Miata Mods

It only took me 3-1/2 hours to get one side sill on. To be fair, some of that time was taking the front mud flaps off. A big chunk of that time spent, even though I pre-read the directions, was reading and re-reading the instructions. They are not exactly clear in a lot of ways. I’m sure that comes from them being originally in Japanese and then translated into English. And you definitely want to make sure you understand exactly how things are supposed to go when you are drilling holes into you car.

Speaking of drilling you were supposed to use a 1/8 drill for a pilot hole and then a 21/64 for the finish hole. Raise your hand if you have a 21/64 drill bit handy. I didn’t. I did have a 5/16, which is close enough for my shade tree mechanicing. Trouble was it was kinda dull making it slow going drilling out the 10 holes. That’s right 10 holes, it was supposed to be 9, but for some reason I insisted on drilling out a perfectly good threaded hole. No wonder I broke my 1/8 drill bit…

Tomorrow morning I’ll do the other side. Should only take about an hour and a half now that I know what I’m doing.

Which if Babel Fish’s translation is correct, is German for “The Comet Is Installed.”

Picked up the car at lunch today and it was definitely worth the wait:

The Miata is staying overnight at the recovery room/body shop. The instructions say: The vehicle may not be driven in the first 12 hours to the gluing. (wash road at the earliest after 48 hours). And at first, I interpreted that to mean don’t drive it for 12 hours and don’t wash it for 48 hours, but I think they really mean, don’t drive it at all for 12 hours and don’t drive on rough roads for 48 hours. They were supposed to silicone on the spoiler this afternoon and I tried to call and find out the progress, but Liza was apparently too busy to call back, so I’m not sure if they did it or not. I’ll find out tomorrow morning and see if they did get it on. If they don’t glue it on until tomorrow, I might not be able to pick it before Friday as the silicone needs to set. Donna’s mom needs her car back for Friday to go to dialysis, but I guess at worse case I might have to duck out in the AM and drive her.

Comet Incubation Period: 12 days

I tried a variation of something I read on Miata to cure my annoying tick-ticking sound coming from the passenger area. I bought some tan velcro at the store this weekend and glued the fuzzy half onto the edge of the seats where the seatbelts hit them. It was easy to know where to put the velcro because the black seatbelts were leaving black marks on the tan seats. I may have to readjust the positioning downwards some though, the seatbelt hits right in the middle when in use, but it hits the very bottom of the velcro when you first buckle up causing it to lift the velcro off the seat. And get the edge of the belt sticky.

Comet Incubation Period: 11 days

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.