Miata Service

Miata Wiper Blade Fun

Last Thursday it was raining on the way home from work and when I turned on the windshield wipers the passenger side blade made a really rude noise as it swiped an arc across the glass. At first it happened intermittently and then turned into every time it moved. Because it was still daylight I rode the rest of the way home only using the single swipe function a couple of times.

OK, it is time to buy some new blades. I looked online at Advanced Auto first because they are right down the street a mile and I can get there and back in a loop that consists of nothing but right turns. I picked out a pair of 18″ Rain-X Weatherbeater blades for $14 each. They are old school styled and look more at home on the Miata than the more modern beam or the stealth types.

For the heck of it I checked on Amazon for the same blades. They had them for nearly half that cost at $7.50 and I wouldn’t even have to go out to get them. Because the rain was going to quit, I wouldn’t need them for a couple days, I put them in my cart. I didn’t order them though because they would have arrived on Saturday and we were going to be in Hilton Head. I told myself I’d order them on Sunday so they would arrive on Tuesday.

Because we went away for the weekend in the Mini I didn’t think about Miata wiper blades until yesterday morning when it started to sprinkle on the drive to work. Doh! This is another reason Amazon is helpful, the wiper blades were still sitting in my cart and all it took was basically one click to buy them. If my only option to buy windshield wipers was going to a physical store to get them, I would have forgotten again, because by after work it had quit raining.

Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick

About a mile from home on my way to work Tuesday, out of the blue, there came a ticking sound from the passenger side of the CTBNL. It was a high frequency sound tick, loud, but not enough to drown out every other normal driving noise and occurring at about 2 or 3 times a second. The steering felt fine and I had no warning lights. I put my hand on the seat, the dashboard, the transmission and nothing was vibrating, As I slowed for the next cross street to pull over, the sound didn’t change, so not speed dependent. When I pushed in the clutch in, the sound once again remained constant, so no engine or transmission. Hmmm.

I stopped, left the car running and stepped outside. I could still hear the ticking, it was less loud and coming from the area around the windshield / hood on the passenger side. A long inactive synapse tingled, I was now pretty sure I knew what it was. I got back in the car and turned the HVAC fan from 1 to 0. The ticking stopped.

I just left the fan off for the rest of the commute. When I got home I pulled the car into the garage (baby, it was cold outside) where I removed the glove box and laid on my back in passenger side with my feet out the door to take out the three screws that hold the motor up. Somehow a tenacious live oak leaf had found its way into the cowl area, under a plastic cover, then up and over a 1-1/2″ metal dam and through a loose mesh screen to fall into the fan motor. That 3″ long intact leaf wasn’t the only thing in the fan either, but it was the noise maker. I also pulled out a couple of small acorn pieces, a couple of small broken leaf pieces, several strands of pine straw and a lot of dust that through centripetal force and the design of fan had been wedged into the very bottom.

56,000 Vaporized Posts

Over the last couple of months there have been a ton of things that have happened that were definitely blog worthy, but I just haven’t pulled the trigger.

To name a few:
1. Getting some new Toyo Proxies R1R tires.
2. Seeing a bunch of plastic bins stacked on a table at work right under a posted sign that says: Don’t Place Plastic Bins Here.
3. Reloading Windows 10 on the laptop because it kept locking up.
a. Struggling to get it back networked to the desktop.
b. Resetting the router back to defaults.
c. Struggling with the stupid Windows Update Service.
d. Contemplating loading some variation linux on the laptop for the umpteenth time.
4. Running over an armadillo on the way to work one morning.
5. Getting to drive a 2015 Porsche Boxster GTS.
6. An FRS pennant run that almost mirrors the one exactly a decade ago.

Less than a mile from the house this morning on the way to the Valve Store the CTBNL turned over 56,000 miles.

Laborious Day

Monday was Labor Day and the Valve Store was taking a holiday, so I didn’t have to work, but I did do some Miata work. I was a few hundred miles past oil change and tire rotation time, so in the morning when Donna went off to the gym, I jacked up the CTBNL and went to crawling around under it.

