Took a short jaunt up north to see the corona of the sun. Got caught in the traffic jam from hell heading back along OR HWY 97 with a million (I don't know) folks from California doing the same. If a folk from Cali would make eye contact I flew 2 fingers up for PEACE! Everyone was pretty calm!

Turned 287,000 miles on this trip. Stealth mode most of the way from Bend to Chemult. Usually an hour and a half max. A bazillion people made it a 9 hour trek. Shoulda camped out another day on that cattle ranch!

Anyway the beat up '06 FEH just sang it's song, guessing slightly >1/2 time in stealth mode for that 9 hour torture. AC banging the whole way to cool the battery.

My heart sank passing all the Subaru oil burners off the side of the road overheated. We had 3 of them before the FEH and Loved each one. Never again...

As an aside the cowhands hosting the event were some of the finest young men and women you'd want to meet. My old hippy wife (born and raised in CA) commented as we were leaving, "It's interesting that cowboys (and cowgirls) are always some of the nicest people I meet." My reply, "Easy, their parents taught them work ethic and manners." Didn't see cell a cell phone in their hand all weekend.

The FEH uses a K&N Air Filter. Prior to 200,000 changed the oil every 5,000 miles. Since every 10,000. Use a Scangauge to monitor the FEH.

 

Steve, that's really impressive mileage for your FEH. Did you have any major mechanical failures along the way, or just routine maintenance? I'm on the 10k/1yr oil change, Mobil 1.

Interesting about the Subaru's, I always thought they were really reliable. I had a WRX before the FEH and have been contemplating replacing the FEH with a new Forester XT turbo. My FEH has been the most unreliable vehicle I've owned, not expensive so far but lots of little problems and problems that can't be fixed. Right now I don't have regen braking anymore but otherwise performs as normal and no codes. A couple of times a month the SoC will go way low overnight, like 25%. The most dangerous and intermittent problems were unintended acceleration and failure of the ICE to restart from EV mode.

 

Here's the 250,000 mile thread. https://www.greenhybrid.com/forums/f...0-miles-30129/

No major repairs, just the usual discussed on this forum. Haven't done anything other than maintenance since. I got the FEH after we picked up a CX-5 for my wife. I don't put anywhere near the miles on a vehicle she does.

I felt bad about the Subaru's, we really enjoyed ours. In the late 90's Subaru had a problem with motors throwing rods at 85,000 miles. Our '97 went 150,000 before we sold it. So not all of them self destructed but enough it seemed to be a QC or design problem. Subaru's response was basically: bummer out of warranty.

So now on 2011 -2015 models folks were getting 1,200 miles to the quart of oil on a NEW car. Subaru's response was: oh they're suppose to do that. They lost the class action suit. The remedy is to extend the warranty on the crummy motor. https://www.torquenews.com/1084/suba...-should-you-do

The only reason we considered Mazda was because of the FEH. Drove everything we could locally in that class and ended up with the CX-5. It has 50,000 miles, we'll see in time if it's any good.