What’s That Sound?

We did some local running around on Saturday morning and on the way home we could both heard a weird sound once we got to stop and the Miata was idling. It wasn’t a rattle, but more a grumble. As we parked in the garage, the close quarters made the sound really noticeable. I thought it sounded bearing-ish, not main bearing, but maybe something in the valve train.

We started talking about what to do. I definitely didn’t want to drive it somewhere to have it looked at and my shop of choice would be Panic Motorsports about 50 miles away. They aren’t open on Saturday’s so I left a message to have them call me back when they get in.

Now, how do I get the car there. I called a local towing company and got an estimate; $240. Wow, seems high, but might be cheap if I try and drive the 50 miles and the car dies part way because then I still have a tow bill and maybe then a more serious issue. Next was to call a couple folks in the Miata club that have trailers for their racing machines and see if gas and dinner would be enough for one of them to get me there.

Call number one was a no go, not that the price was wrong, but they were heading out of town for a couple weeks on Monday. The second call was a little different. I didn’t get a definite no, but the days available for the trip were very limited. But Kurt volunteered to drive over from Augusta and take a listen to the sound to see I even needed the tow or it might be OK to drive it to the shop.

When he got here I started it up and before the engine could get too warm he laid hands on several placed to see if he could feel any weird vibrations. Feeling nothing, he then told me he wished he had brought over his mechanic’s stethoscope that he had just bought on a whim recently from Harbor Freight. Did I have one? I think he knew that was a rhetorical question when he asked it, given his knowledge of my auto wrenching capabilities (very little), but it was worth a shot, I might have won one in a raffle. He asked if I had any tygon tubing. “Nope,” I reply, “the closest to any tubing I’ve got is this extra piece of washing machine hose. So, using this poor substitute for the real this, Kurt announced that he was pretty sure that it is the bearing in the water pump making the growling noise. It didn’t sound too bad and I probably could drive it the 50 miles.

Both Donna and I agree, better safe than sorry, so we will probably have it towed. No sense in tempting fate. Now I’m just waiting on a call back from Steve at Panic.

48,000 Valves

I don’t know who the heck is buying all these solenoid valves but we ship out a crap load every day. The PIC (Production & Inventory Control) Manager sends me a PowerPoint presentation chart to print out at 18 x 24 on my plotter that shows Daily Goal, Daily Ship, Monthly Goal and Monthly Ship dollars. The daily goal number for September was 480k.

If each valve was $10 the would mean 48,000 valves went out our back door every work day, but I’m betting it is a lot fewer than that though. If you work in the process industry you’d know that an ASCO valve is premium product, sort of the Mercedes Benz of solenoid valves, so I think that $10 price is at the very bottom of our price chart.

As I backed into the parking spot in the North 40 of the Valve Store(TM) parking lot (our usual place) on Friday, I noticed that the odometer of the Purple Whale read 48000.

Who Knew?

Folly Beach Pier

Well, not only is baseball season over until April, so too is the first half of the Outlander TV show. Wow, 8 episodes in two months, take seven months off, then do two more months of TV. I hope maybe because the show has already been picked up for a second season, they’ll start filming it and there won’t be a 7 month break between season one and season two.

Speaking of season two, the author of the books and show consultant let out the news that there would be voice over from the male star in the second half of the show. There is a lot of controversy on the interwebs about the female’s voice over in the first half. Some folks find it takes them out of the show and at times it is redundant as it is just describing the action taking place. I kinda like it, but I’ve always liked it, I even liked the controversial voice over of Harrison Ford in the movie Bladerunner.

Oh, and where did the author make these comments? Twitter? Facebook? Nope the Compuserve forums. Compuserve? Who knew that name was still around? Do you have to use the Netscape Navigator browser to go there?

I Miss It Like Bad Tooth

 

 

Tonight at 7:05 PM I turned on the TV and watched….Wheel of Fortune. Its the first night of the baseball off season and they may have had the 26th worst record in the Major Leagues by losing over 90 games, but I’m sure going to miss watching the FRS bumble through 9 innings each night.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1426

Serial Offender

Destination - Pier

Yesterday was not the first time I’ve sat stopped in a Miata in front of a police car with its light bar strobing for this same issue. The previous time was quite a while ago, might have even been in an earlier Miata, back before they kept track of warnings by filling out a form.

