Cars

Help!

Trekked to Augusta this evening. First order of business was to run the Master’s Miata Club‘s newsletter through the postage meter at Rader. Sorry we didn’t stop and say hello Scott, but we were hungry and the ribs at Tony Roma’s were beckoning. Besides I’m sure you were busy selling cars as Kwanzaa gifts. đŸ˜‰

Second order of business was to shop. I am owed $50, thirty-five from a misspent Target gift card plus fifteen bucks for the vig. I am searching high and low looking for the movie Help! with the Beatles. Target – nope. Circuit City – nope. Boder’s – nope. Best Buy – nope. I tried my level best locally, so off to the net I go…

It was in the upper 60’s when we left work and even though the sky had clouded up, it was still warm enough for top down motoring. As the night crept on the cold crept in, it was in the upper 20’s by the time we started for home. The top stayed down, but the windows went up and the heater came on a touch,

Thanks John 2

I have a cockpit cover that I use to protect the interior of the car when we leave the top down with boot on for extended periods of time (like during work.) It goes under the wipers in front, straps around the mirrors, a couple of elastic straps in the wheel wells and three tabs under the trunk lid. Works great. The only downside is that it was designed for the earlier cars. The 2001+ Miatas have taller seats, AKA surfboards, and they cause the cover to have to be stretched when it is on. Over the last year that stretching has caused the cover to start to rip near the center tab on the back. John Haff to the rescue. He has an industrial sewing machine and knows how to use it. John sewed the ripping seam and added a gusset for extra strength. While he was at it he made me a bag to keep it in and a fender cover out of the same car cover material he used as a patch/gusset. Thanks John.

Next time this starts to rip I may just go ahead and buy a new one. The Crazy Red Italian has a cover that fit over cars with rollbars, so I know they will fit over the surfboards.

Dream On

Just saw a commercial for the new Buick LaCrosse with the background song of Aerosmith’s “Dream On.” Good song, IMHO much better than their more current work, I can only hope that the same is true for Buick. Some how though I can’t imagine that that car will be the car of anyone’s dream.

This is not the first time Buick’s advertising has dipped into the classic rock bag of tricks to try and sell cars. I don’t know how many more Rendezvous they sold because of the pairing of that SUV with Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein”, but I thought the song was dead (no pun intended) on right for the vehicle. It looked like it was made various parts of other cars and pieced together to form a whole vehicle, but it wasn’t cohesive.

Started Early

Started on my New Year’s resolution early. Tonight I watched a show called Overhaulin’. It had two things going for it that made me want to watch it, because I’m a cyclist (barely) it had Uber bike racer Lance Armstrong and as a car guy it had the muscle car icon called GTO (bonus points because it is a convertible.)

I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but what I got was an hour long commercial for Foose Wheels, Clarion, Kicker, Something Parts Group, So & So’s Suspension, etc. Take a season’s worth of This Old House, cut out all the really interesting segments on how to do things, apply it to cars, add pretty boy & girl “hosts”, toss in the arbitrary deadline and ta-da, entertainment for people who want something great while not having to do anything hard (or at all) to get it.

Membership Drive


Today was the Master’s Miata Club annual membership drive at Rader Mazda. Because it was a Miata show-off day I got out here early to wash off the car. Water can be down right cold when the outside temperature is at 48 degrees. This year, super salesman, Scott went the extra mile (besides setting up the tent, buying and cooking the food, icing the drinks, etc.) and wrote a nice letter to everyone who had bought a Miata through them in the last 18 months and invited them to come out. It worked pretty well. We got two new memberships, one possible, one not-so-long lost member rejoined and chatted with a couple of Miata owners who just dropped on in. They had invited the regional Miata rep to join us and that he did. Sloane Whitehead (a name right out of a soap opera or romance novel) came in from Columbia and brought along some goodies for giving away as door prizes. Rader also contributed some key chains and service coupons. They had enough stuff so that everyone attending came away with something. I was the lucky winner of a very strange looking clock, a free front end alignment and a hat. The hat is cream colored with a navy blue bill, all and all a nice little bit of millinery until you get to the bright purple Miata logo embroidered on it. Marty of V-8 Miata fame had hoped to get his now Kennie Bell supercharged V-8 Miata out to show us, but minor set back after minor set back kept him from a displaying it’s awesome power (to be used only for good.) He did roll it out, hoodless, for us to marvel at just how much engine can be stuffed into one of these little cars.

Silence so far from the German advertising firm from the other day.

17,000 Miles

Passed through 17k on the way home from work tonight. Because there is a Master’s Miata Club event with an early start tomorrow I broke out the Quik Detailer and “washed” the car in the driveway before parking for the night. We meet at 8:00AM for the drive to Newberry Street to see the inaugural Aiken Exotic Car Festival. There were supposed to be over a hundred cars, but this morning’s paper said just over 50 are registered. You have got to start somewhere, so I hope there is enough attendance to prompt another one next year.

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