alternator and the way and that night we discovered that the ground had split and the alternator fried.

Anyways... here are some pics I took:








I have already sold the Grids, which I'm getting loads of hate for, but I'm not a fan of buying someone else's car and calling it my own without doing anything to it.