25F

Got my first estimate for painting the spoiler today. Kelly Paint and Body is right down the street from where I work, so it is convenient, but also they did some painting for me on the ’95 Miata and I was pleased with their work. $63 bucks to paint it. For grins I asked about installation, $76. Total would be $139 for the whole works. I’m considering it. I’m not the most mechanical person in the world and I probably could install it, but if they put it on and it falls off with out me hitting anything, I might have some recourse. My co-worker Brian is getting the folks that painted his truck to give me an estimate as well. I get the feeling I’m about a week off from getting the spoiler on the car.

I’m a little closer to getting the new tires on the car. According to the FedEx site they are due to arrive on next Monday the 4th.

Comet Incubation Period: 5 days

Lipitor Here I Come?

Last week our company had a Health Fair. One of the local hospitals was offering a free Lipid Profile, AKA Cholesterol Check. What the heck, I’m in. The results were mailed to the house and it seems as if I am totally out of the “normal” ranges for most all of them.

Total Cholesterol was 209, less than 200 is the goal
Triglycerides were 271, less than 200 is normal
My HDL was 24, 35or greater is what you are supposed to have of this “good” cholesterol
My LDL was 131, less than 130 is what you are supposed to have of this “bad” cholesterol
My Factor was 1.82, instead of less than .50, I guess this is some sort of mathematical combination of these other numbers.

Wie ist Ihr Deutscher?

Or, How is your German?

The Comet Spoiler comes from Germany, so the instructions that were included are in that language. There are a half dozen somewhat informative pictures, but there might be something important in the text. So today I scanned the sheet and ran it through an OCR program. I then plugged the results into Babel Fish where I got about 1/2 of the total verbiage in an understandable form. Then I went back and fixed the OCR errors and added all the umlauts onto their vowels. The second time through was a whole lot better:

1. Clean first the front in later edition range of the spoiler thoroughly with silicone remover.

2. In order to avoid a contaminating of the vehicle by positioning the spoiler with adhesive already laid on, the later seat of the part is marked by first provisional fixing at the vehicle.
You found the assembly position if the spoiler rests optimally against the outline of the vehicle.
Fixing and marking know vehicle outline with sticking and/or Krepp volume take place-taking place that.

3. Grind the spoiler within the range of the sticking klebesicke with sandpaper of the granulation 100 and clean you the sharpening places. Here must be removed for a later, optimal gluing, all lacquer and priming arrears.

4. Lay on like illustrated the adhesive in full bulge.
The spoiler can now set on the vehicle in accordance with the position marked before.
Note: in the marked place “X” no adhesive is laid on, so that the wheel arches can be further if necessary opened!

5. The spoiler can be set now on the vehicle in accordance with the position marked before. Examine again the accurate position us fix the spoiler for draining the adhesive as shown with tape.
Impurities by the adhesive remove you please immediately with silicone remover!

Please you consider before processing the adhesive:
For draining the adhesive the vehicle in a dry, area if necessary kept at a moderate temperature should remains (18 – 25 degrees).
The vehicle may not be driven in the first 12 hours to the gluing. (wash road at the earliest after 48 hours).

Comet Incubation Period: 4 days

Happy Birthday, Anniversary & Christmas

The Family CFO allowed me to go ahead and buy some fresh tires for the 15″ wheels. She wasn’t real happy with me for getting myself into this position, but agreed to spend the money for tires now as long as I consider them my birthday (today), anniversary (Wednesday) and Christmas (12/25) gifts for this year. And if I don’t behave myself, maybe next years as well. It works out better financially further down the road, because if I went back to the 16″ wheels, when those tires wore out later next year I would have been asking for the $300 for tires and an addition $400 for after market wheels.

Now if all 10 of my occasional readers would donate $5 via PayPal to sales@barndoorfanclub.org I’ll be able to get them mounted. 🙂

I ordered 4 Toyo T1-S in 195/50-15 from my pals at OnlineTires.com who have that size on special for $59 a piece. For that price and that tire you can’t get better bang for your buck in a high performance tire. I just hope they are still selling them for that price around January 2006, because that is when I’ll probably need another set. Of course, if the Miata.net rumors are correct, by then Toyo will be selling the replacement tire called T1R and it will probably be a bit costlier.