I was making a left from the two lane Price Avenue onto the five lane Whiskey Road. This intersection is atypical in that cross traffic have segregated turns at crossing and or entering Whiskey Road. This means that when it is your turn to turn left, you get a green arrow. I was a ways down the road when the light went green and the two cars who triggered the signal were long gone by the time got to the intersection, so I barreled through without slowing and entered the rightmost lane because in about a 1/4 mile I was turning into Kroger’s parking lot.

Sure enough, there was a city cop sitting at the head of the line pointed in the direction I was going. When his light went green he hit his flashing lights and caught me half way to my destination. I got a warning about how I should enter the left most lane when turning left onto a multiple lane road.

What both these incidents have in common is the car I was driving and the manner I was driving it, more so than the actual lane entered. In my humble opinion, had I been piloting a Toyota Camry with in a Camry-esque way, neither LEO would have bothered me.

This is from the South Carolina Drivers Handbook: A left turn often takes more preparation than a right turn. …Then turn into the lane nearest and to the right of the center line. This, anyone can understand, so perhaps that particular section 56–5-2120 should be written more like this.

I still probably won’t obey it in situations like this one or yesterday because of the impending right turn though.

Happy Birthday From Officer Krupke

WarningIt is actually fall around here, so for my birthday we were going to drive down to Folly Beach in an attempt to get a Moss Motoring Challenge photo of their fishing pier and to get some seafood for lunch on the beach.

We started our road trip today in the usual way, by going to the local DD and getting my coffee and Donna’s hot chocolate, when we left the parking lot it got slightly unusual. It was early, so there was very little traffic on the 5 lane Whiskey Road and it was still dark, so picking the spot to exit was easy. I waited out the two cars coming from the left that were close together and there were two more coming from the right that had a enough separation to get between, so I swung left, out between them and got in the far right lane because I was turning right at the next intersection about 200 yards away.

As I stopped at the light and prepared to make a right on red, that second car that I had got in front of, pulled to a stop behind me. It was a white car and I instantly recognized the headlight signature as that of a Dodge Charger, which probably meant one thing, city cop.

My blinker was on and the car behind me put his on. I turned right and moved to the left turn lane in preparation for my next turn. Sure enough the white Charger followed in step and when he got in the left lane, he lit ’em up. I hung another left into the back parking lot of the quick oil change place there.

We were in the Miata with the top down and as the officer approached the car, Donna “helpfully” told him it was my birthday and it was her fault we were going this way as she forgot something at home. I think our LEO was more nervous than I was because as he tried to explain why he was pulling me over he was stumbling over his sentences and was a little confused as to where I came from when I got on Whiskey Rd. He did get out that the reason we were gathered here together was that when making a left turn onto a multi-lane road you should enter the leftmost lane first before moving into the right one.*

I handed him my license, insurance card and registration and as he walked back to his car he said, “If everything checks out OK, I’ll probably send you on your way.” Well, of course everything checked out, so our friendly young officer reiterated why he pulled my over, then explained he was just giving me a warning, which generated the piece of paper he was giving me. He then wished me a Happy Birthday, told me to drive safe and sent me on my way.

I blurred out my driver’s license number in the image above (I didn’t do any of the rest of the info as it is already readily available elsewhere on this site.) I did change the name of our police officer** and blurred out his badge number as well.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1424

*South Carolina Code of Laws, SECTION 56-5-2120. Required position and method of turning. Paragraph (b), Left turns … Whenever practicable the left turn shall be made to the left of the center of the intersection so as to leave the intersection or other location in the extreme left-hand lane lawfully available to traffic moving in the same direction as the vehicle on the roadway being entered. I’m guessing that if I was to get a ticket it would be for a violation of that bit of very confusing legalese. It is the only thing in the vehicle code that I can find that is remotely on point.

**to the first name that popped into my head, it’s from West Side Story in case you were wondering.

English-ish Spoken Here

There are 6 microwaves on an L-Shaped counter in our break room. One of them no longer works, a fellow associate made a sign using a marker and a paper towel. Placing half the paper towel inside the microwave, closing the door leaving the words in big black letters on the outside, “DO NOT WORK.”

Donna and I were heating up our lunches, along with another co-worker, and we all got to wondering who might have made up the impromptu sign (hoping against hope it was not someone from HR or some other college graduate from the front office.) Up came the stockroom supervisor and we asked if she had a pen so we could fix the sign. She did, and quickly added an ES on the end of DO to make it right.

As she was doing it she said, “I seen that this morning.”

Started down, went up, back down, up again, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1422