Happy Birthday Special Agent Scully

Happy Birthday Dana

According to the X-Files Wiki, Dana Scully was born today, 52 years ago, on February 23, 1964.

On a side note, I just finished watching the finale of the 6 episode miniseries/revival of the X-Files and what a tremendous mess it was. Unfortunately the last one was not the only one, almost all of them were equally wretched. Even the critical favorite of the run, the Monster-of-the-Week “Mulder & Scully Meet the Were-Monster” played to me like a bad parody of some of my favorite episodes from the original run of the series. I was excited by the possibility of its return, but trust me when I say, even if Chris Carter does talk FOX executives into making more episodes, I won’t be watching them.

Mr. Miata Goes To Mini Tec

Mini Tec Visit

Man, I’m down to blogging once a week anymore, not with a bang but a whimper maybe?

Friday the Emperor got a bath because on Saturday the MMC was going on a day trip. Saturday the Emperor passed through the 163,000 mile barrier somewhere on SC-28 between North Augusta and McCormick.

About a month ago an item popped up in my Google Miata newsfeed about a company that is selling kits to transplant a Honda V6 into the first & second generation Miatas. They were just a hundred miles up the road in the small town of Royston, GA.

Mini Tec has been in business for 13 years hot rodding the original 1959-2000 Mini by stuffing Honda VTEC motors in them and now they have branched out in the Miata. A couple of emails and a phone call later and I arranged a tour of the place for the Masters Miata Club. We had seven cars and a dozen people follow Donna and I to the town that used to be just famous for being the boyhood home of Ty Cobb.

BJ and Norm welcomed us with open arms (and snacks), showed us around their shop and regaled us with tales of daring do. They had a couple of converted cars, an NA and an NB, with their hoods popped up showing those Honda V6 engines. The motor almost looks like it belongs there and as it turn out the the conversion actually is lighter than the stock get up and you end up with about twice as much horsepower.

They offered rides in the NA and only one of our group took them up on it. They zipped off up the road the shop was on and were gone for about 5 minutes. You could hear Dennis hooting a hundred yards down the road on the way back. This looks like big fun, but it would change the whole character of the car in my opinion and is not even on my radar, but if you desire big hp & torque numbers or are a hot rodder at heart, this might your ticket.

Started down, went up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 145

Motoring Challenge Points 6, Approx Miles Driven 300
Totals So Far: 35 points & 740 miles

Political Quandary

Well even if you don’t watch the news or read the paper, if you live in South Carolina you know it is primary season because your phone is ringing off the hook with calls from candidates, candidates and “their” PACs. Our ringer is off, so every one of those calls goes straight to the answering machine to be dealt with later.

All the calls are for Republican candidates, the Democrats have been silent so far, perhaps they are waiting for next week. You see, for some reason the two primaries are one week apart. First up is the Republican Primary this coming Saturday the 20th followed by the Democratic Primary on the 27th. The cool thing is that they are both open primaries, i.e. open to anyone. You can only vote in one of them though.

I’m registered as having no party affiliation, so in some states I wouldn’t be able to vote in any primary, but here in SC I can vote in either of them. There in lies the quandary. Should I vote in the Republican Primary for anyone but Trump? Or should I wait a week and vote for Sanders?

County, Parish or District

15 County LoopThis year’s Moss Motoring Challenge has the same requirement of just 15 counties as last year and while there are still three other county names (Jackson, Franklin & Jefferson) out there that occur in around 25 states. Donna will have none of that foolishness this time around.

So I’ve cooked up a different bit of craziness for this year’s 15. Last year my reason for doing 15 with the same name, forcing us into a convoluted huge loop, was because we live in a fairly county rich environment and I wondered where the challenge was. I claimed that we could get 15 counties in day trip from home. Well by golly, that is just what we are going to attempt.

There are 6 in South Carolina (Aiken, Saluda, Edgefield, McCormick, Allendale & Barnwell) and 9 in Georgia (Lincoln, Wilkes, McDuffie, Columbia, Richmond, Jefferson, Burke, Jenkins & Screven) that can be run in a loop. We will cross the Savannah River twice, once on US378 and back on US301 and if we drive from county seat to county seat it will be around 370 miles according to Google maps. That mileage should take us 7.5 hours baseline. If we average 10 minutes per photo stop that adds another 2.5 hours. Now we are up to 10 hours and doesn’t include bathroom, gas or eating stops.

I’m hoping we can knock off at least 70 miles or so off that total by dropping the county seat thing and cutting some corners. Either way we will have to do this near the summer solstice to maximize our daylight hours.

We’re Number 5!

We’ve actually known the results for a week or two now, they were published on the new page for this year’ Challenge. I was kind of waiting to see if I’d get some sort of official email like in previous years, but it doesn’t seem forth coming, so here they are.

