Life of Brian – Page 213 – a proud part of the 90%

Well, That Explains That

Saturday, September 17, 2016

24V on 22V

Washed both cars this morning. Started with the Sonata because I knew if I did the Miata first, I’d look over at that big car and just put away the hose. After drying the Miata I was struck by how the license plate frame, painted with the same silver paint as the patch on the bumper, looked sort of greenish too. I was fully prepared to believe that the silver paint I ordered from automotivetouchup.com was the correct shade and I screwed it up with the off-brand clear coat I used, but I never clear coated the plate frame. So I looked at the information sticker inside the driver’s door and found the color code of the car, 22v. Then I went over to the shelf where I had the touch up paint stored and looked at the can, it read 24V!

There was only one silver on the Miatas in 2002 and it was 22V, AKA Sunlight Silver Metallic. How could I have gotten the wrong paint? I went back in the email and looked at the order confirmation I received and sure enough there at the bottom was “Description: 12 oz Aerosol Spray Paint, 2002 Mazda MX5 Miata: Cerrion Silver Metallic 24V.” I went to the paint web site and found out what the problem is, you can choose MX5 Miata or just plain Miata and each page has a different list of paint codes.

I went to the contact page and filled out my name, email, phone and this is what I put in the text area:

I believe I was led astray by your web page color selection process. On August 15th I ordered a 12oz spray can of silver touch-up paint for my 2002 Mazda Miata on Order #9167888. The paint code for that year Miata is 22V, but I received 24V.

Admittedly I probably had several chances to realize I had the wrong color paint, but I didn’t notice it until I had painted a portion of my rear bumper (and license plate frame.) My fault was my trust in my knowledge of Miatas in that I knew there was only one silver offered on the Miata in that year.

When I selected my color I must have chosen from the drop down boxes “2002 – Mazda – MX5 Miata” because the generated list of colors shows one silver, so I selected it. Unfortunately that was 24V, a color not available on the Miata in 2002. To get the right color you have to chose “2002 – Mazda – Miata” to get to a list that shows the right color code, 22V. Why 2 different selections anyway?

Attached are screenshots of the two different pages. And now that I look at them closely I see several errors on the two pages, both in omissions and additions.

Could you please ship, at your expense a replacement 12oz spray can in the color I really need – 22V?

Thanks for your consideration,
Brian

: 2002 – Mazda – MX5 Miata

: 2002 – Mazda – Miata

After I sent that off I did a little research over on the Miata Forum and found out that 24V actually was a Miata color in 2002, it was used on some Special Edition cars in Japan and Australia. Ahh, maybe that is the reason for the two Miata options on the touch up paint maker’s web site. If they are using MX5 Miata for non-US cars their chart is still wrong as there was 22V silver available in both those countries as well…we’ll see how they respond.

The Modifications List

Friday, September 16, 2016

Over on the left-hand side in the area marked “Pages” were a couple of links called Brian’s Basic Miata and Brian’s Miata Mods. Because they related specifically to the 2003 LS Emperor I pulled them down the other day. Today the Basic Miata page went back up because I edited it to match the base 2002 CTBNL.

I’ll probably resurrect the Mods page as well, but most of the current mods are David’s so maybe I’ll need to call it something other than “Brian’s Miata Mods.” Possibly The Miata’s Mods and keep it two sections, his and mine.

And in the mine section I’ll have to work out some sort of metric to keep track of how much of a pain in the butt they were to accomplish. 😀

Bare Bar

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

When David installed the roll bar in the car he never got around to trimming the carpet on the rear shelf. It wasn’t really noticeable because the carpet was sort of tucked underneath tight against the bar, but it was on my To-Do list. This was a perfect project for Saturday afternoon because I could do it in the air conditioned garage.

I tilted and pushed the seats forward so I could get at the carpet and when I put my hand down on the roll bar to climb in, my kind of stuck. When I pulled it off there was a glob of very viscous sticky stuff on the palm. I looked back where my hand was and you could see a streak of glue running in a couple places from under the fuzzy velcro pieces.

The all black interior strikes again. It gets so hot inside the car it surpasses the melting point of the adhesive on the back of the hook & loop fastener tape. We need an alternate way to secure our seat to roll bar anti-squeak measures. Sewing would work, but we have no sewing machine. And even if we did, it wouldn’t be anything heavy duty enough to go through both the heavy vinyl and the fuzzy tape, which is the same reason hand stitching is out.

So I did the best thing I could, I removed the offending vinyl cover and the high density foam piece that was stuck on the front of the bar. Now there is no need for anti-squeak measures at all because the seat back sits a full inch in front of the bar. And because the seats of the 2001 and up Miatas have the higher backs there is not much chance of my our heads contacting the metal roll bar if we ever get rear-ended.

Of course when you think of safety aspects of the roll bar, you would hate to have it protect you in one way and be a hazard in another. Not much chance of hitting your head is not the same as zero chance, so maybe it might be worth a few bucks to find a local upholstery shop to sew that velcro on for us.

THEANSR

Sunday, September 11, 2016

I blogged yesterday about maybe getting a personalized plate, but I’ve already had a chance at one, it came on the CTBNL. David said I could keep it if I wanted and I thought about it, but in the end it was a personalized plate and he picked it personally, so it would have felt weird to keep it. My answer might have been different if I had thought it up without any outside influence, tried to get it for the Emperor, but couldn’t because it was already taken by David.