Comet Incubation Period: 3 days

Nearly Wasted Weekend

I am still way behind in my self imposed goals of posting an entry into the three weekly photo memes. I did do a Tuesday and vowed to do the Thursday and Friday ones this weekend, but didn’t get around to it. The only photos I did take were at last night’s Master’s Miata Club Bug Splat Rally and non of them were Furry (Friday) or Creative (Thursday.)

The only thing keeping the weekend from being a total loss was I did watch the My Cousin Vinny DVD.

Tagged:

There It Sits

The front spoiler looks pretty much like the Mazda OEM unit that was for the 99-00 cars, but doesn’t fit the slightly modified nose of the 01 & up cars. This is perfect because that is exactly what I was looking for. It is sitting on the work bench in the garage. It is mocking me, I know it. Like the countdown until it arrived, I will now count up on the bottom of each day’s post until it is mounted on the car. I guess I will ask at the body shop where I planned on getting it painted about whether to paint it first and then installed or vice versa.

Love the 15″ wheels, but I think I may swap back (as long as Russ didn’t sell the car this weekend.) The tires are a bit too worn down for my tastes. When I first looked at them in the parking lot there seemed to be a bit of thread wear left there. Upon closer inspection, there is hardly anything left at all. He thought he would go until the first of next year before he would buy tires, but Russ is a very frugal person and would go until the tires are hitting every wear indicator. Me, I feel a lot better if there more rubber under me, especially when it comes to driving in the rain. There is not enough tire for me to go until the first of next year, when I could possibly swing the cost of new tires. The 16″ wheels have enough tread to last me until late summer next year. By then I might be in a better position to get some new tires and new 15″ wheels.

Comet Incubation Period: 2 days

Der Komet Ist Gelandet

Which if Babel Fish is correct in its translation, means “The Comet Has Landed.” The spoiler arrived at work at 3:20pm. Trouble was that I had the afternoon off with a ton of things to do so I couldn’t get back to the plant to pick it up. I called buddy Russ up who I was to meet later and asked him to bring it with him. The spoiler made the trip from Germany to Canada to Aiken inside a heavy plastic bag which was wrapped in bubble wrap and then covered with a layer of thin cardboard mostly unharmed. There is one little scratch on it, but it is no matter as it is getting painted body color before mounting anyway. Speaking of mounting, I put the Mazda OEM front lip and rear skirt on my ’95 and they used numerous screws and clips, but for mounting this one, the folks at ATH have given me hot dog sized tube of some sort of adhesive. I wonder just how secure that will be? Well if worse comes to worse I’ve got a nearly full roll of burgundy duct tape…

I was meeting Russ later where I could pick up the spoiler from him because we were swapping wheels. I now have a set of Mazda 15″ wheels with some fairly worn out Michelin Pilots and he has a set of Mazda 16″ wheels with some half-worn Bridgestone Turdanzas. Amazing the difference in looks of the automobiles. I’m thinking that maybe it would be cool to work a wheel swap every 3 months so you could get a fresh look. You would have to work it out so that everyone had about the same kind of rubber, otherwise someone (probably me, with my luck) would be buying a lot of tires. While we were swapping, Russ went and got his bathroom scale at my request, so I could weigh the different wheels. First I weighed myself, 195lbs. Then I stood on the scale with the 16″ wheel and the total read, 227. Then I hoisted the 15″ wheel and the scale blinked back and forth between 223 & 222. Best guess is I lost 4-1/2lbs of unsprung weight. My sophisticated butt-dyno tells me the car accelerates a little quicker, I haven’t had around any turns at speed or had it long enough to feel a major change in handling yet. I get the feeling that this change to the car will be just like when I added the Strut Tower Brace on the ’95. The change in the characteristics in the car was very noticeably positive right up front, but after a few weeks they melded into the overall feel and were quickly gone. Not that meant it was all for naught, it just meant that you got used to the increased performance and took the new found road prowess as a given.