Miata Service

The Emperor has a new right rear shock.

He didn’t need it though.

The one that came out is perfectly fine. I made an assumption and you know the old saw about what that means.

At around 60,000 miles I replaced the worn OEM shocks with some Koni Yellow Sport adjustable shocks. When it came time to to replace those worn Konis, I went with some Koni Orange STR-T non-adjustable ones. I had two reasons for this, one, I adjusted the yellow sport shocks once, to the mid-point where they felt fine and two, the orange non-adjustable shocks were half the price at $70 vs. $140 each.

Because they came from the same manufacturer I thought they would be plug & play, but nope. The yellows because the adjusting mechanism runs through the shaft it is slightly larger in diameter at 12mm, than the stock shaft’s 10mm, so the hole in the top plate of the shock mounts had to be enlarged to accommodate it. The new orange shocks are meant as a slight upgrade to the OEM units, so its shaft is 10mm in diameter.

What I thought was shock failure was really the new smaller shaft poking through the enlarged mounting plate hole. My mechanic used a metal shim/washer with a 10mm hole in it to make things work. We are good for now, but we’ll take the car back to him next week and let him do the other three prophylactically.

One of the Emperor’s recently (6/19) installed shocks has flat-lined.

In hind sight it is no surprise. From the first few times driving the car on the new shocks it didn’t feel like much of an improvement over the old ones that were replaced. After I cured the socket rattle things were fine for a couple weeks, but then started noticing a slightly lower pitched sound from back there when hitting certain kinds of bumps. I kept meaning to tear apart the trunk and check for other loose tools or stuff that I keep back there, but never did.

Last week a high tone rattle appeared to go along with the occasional thunks, so Friday I did what I should have done before. I removed the faux carpet, the fiber board spare tire cover, the small tool kit,the air pressure gage, the flashlight, the small bottles of quick detailer & glass cleaner. I pulled out the pair of mechanic’s gloves, the paper towels, the umbrella, the rolled up Zoom Zoom picnic blanket and the cargo net holding the Garmin GPS & Cool Breeze Scoop. I pulled out the 10 disc CD changer and the plastic cubby holder on the left side. I then removed the three plastic beauty panels, 2 sides and back exposing access areas to the shock mounts.

I found nothing extraneous, but if you grabbed a hold of the big nut holding down the top of the driver’s side rear shock it was easily shook. And when you did shake the shock, it sounded off with that tinkling cymbal sound that I had been listening to for the last few days.

I filled out the contact form on the Moss Motors site, where I bought the shocks, and within an hour someone from there called. The shocks have a lifetime warranty and the way they handle a situation like this is I have to buy a new shock, but if it does turn out to be a manufacturer defect, they refund the money. Moss also is paying for the shipping of the new shock to me and the return shipping of the defective one to them, so not bad.

The new shock arrives tomorrow and gets installed on Thursday. Hopefully things will be a lot smoother (pun intended) after that.

When we left the Kroger store parking lot to go buy some gas for the still fanged Emperor, Donna asked, “Are the lights on?” I said, “Yes. It just looks like they aren’t on because we are in a well lit parking lot.” We filled up with gas and headed home. About halfway there I noticed that we seemed to be missing the right headlight. That was confirmed when we pulled into the garage.

This is the first time I have ever had a burnt out headlight in a Miata. Not just this one, but in the first two either. Twenty two years without a headlight going bad. Watch, one of the new ones will burn out in a week and I’ll never go another year without one or the other headlights going bad.

Went back out in the Purple Whale and drove to Advanced Auto to buy a new bulb. Before I went I checked the Owners Manual to see what bulb I needed, low beams on my year car are HB4. At the store there is an aisle full of bulbs and I searched and searched , but couldn’t find an HB4 bulb to save my life. I checked a cross-reference guide they had there and it said I needed a 9006 bulb for that application. Those they had plenty of, just not in single packs. I ended up buying a pair of Sylannia Silver Star 9006 bulbs and left the store $38 poorer.

I sure hope I’m wrong about what I wrote in the 2nd paragraph.