Month: July 2005

Well today was the day for the long delayed brake caliper painting. In preparation, yesterday I had bought a pint can of “Colonial Red” paint and some cheap small paint brushes at home store L. Pulled all the wheels off, including carefully backing off my defective stud/lug nut combo, and proceeded to clean all the calipers using brake cleaner and one of those small brushes. Opened the can and started painting the left rear caliper. Boy this looks a lot less maroon than the label led me to believe, maybe it will darken up when it dries. Painted the right rear. Then the two fronts, but unlike last time I didn’t paint the brackets, just did the calipers. Went back to check on the left rear, the first caliper painted to see if it looked any maroonish. Nope, the paint had darkened a bit, but it just looked like I had painted it red and it got dirty.

I finished my 1st coat at around 11:00AM and decided that the color was just too red, so I figured I would go out to the home store HD and get something more maroon for the second coat. Trouble is I live in the Bible Belt and we still have blue laws around here, the stores do not open on Sunday’s until 1:30PM. Seeing as I now had a couple of hours to kill I thought that it would be a good opportunity to clean up the interior a bit. Over on the Miata.net forum someone had recommended using Mr. Clean Magic Eraser on dirt and those tough scuff marks. And what do you know it works pretty good, so I cleaned up all the tan plastic of the interior. Didn’t do any of the black because the Magic Eraser is just like a pencil eraser, it leaves behind dust. Even though I wiped behind my erasing with a damp cloth I didn’t want to get white fuzz or whatever on the dash.

With still more time to waste I went ahead and cleaned the leather seats, then followed that with a good conditioning. It really needed it, the seats weren’t too dirty, but after last week’s unexpected rain soaking they really did need the conditioning.

Cleaned myself up and went in for lunch. When the sandwich was finished the clock read 1:20, perfect, by the time we pile in the MSV and get to HD, it will be open. This time I got a can of “Claret Wine” and although the shade shown on the label was just like the one for “Colonial Red” I figured with that name it should be perfect. When we left the store the rumble of thunder could be heard off in the distance. Good thing I had put the top up on the Miata. Even though it was under an awning at home that wouldn’t keep it totally dry. By the time we got home it hadn’t started to rain there yet, so I quick like a bunny painted the second coat on the calipers. The color was better, but not really close enough to the car color for my perfectionist ways. Not two minutes after I finished painting the rains came, so I had plenty of time to sit in the garage and look at the car and contemplate my options.

Donna had a great idea, she said why not use those three little bottles of touch-up paint that you got for free from Mazda. Would have been great, but the paint I have been using is latex and the touch up paint is oil-based and would probably eat the the other stuff off and make an icky mess. For now I am going to just live with the mismatch, in the future I may look for something more maroon, but for now “Claret Wine” will have to do.

When I went to put the back brakes back together, I couldn’t get the caliper back over the reinstalled brake pads. Dang, usually it is a tight squeeze, but this is way too much interference. That’s when it hit me, when I cleaned the interior I had pulled up the ebrake handle to get underneath it clean. Activating the ebrake expands both back calipers. Dang. Slight set back, but not insurmountable. I put the rear pad in and lower the caliper into position, then using a big screwdriver pry on the front claws of the caliper and it squeezes the piston back. Side one went easy, but on side two I slipped with the screwdriver and scraped a big spot of the new paint right off. Double dang. No problem, we’ll just get the paint can back out and touch it up. That worked just fine, no one will be the wiser that I had to do a repaint of that spot.

It didn’t go smoothly though, continuing what started at breakfast, this small job didn’t go right or easy either. As I dodged the tire sitting to the right of the car I stumbled with the open can of paint and splashed about a quarter of it on the driveway. Thankfully, continuing what started at breakfast, it was not a major snafu, the paint didn’t get on anything but the ground.

For the rest of the night I will be in the living room reading a book and watching the rebroadcast of today’s stage of the Tour de France on OLN. Hopefully I won’t fall off the couch or anything.