The CBTNL needs a washing and my plan is to do it tomorrow evening. I’d like to throw a coat of wax on it too, but I’ve got a small problem, my fancy matte stripes. Everything I’ve read is don’t get wax on the matte finish, it”l make it shiny. That’s all well and good if the whole car is matte. Or your whole hood. Or even a couple of accents. But I’ve got 4 straight lines that run the length of the entire car I have to wax right up to, but not over! I was not to good about coloring in between to lines growing up, so this will be a daunting task.

No way I was going to mask the stripes off every time I want to wax the car. But the word tape keyed an idea, why not apply a 1″ gloss vinyl stripe along each side of the matte blue stripe? That would would be enough of a buffer and if I got wax on shiny vinyl, so what. Above is a mock up using my Windows 10 profile picture. The dark blue is nice and the white ain’t bad, but I’m partial to the black. I even did a little experiment, I laid a stretch of black electrical tape on all 4 sides on the trunk. Nice.

When I put the electrical tape away I noticed that I still had the sample of matte blue vinyl that was tested on the trunk lid awhile back. I had stuck it to the cabinet door in the garage. So I took some masking tape and covered half of the sample square. I then squirted some of the Ice Liquid Wax I’ve been using recently on the unprotected half. Let it sit for a second then wiped it off with one side of a micro fiber cloth and buffed it with the other. When I peeled off the masking tape, I couldn’t see a difference. I’ll have to try it on a not so noticeable spot on the car in daylight, but maybe this wax won’t be an issue.

I still like the black accents though, maybe that will be one of my Christmas gifts…

Almost hard to tell that it is there in the photos, but my clear lexan wind blocker project is complete. Well, sort of. After it was installed my navigator said, “Do you think maybe we could find some black screws?”

Materials required to make one wind blocker are 5′ of black plastic door edge guard ($2.71), two 1-7/8″ plastic coated loop clamps ($1.55), one 18″ x 24″ x 1/8″ thick lexan sheet ($10.56) and a couple of 5/16-18 bolts and nuts (0¢) for a total cost of $14.82.

But it cost more to make this one. I had to buy 18′ of the black plastic door edge guard ($9.74). I had to buy ten of the 1-7/8″ plastic coated loop clamps ($7.74), smaller or even larger ones were available separately, but not the 1-7/8″ size. I needed to buy two of 18″ x 24″ x 1/8″ thick lexan sheets ($21.12) because I cracked the first one when drilling the holes. The pair of the 5/16-18 bolts and nuts were still free (0¢). So the project really cost me $38.60, but it was well worth it because nobody makes a wind blocker for this particular roll bar.

One of the things we are missing out on, because of the roll bar is the OEM wind blocker. There wasn’t anything like it in the first two Miatas we owned and we scoffed at it at first in the Emperor, but came to realize it had a great benefit in the cooler weather. With the windows up, wind blocker up and the heat on, we could handle top down cruising in the upper 30’s to lower 40’s for short trips.

No one makes a wind blocker specifically for the bar we have, so I thought maybe I could make one on my own. Using my low tech measuring device (a folding carpenter’s ruler) and my high tech drawing program (AutoCAD) I drew up an idea of a shape. Before cutting out my design from some fairly expensive Lexan, I make one out of extremely cheap cardboard.

To mount my wind blocker I thought a nice way would be to use loop clamps around the roll bar. At first I thought two per side, but realized that was overkill for its small size. But how do I secure the bottom? Velcro is how. I have maligned what Mazda calls carpet in these cars several ways, several times here, but one thing this stuff is excellent at is acting as the fuzzy side of Velcro. It has helped me secure everything from small liter bags to USB drives with MP3s to floor mats. This time a small strip along the bottom of my mock up wind blocker creates a needed third mount point.

Last night, after I had some clamps in hand I decided it was time to see just how well this thing would work. I didn’t want to drive around with a piece of a cardboard box affixed to the roll bar, so I grabbed the spray can of black plast-dip and coated both sides of the cardboard with it. Donna asked incredulously, “You actually think painting the cardboard will make it less…ahh.” “Rednecky?”, I finish for her. “Yeah,” she sez. “Well not on close inspection, but it make me feel better,” I tell her.

This morning’s cool drive to work proved out the shape, it did seriously cut back the cold blow back air on my neck and her slightly lower head. It also showed a flaw in the upper loop clamps. The clamps are vinyl coated and where they were located they hit the seat backs and generated a squeak any time we hit a bump. I’m not sure I can move the loops far enough up to not squeak and have them still in a position to reach the wind blocker. Plan B is some sort of Velcro strap as long as I make sure the fuzzy side is the part that hits the seat.

After trying three different cheap carpet pieces cut into the shape of the Miata’s floor mats we broke down and bought the real thing from REV9 Autosport. The Zeromotive Small Pattern Checkered Floor Mats in Black/Gray I ordered about a month ago had finally arrived from Japan. The box was sitting in my desk chair at work on Monday morning. Yesterday’s image was the big piece paper on top of the mats when I opened the box. It was translated by my cubicle neighbor David by snapping a photo and running it through a translation app on his smartypants phone.

Also included in the box as a thank you gift was a pack of Hi-Chew in White Soda Flavor. The candy, like the sentiment behind it, was very Japanese. Almost makes me want to order something else from there to see what I might get next as a bonus.

The mats are the final pieces of interior modifications to be done to the CTBNL. As a matter of fact, they are almost the final modification overall. There are only two left I’d like to do, get the fog lights to operate independently of the headlights and make a small wind blocker between the seats. I did the fog light mod on the Emperor to use them as my daytime running lights. The stock wind blocker had to be removed for installation of the roll bar, a replacement needs to be concocted so we can extend downward the outside air temperature for convertible driving.

Caution!!

Please be sure to read

Please do not laid on top of the mat on top of the mat that is laid already.
Matt, please firmly seated in the hook (Velcro), and the like.

In March of 2004 at the MMC Tech Day I brightened the otherwise vast expanse of blackness in a fellow Club member’s 2001 Miata interior with the random aluminum bits from the Emperor. Today I did it again to our “new” Miata with the help of Steve from Panic Motorsports.

When we sold the Emperor to Steve he said he’d give us a check for the sale amount, plus $50 in cash for lunch for driving it to him in Columbia. When we got there we got to chatting and forgot all about the cash. When I remembered, I sent him an email and said instead of the cash I’d take it in trade, the random aluminum look bits from a 2003. The very same ones I traded away 12-1/2 years ago. He said, “OK, next ’03 to ’05 that comes in as a donor car, you can have their stuff.”

Last week, such a car arrived. Friday on our way to Charleston we picked up the 4 air vents, the radio and shifter surrounds and the 2 interior door handles. Saturday they made their way into the CTBNL.

Two 8″ stripes in Matte Riviera Blue with a 4″ center gap. No ghost stripes here, that blue pops!