…Technically Scott and Nancy are third place winners, but since only one grand prize can be awarded to a Challenger, they received the larger of the two prizes. A standing ovation to everyone listed here!!!

1. Charlie Walter – 203 points – Miata 1999-2005 ($1000 Moss gift certificate!)
2. Richard and Susan St Clair – 191 points – Miata 1999-2005 ($500 Moss gift certificate!)
3. Scott and Nancy Gilbert points – 183 – 1952 MG-TD VINTAGE VICTOR – Top score pre-1960! ($500 Moss gift certificate!)
4. Kenneth and Denise Mohlman – 178 points – 1959 Austin-Healey Sprite ($250 Moss gift certificate!)

$50 Moss gift certificates will be received by those listed below…

5. Brian Bogardus – 172 – Miata 1999-2005
6. Michael McDermott – 170 – Miata 1999-2005
7. Greg Foster – 157 – Miata 2006-2015
8. Robin Camblin – 153 – MGA
9. PJ Lenihan – 153 – MGB
10. Paul Rolig – 151 – Miata 1999-2005

After 2014’s contest where we scored 128 points, I set a goal of 150 points hoping that would get us in the top ten. Well, as you can see from above it would have been real close, but not enough. But we out did that goal by a big margin and jumped from 20th to 5th place overall.

Our entry sheet had a total point tally of 169, so we must have been awarded 3 bonus points for intangibles somewhere, but even with that we still fell seven points from finishing in the “big” money at the top. The only real holes in our entry blank were states, we needed more states in spite of visiting 22 of them things.

This year who knows how well we will do, but we will definitely have some fun doing it.

Moss Motoring Challenge Ideas

Last year while driving around hunting for the 2015 Challenges Donna and I tried to come up with ideas for the 2016 contest that we could submit to the organizer(s). Here is the list we compiled that used to be displayed over on the left:

  1. Tattoo Parlor = 1pt
    • Tattoo Parlor w/ Fresh Tat = 2pt
    • Tattoo Parlor w/ Moss Logo Tat = 5pt
  2. Food Bank = 1pt
    • Food Bank,Dropping Off Donation = 2pt
  3. Identifiable Roadkill = 2pt
  4. Military Hardware Display = 1pt
  5. Harley-Davidson Dealer = 1pt
    • Harley-Davidson Dealer & Wearing their T-shirt = 2pt
  6. Photogenic Bridge = 1pt
  7. In a Cemetery/Graveyard = 1pt
  8. College Football Stadium = 1pt
  9. Large Outdoor Mural = 1pt

By the time I sent in the list, it was too late, next year’s flyers/entry forms were all ready being printed/produced. How did we do as prognosticators? Not bad actually.

We had three direct hits, Tattoo Parlor, Military Hardware Display & Cemetery.

And three near misses, Harley-Davidson Dealer came in as Biker “Gang”, Photogenic Bridge became Drawbridge (raised) and College Football Stadium turned into University Campus.

Food Bank and Large Outdoor Mural have real merit and might have made next year’s list, but Roadkill not so much.

$500 Car Wash

The Purple Whale just got back from his 60k service appointment and before they give you car back as a “free” perk they wash and vacuum it.

We dropped off the car yesterday, so this morning I called the Service Adviser to see how how much this was going to set me back I was told it would be $491. When we showed up to get the car back he told me the total was $527 which I figured was the price + tax. We I got home and looked at the back page of the sheet he gave me there were itemized costs for labor, parts, misc and tax with a total of $580.33. Right underneath that he had hand written in -$53.08 bringing the total to the paid $527.29. WTF? The math isn’t even right! The original $491 plus the 7% sales tax should have totaled $525.37.

The recommended service is to inspect a zillion things, the major items are changing several filters and draining, flushing and replacing the big three fluids (oil, coolant & transmission.) Where did the $580 come from, hard to tell, because the inspections aren’t itemized so all the cost is lumped in the blocks for the 3 fluid changes.

While he was in the shop he also had a couple recalls taken care of. One was some sort of brake pedal stopper which might cause the car to not start needed to be replaced. The second was inspection for engine block noise which might indicate possible main bearing failure. Some engines apparently didn’t get all the chips flushed out during manufacturing. The Purple Whale was fine on that count.

A couple of other observations:
1) They noticed a clunk when turning and replaced a steering coupling under warranty. I have been hearing something like that when backing out of the driveway when transiting off the little curb there, but thought nothing of it. In the write up section for this it says, “Replaced steering coupler per TSB 14-ST-002. One time good will for customer satisfaction.” So they changed something per a Technical Service Bulletin and it is goodwill?
2) In another shining example of car dealer math, Hyundai recommends changing the oil every 7,500 miles and in a little note towards the end of my service print out it says “next oil lube service due @ 63,258 miles, or about 3,746 miles more than the car has now.

Started up, went down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 141