First I took off all the tires and rolled them to their new locations. When rolling the left front to the back I noticed that there was a lot of wear on the tire’s inside edge compared to the tire that just came from there. The tires on the right both looked evenly worn and good for several thousand more miles. The left front was not that bad and could go that long. The now left rear has probably only got a couple months to go before crisis time.

So now I’m tire shopping. Really, really love the Toyo R1R and have sworn that when the time came I would replace them with the same. Now, when it comes time, I start to doubt that declaration. There are 8 results when you search for summer tires in 195/50×15 tires on the TireRack.com. I have personal experience with 3 of them and experience with a newer model of tire that replaced one I previously owned.

I have to say the Toyo R1R are the best of the lot, but they are the most expensive tire of the four at $125 each. My second choice is the newer Bridgestone Potenza RE-71R. I ran several sets of the Potenza RE-11’s on the ’95 Miata and was very happy with them. They are $9 cheaper than the Toyos and there is even a current rebate deal that would take the price down to around $100 each. But, the tires are the noisiest of the group in reviews and they have a fairly stiff sidewall which won’t mix as well with the stiffer suspension of the CTBNL.

The cheapest of the bunch is the Yokohama S.drive’s, they were the last tire we had on the Emperor and they handled well, but were the noisiest tire that I can remember having on a Miata. The BFGoodrich g-Force Sport COMP-2 were the tires on the Emperor just before the S.drives and I don’t really remember them, but I must not have liked them much because I didn’t buy another set when it came time to replace them.

After trying, and failing, at really talking myself out of buying the Toyos, I’m a cheapskate at heart and will probably end up with the Bridgestones. First I need to get an alignment…

65,000 Oil Changes

Changed the oil and rotated the tires on the CTBNL this evening. I like to do this bit of routine maintenance every 5,000 miles because the nice round number makes it easy to remember. It takes about an hour and a half from start to finish and acts, like washing and waxing, as a bonding agent between a man and his car.

The first step in the procedure is to back the Purple Whale out from under the awning so I can use that for my wrenching under. As I rolled back I noticed the odometer reading was 650004. The last time we drove the Sonata was to work on Tuesday, so the 65k milestone was crossed about halfway home on that day.

Somewhere Along Randy’s Route

Went for a little walk in Hitchcock Woods early this morning. It was quite peaceful, the only sounds, besides saying hello to a couple of dog walkers, was the random dripping of moisture off the trees because of the fog.

I finally popped off the door card of the passenger side to see about the slow window movement. Turns out the guide bushing was fine. It was just the original, 14-year old grease, in the tracks had gunked up in places. So I cleaned the track and the bushing and sprayed some silicone on both items and put it all back together. But the silicone stuff I used was too liquid, I’m really supposed to have semi solid grease-like stuff. I think I’ll save the driver’s door and a re-greasing of the passenger side until the MMC’s Tech Day this spring.

Maybe I can sell the bushings for enough to pay for the right lubricant…

How Did We Do ????

About a week ago I got an email from my buddy Frank at CroftgateUSA. Today’s post title was the entirety of the body of that email. I wrote back to say that I hadn’t used either of the products yet. Last week it pretty much rained the whole time and this week is supposed to be a repeat, so on what was to be the only marginally nice weather day in a fortnight, Saturday I washed the Miata. I started in the usual way with a soapy bucket of water, a fresh water hose rinse and drying with a squeegee and several towels.

Then I broke out the special sauce and followed the instructions on the spray bottle: spray on surface, spray on microfiber towel, wipe surface with towel, then buff with separate microfiber towel. I will have to admit that the matte stripes do look cleaner and nicer. Whether that is placebo effect or an actual difference, I don’t know…anyway, we’ll see how it works. Especially how it handles beading water on paint.

I’m gathering the makings of the glove box light. The little LEDs are in hand and the switch is on its way. Figuring where to mount what and wiring it up, well those details are sketchy at the moment.

It is not all fun and games here at LOB HQ though, the CTBNL is afflicted with what every Miata of a certain age gets, slow power or hard to crank windows. Mazda in their effort to save weight or money or both sourced a plastic window bushing guide with a useful life of 8 years or 10,000 ups or downs. Now you can get these same guides on the aftermarket made from Delrin which will outlive the car. I’ve got a set on the way from Rspeed and might be just the rainy weekend project.