Man, my wife is cool. I don’t know how I got so lucky. Tonight was the night of the Master’s Miata Club’s 9th anniver­sary din­ner over in Augusta. She got all dressed up, fixed her hair and face, but didn’t bat an eye my request to keep the top down for the ride over. Din­ner was at 5:45–6:00 and the sun was still up, but it was prob­a­bly only 50 degrees, no prob­lem she just put on a coat. After din­ner of the 8 Miatas in the lot (a few folks came in the MSV) there were only 2 tops down for the ride home in the near 40 degree temps at 9:00 PM. One was Rudy, Club Pres­i­dent, who never puts his up and ours. Donna just said roll up the win­dows and turn on the heat.

Started up, now down.
Top Tran­si­tions since 02/01/02: 2

So busy writ­ing about all that other stuff I did to the car yes­ter­day that I for­got the real first thing I did. In Friday’s install­ment, I men­tioned a tick­ing noise ema­nat­ing from the heater/AC fan. I knew it was from behind the glove­box some­where, so the first thing I did was take out the box. As it turned out I didn’t need to, no big deal, it is only two screws… Unhook­ing 3 wiring har­nesses and remov­ing 3 screws is all it took to drop the fan from its hous­ing. Lo and behold inside near the squir­rel cage was a dried out oak pollen clus­ter. It had taken about 11 months to work its way from up near the wind­shield and the fresh air intake down to the fan motor. While I had the fan out I looked inside where it came out of and sure enough there was one more pollen thing wait­ing to take the oth­ers place as soon as I but­toned every­thing back up. No more noise.

Drove over to Evans, Ga to check the Miata Club mail­box. The Weather said the temp was 57 so we left the house with the top down to enjoy the ride. Prob­lem was the sun was cov­ered by the clouds and there was some lin­ger­ing fog around. After about 10 min­utes we put up the win­dows, in 10 more we turned on the heater and after 10 more we put up the top, just too cold feel­ing. After stop­ping and check­ing the mail and then dri­ving a bit fur­ther to make a dona­tion into our retire­ment fund (Lotto South and Big Game tick­ets) we stopped at the North Augusta Green­way and took a mile or so walk. After walk­ing we were warm enough to put the top back down for the last 1/2 hour of the trip.

Started down, up, now down.
Top Tran­si­tions since 02/01/02: 8

Cold morn­ing, so the top got put up before leav­ing the garage. Warm after­noon, so the top went back down for the ride home. This is the time of year where that pat­tern will get repeated for a quite a while. Aver­age lows at night mid 30’s and aver­age highs in the after­noon mid 60’s.

Mazda doesn’t make a blank­ing plate in the cor­rect size to fill the spot in the con­sole, so today I ordered a Mazda lit­tle cubby hole thing. It will fill up the major­ity of the gap and I’ll have to fab­ri­cate some­thing out of alu­minum and paint it with some black crinkle-coat paint to fill the rest. Think­ing maybe of get­ting some retro look­ing tog­gle switches to put in the plate. I won’t hook them to any­thing, just label them things like, 50 Cal. Gun, Oil Slick, NOS, Bat Hook, etc. Inspired by this, but they want way too much for them. They also make some for the power win­dow switches but I could never use them as I some­times hit them with my elbows and those switches would prob­a­bly hurt.

Started down, went up, now down.
Top Tran­si­tions since 02/01/02: 10

Pre­dictably, I put the top up the ride to and put it back down for the ride from work.

Man those guys in the Trussville Mazda parts depart­ment are good. Ordered the cubby hole yes­ter­day and got it today via UPS ground. Bad thing was it was too big for the hole. When I checked Miata. net Garage sec­tion there was men­tion of some trim­ming required to use big­ger cubby that I ordered, but to the extent I thought. This thing needed, in my opin­ion, major rework. About a 1/4″ off the bot­tom had to be removed and there was no way I was going to get a straight line across the 7 inches or so of width. I sent it back. They were real nice about tak­ing the part back, I’m just out about the $10 it took to cover ship­ping in both directions.

My next option was $80 for one of those Really Nice CD Cad­dys from Seri­ous Auto. But before I did that, I went and vis­ited the company’s Mad Sci­en­tist in res­i­dence and bor­rowed 4 tog­gle switches. Wanted to see how they would look in my tem­po­rary card­board blank­ing plate before I spent that much on some­thing I could only “see” on the web. Made up a cou­ple of labels and stuck them on there too.

Not too bad for a first attempt. I don’t like the labels yet, maybe I can find some­one who still has one of those old dynamo pres­sure label­ers. I think maybe I need lights too. Just wire the lights through the switches so they come on when the switch is up… Maybe get one as a momen­tary on to use as the garage door opener. I can see this mod get­ting out of hand.

Started down, went up, now down.
Top Tran­si­tions since 02/01/02: 12

Dull Feb­ru­ary day here in Miata­land. Got some more ideas for the tog­gle switch labels from FillG over on Road­ster­Chat: Smoke Screen. Nails on Road. Pas­sen­ger Eject. Only other news is I’ve got a buyer for the CD Changer I yanked out of the trunk. A fel­low Master’s Miata Club mem­ber wants to put it his daughter’s 90 Miata.

Once again, started down, went up, now down.
Top Tran­si­tions since 02/01/02: 14

Usu­ally the Miata sits on Sun­day, but today was dif­fer­ent. Donna’s mom didn’t want to lunch out, so we got to drive the Miata with the top down. After eat­ing we went gro­cery shop­ping for the week. I had to revert to actu­ally plan­ning where the gro­cery bags go and in what order, etc. instead of just toss­ing them in as I get to do with the Honda Civic. No prob­lem, now 2 weeks worth of gro­ceries might require some real plan­ning and maybe even a bag at the passenger’s feet.

