Dark Teal Metallic

I guess I was wrong about this being a money making proposition for the Dealer. They told me 6 hours, yet they had the car all day and it was still not finished when I went to pick it up. Seeing as I went into this with low expectations, this just reinforces my bad feelings. I’m sure the optimist would say that the extra time is a good thing because the technician wants to get it right. I’m sure this means that he doesn’t know what the heck he is doing so it is going to take twice as long as specified.

Because they were keeping the car overnight, they gave me a loaner vehicle. A 2005 Tribute in Dark Teal Metallic which kind of brought back memories of Splash Green Metallic. It took about 15 miles before the feeling of being on stilts subsided enough that I just felt too high up. The drivers foot well seems narrower than the Miata’s so I never got my left foot comfortable. In typical Mazda (and maybe all Japanese car) fashion the seat bottom is too short for my thighs, leaving me feeling unsupported even with the more upright position. Remember me whining about the cheap plasticy feel of the Mini’s interior? Well the inside of this is worse. It is silver (really more gray) I guess to simulate aluminum, but it comes off more like a plastic scale model of a navy battleship. The only good feeling was from the steering wheel, a little from the way it handled (not really zoom-zoom worthy) and a little from the texture, hard to describe, but felt very grippy and comfortable.

Brian returned with is estimate from the folks who painted his car, $200, that is painted and mounted. They felt that they would want to add some pop rivets to go along with the silicone adhesive. This is all well and good, but they have not seen the spoiler. I’m having a hard time explaining that the construction of this thing just doesn’t allow for adding anything else for securing it to the car. I’ve tried to take a picture of it, but can’t get one that will convey the shape right.

Comet Incubation Period: 6 days

TSB 05-001/03

Just dropped off the Miata at Rader so that tomorrow they can fix the clutch shudder issue per TSB 05-001/03. Cross your fingers for me and/or pray to the deity of your choice that they don’t screw up more than they fix while doing this. I’m hopeful that things will be swell, seeing as for the 15K service I didn’t have to get out the breaker bar to loosen the lug nuts and I only had to use touch up paint on one little spot near the hood opening.

Comet Incubation Period: 5 days

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.

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