WEEI III

I called and complained to to MLB.com’s Customer Service on Thursday morning. Talked with a nice fellow named Victor, who while sympathetic, could not do anything about a refund because their policy is they are only available for 10 days after purchase. He asked if I would email him a description of my issues and he would pass them along to his supervisor. I sent him a novella generated from my ranting posts here and earlier email traffic to someone else in their customer service department.

The Red Sox had an afternoon make-up game with the Orioles and wouldn’t you know it, the audio was nearly flawless. But tonight’s game against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim was one of the worst ever in the quantity of sound gaps. I’m listening to the game on the Angels radio station, ESPN. I’d really like to listen to the Bosox’s announcers, maybe if I tried the Spanish language broadcast, might learn to speak a second language…

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 165

Mmmm…BBQ

The monthly meeting of the Master’s Miata Club was tonight and we held it in a back room at Bobby’s BBQ just west of Aiken. I like the food here and managed 3 trips to the buffet, before getting dessert. I don’t heap the plate or anything, but I do get my $6.95 worth.

The weather has been downright dreary around here the last week or so, but today we did manage to get the top down for the drive in to work and the ride home. We put it up while at the meeting as radar looked ugly, but it didn’t rain while we were inside. So the top went back down for the drive home. We almost made it home with it down, but about 2 miles from the garage we had to put it up as the slower city driving allowed the rain to get us wet instead of just the windshield.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 162

Happy Birthday Mom

Wow, 79 years old today. I know what you are thinking, if you knew you were going to live that long you would have taken better care of yourself. Well, hell, I don’t smoke, don’t drink, I’m taking blood pressure pills and now cholesterol lowering meds and sometimes I’m not so sure I’ll make it to 50, a mere 4 months from now. 🙂

WEEI II

Last week while listening to the Red Sox/Blue Jays games on WEEI via MLB.com the annoying sound gaps I’ve been complaining about seem to come and go. I sent an email reply to the last customer service address I had that said keep them posted, but heard nothing. Saturday and Sunday the Yankee’s games were on the tube, so I watched. Monday and Tuesday games with Baltimore were on ESPN as well. Tonight it was back to “radio” and I couldn’t make it through the player introductions the silences were so bad. Tomorrow I’ll give them a call on the toll free number and see if I can get 2/3rds of my money back or something.

Guess I’ll go back to listening to Radio Paradise in front of the PC in the evenings and check the box scores in the morning…

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 158

Hi Ho, Hi Ho

Going back to work is such a PITA after having a 3-day weekend. We made an effort not to have to go back, but unfortunately some other bozo won.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 158

Happy Memorial Day

We had the day off from work, but did little if anything in celebrating the holiday, unless of course you count eating red, white & blue M & Ms. We had planned on a hike in Hitchcock Woods but the morning rain put a literal damper on that plan. Instead we just hung about the house and enjoyed a lazy day.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 157

Aborted Mod

I had 3-1/2 hours free this morning after we returned from the store, so I decided the time had come to paint the brake calipers. I loosened the lug nuts on all four wheels a half turn and put the car on jack stands. I pulled the right side wheels off and when I started on the back left there was one lug nut that required a lot of force to back off. I quit after a half turn knowing just what that meant, stripped or cross threaded lug nut. It felt just like the last time back in April. So much for painting calipers.

What the heck, I thought, I’ll do the passenger side this morning and do the other side at another time. I removed the bolts holding the right front caliper on and lifted it off. Sprayed it real good with brake cleaner, so the paint would adhere to it and rested it on top of the rotor. I then went in search of something to hold it or hang it from while I sprayed it. First I was going to paint it with some silver I had as an undercoat before hitting it with my Garnet Red in a can. Couldn’t find the old coat hanger I thought I had in the garage, so I went back to the car to study my options some more. The more I looked, the more I thought it would be hard to mask all the spots I needed to and make it easy to paint without getting overspray on places I didn’t want to. I relubed the slider pins and put the brakes back together.

Because I had the wheel off in back I lubed those slide pins too before mounting the wheels back on the car. I used some of my recently purchase anti-size compound on the lug nuts as a good measure. For the heck of it, I also put some anti-seize on the left front lug nuts before putting it back on the car. That left me with the left rear and it’s stuck lug nut. I tightened the other three down and slowly backed off the offending nut. Maybe because the car was a little cooler or the other nuts being tight, but I could slowly back it off the stud. When I looked inside the nut I could see that it was very mangled. The stud had a few misplaced grooves but otherwise it looked OK. I put the anti-seize on all of them and carefully tightened up that scarred nut on the scarred stud.

I have zero proof that this is what happened, but from recent experience it certainly seems likely. The knucklehead who changed out my previous stripped stud decided he didn’t want to put a half mangled lug nut on his nice new stud, so he walked around the back of the car, removed a random lug nut off the left rear wheel and using his impact wrench force fed the bad nut on hoping that would re-form the threads. Instead he just created another problem as I am going to have to have the one on the left replaced, plus it might be a good idea to get a new lug nut. You can bet that even though they should do the work for free at the LTS, I’m going to cut my loses and go somewhere else and pay to have it done.

I haven’t given up entirely on painting the calipers yet either. I think instead of the exact match thing I will go get a small can of the liquid Rustoleum in maroon and use that. I had a real good experience with that stuff when I did my old Laguna Blue’s calipers in yellow.

Started down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 156