Finally bought switches and lights for the con­sole. Ended up back at the place I went to on lunch Thurs­day. Radio Shack had more kinds off tog­gle switches than you could shake a stick at, but they were all pretty black or col­ored plastic…I wanted plain old sil­ver. The other parts stores only had one switch like I wanted and no lights. Tomor­row night I’ll take the con­sole out and see about mount­ing the stuff and wiring it up. While I was at the store I found some 194 bulbs in blue. I bought two and will stick them in the dash and see if they will make the ODO num­bers blue.

Started down, still down.
Top Tran­si­tions since 02/01/02: 20

Back to the pat­tern. Put the top up for the morn­ing com­mute, put it down for the return trip. A busy day in Miata­land. Took the mak­ings of my switch/light panel to work and wired it up. After work I installed it.

Looks good, still need to fill about an 1/8 below the HU. I may try and butcher up most of the sil­ver trim piece that came with the radio…

The blue 194 bulbs were a waste of $3. They are real blue when out, but on they look white with a hint of blue, so the ODO is still white. Gotta find them blue bulb “condoms.”

The 2″ Barn­door Fan Club stick­ers came in today. That’s the good news, bad news is that they aren’t exactly right. Emailed the place I got them from (websticker.com) and they said they’d check into it. They are almost good enough, but after going through 4 dif­fer­ent proofs and think­ing you got it right, they come in with the image smaller and slightly off center.

Started down, went up and now down.
Top Tran­si­tions since 02/01/02: 22

The sticker folks emailed back to let me know that they goofed by show­ing me and approv­ing a design that they could not print. They need 1/8″ of non-printed bor­der and we had agreed to a design that left only 1/16″, that is why the image was smaller. It was off cen­ter by a 1/32″ and they told me they would reprint them, but couldn’t guar­an­tee any bet­ter cen­ter­ing as 1/32 was within “indus­try stan­dards.” Because the image size was their fault, they offered to knock 25% off the price charged, to which I agreed. The stick­ers are now on sale in the Barn­door Fan Club Store along with all the other club merchandise.

Started down, went up, still up.
Top Tran­si­tions since 02/01/02: 25

Note to self: Never make a snap deci­sion on the tire you buy.

If you need a set of tires because one is irrepara­ble, put on the tiny spare and go home, check Miata net. Back in Decem­ber when I needed tires in a hurry and the guy told me what tires he had, they sounded like a tire I had read favor­able reviews about on MN, but they were not. Turns out 910 is a lot far­ther away performance-wise from 930 than the num­bers let on. The tires I bought were 3 per­for­mance lev­els down from the ones I thought they were and 4 lev­els down from where I was. The Pole Posi­tions I now have are at the top of the street tire line and one step *up* from where I was when this whole mess started. I think that next time I will know, I ended up wast­ing the $270 I spent on the 910’s. I got my money back on them and they took it off the price of the S-03’s but I still ended up pay­ing as much addi­tional for them as they would have cost out­right from the Tire Rack. If I don’t get out and look at the scratches those chuck­le­heads put on my rims installing the tires and just drive, I’ll be fine.

Started down, went up, went down, still down.
Top Tran­si­tions since 02/01/02: 28

We had our first lit­tle MMM…Time with the Miata Club. 10 Miatas and one RX-7. We met at the Sno-Cap Drive In in North Augusta. We popped the hoods and chat­ted out­side. We chat­ted inside nearly fill­ing all the booths. We pretty much over ran the joint. Before we over stayed our wel­come, Stacey Tim­mer­man lead us on a 20–25 mile drive around north of the Inter­state. Fun time.

Started down, went up, went down, now up.
Top Tran­si­tions since 02/01/02: 31

Drove to work as usual with the top up. There was frost on the fields, but we are going to get to 70 this after­noon. Spring is slowly approach­ing though, almost don’t need the barn­doors up for the morn­ing com­mute, get­ting lighter every day. I really should be work­ing on the next edi­tion of The Dri­ver, but instead I am post­ing on Road­ster­Chat, Miata.net forum and blog­ging about my dull day. I don’t mail it ’til Thurs­day, so I prob­a­bly won’t start work­ing on it in earnest unit Wednes­day.

Started up, went down for the ride home, still down.
Top Tran­si­tions since 02/01/02: 32

Braved the chill this morn­ing on the way to work. When we get in the car in the morn­ing it is rel­a­tively warm from sit­ting in the garage all night which makes the first part of the com­mute OK. Today we wanted some Hardee’s Bis­cuits ‘n’ Gravy for break­fast. So while we were inside the car was out­side cool­ing off. Turned on the heater for the 6 miles, no big deal, but I’m sure we looked nutso to the envi­ron­men­tally chal­lenged. I had the boot on because there was no men­tion of rain for the next cou­ple of days (just cold and we ain’t scared of no cold.) For­tu­nately I had to run an errand at around 9, because as I was com­ing back to the plant it started to sprin­kle. When I got in the lot I quick like put the top up. As I walked back into the build­ing from the far cor­ner of the lot I actu­ally got a lit­tle wet. As fast as the errant shower appeared, it dis­ap­peared just as fast. By lunch and for the rest of the day it was mostly sunny. Dropped the top for the ride home. Prob­a­bly be up for the next cou­ple of days, weather folks are pre­dict­ing 40 degree days and teens at night.

Started down, went up, back down for the ride home, still down.
Top Tran­si­tions since 02/01/02: 34