You sort of have to be a Miata enthusiast or a reader of Jalopnik to get the meaning of the plate. Maybe it did start with the Jalopnik piece, but the phrase it represents is all over the car related internet now and has spawned at least a half dozen Blipshift T-shirts (of which I own a couple.)

Car Name? (Part III)

Saturday, September 10, 2016

The weather has been kind of mild for the last couple weeks around here, but last Wednesday on the way home from our monthly haircut I decided to turn on the A/C in the CTBNL. The light came on in the button, but in the whole 15 minute drive home the temperature being blown out of the vents never cooled below the 95° outside air.

When we got home I popped the hood and cycled the on/off switch and the compressor never kicked on and the A/C fan on the radiator never started up. Then I noticed something out of place, well, something missing, the cap was gone off one of the A/C lines. Did this have anything to do with it?

The A/C worked when we bought the car. I’m sure of it because when the compressor came on it caused a bit of belt squeal. As a matter of fact I never could get rid of the that squeal so that eventually I took the car to the Automotive Workbench and paid $50 to have them fix it. Hey, they were working in this area tightening belts, did they knock off the cap and cause this no A/C issue? Probably not, so back the CTBNL goes to the fellows at Automotive Workbench.

I get the call, no freon in the system. They have to recharge the system and add some dye so that whatever leak the car has can be located. A hundred fifty dollars later and there is now very cold air coming from the vents. I have to take it back in about a week and see if they can look for the problem.

It took four days to get the windshield right, we are on our 4th attempt at getting mats to look the way we’d like, the whole silver paint on the bumper fiasco, the Grom Audio box to play MP3s is cutting out on hot days and it just seems like every little simple mod, previously easily done on past Miatas, are a struggle. Both Donna and I are starting to think this car is cursed.

Maybe it is trying to tell us its name. This is a Japanese car, so I fire up the trusty Google Translator and discover that cursed is Norowa Remashita (no row ah – re mawsh ta). That is too much of a mouthful, so I try a couple synonyms. Jinxed comes back as Tsuitemasen (soot e ma sen), OK but still a little much. The next two are a little better though, bewitched translares to Mewaku (me wha koo) and bedeviled is Nayama (nay yah ma). Mmmm, both of those would fit on a personalized plate…

Car Name? (Part II)

Friday, September 9, 2016

This is slightly tangential to the naming of the silver Miata…

Here at the Valve Store we use Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGVs) to run parts from the stockroom to the assembly lines in certain cases. Our first set of AGVs were about the size of a large Radio Flyer Red Wagon and it followed a 2″ wide metallic piece of tape laid out in loops in the aisles around the shop floor. These worked pretty good except it kept the Maintenance Department busy replacing the gaps in the tape from the wear and tear of foot and forklift traffic. Because humans need to anthropomorphize their mechanical underlings, these two AGVs were named Bubba and Bubbette.

They have decided to upgrade our AVGs to a more modern system. These babies are the size of a forklift and use an optical system that bounces a rotating beam off of reflective tubes stationed at intervals along the walls surrounding the assembly floor. The Stockroom Supervisor opened up the floor to submitting names for the new AGVs. She got 70 different pairs of names for consideration.

A lot of pop culture references (my entry is bolded and Donna’s is italicized) with a sprinkling of two word puns and a few robot inspired names. Another good reason not to ask the general public to name something, by either Internet or Post-It note.

Car Name? (Part I)

Thursday, September 8, 2016

I have been referencing the new silver Miata by the acronym CTBNL which means Car To Be Named Later, but what if later never comes? Our first two Miatas never had names, while the thrid one did, The Emperor. It got its name because it was an LS, the top of the line with leather seats, a cloth top and other goodies, plus it was such smooth riding car compared to the previous one, it just felt royal.

Cars are supposed to tell you their names subliminally by their deeds/actions or by your reaction to them, so far nothing has come to mind. I thought maybe I’ll just create one for it with a starting point of the 5 letters of the acronym – CTBNL. What words could I create that had those particular letters in that particular order with other letters in between and around them?

My first step was to write the 5 consonants out with gaps between them, start plugging in vowels and then searching the internet to see if they might be real words. Not much luck. Step 2 was to search the internet for a sort of word generator that would use my criteria and come up with words that fit. It took a couple tries before I found dCode and bingo, 13 words.

CONTUBERNAL
CONTUBERNIAL
CONTUBERNYAL
CONTRIBUTIONAL
RECTOABDOMINAL
CERATOBRANCHIAL
CRYOTURBATIONAL
CERATOBRANCHIALS
PECTINIBRANCHIAL
COUNTERBALANCINGLY
OCTACHLOROBIPHENYL
OCTACHLOROBIPHENYLS
ACETYLMETHYLCARBINOL

I really like the first one, CONTUBERNAL because it means literally “living in the same tent” or living in close proximity; intimate, familiar and this certainly fits Donna and I in the Miata. But the trouble is that first N – Car Named To Be Named Later – doesn’t work. Looking down the list the only word that has the 5 magic letters in the right order with no extras is – RECTOABDOMINAL – and that certainly won’t fly.

I’d open it up to internet voting, but I’m afraid that Miaty McMiataface would win. So for now, CTBNL it is.