Miata Washings

Mr. Aiken & Me

Donna and I went for a little bike ride this morning. First off we chased the 14% larger moon as it set in the southeast to the Post Office to mail something. Once the moon disappeared behind the clouds and the envelope disappeared in the slot we headed back northwest to go downtown and drop the power bill in the slot outside the SCE&G office. While we were that way we stopped in to see what the so-called founding father of Our Fair City(tm) was looking at. Near as I can tell he is looking down the Alley trying to catch a glimpse of a Tipsy McStumbles waitress. Thirteen miles is all our backsides could stand considering the last time we were on a bike was, as near as I can figure, around Thanksgiving last year.

After breakfast I went out and rinsed all the pine pollen and tree bits (seedling covers and flowering things) that were covering he Emperor. Because it is early in the spring yuck season I didn’t bother with soap, just water and a towel. Later in the day on a trip to the mall I parked, against the expressed consent of my wife, near a tree. In my defense, I figured it was through dropping stuff because it had tiny leaves already showing. I was half right, it wasn’t dropping solid bits, but when we got back to the car it was covered with tiny droplets of sap. At first I considered leaving it on there giving the pine pollen something to stick making the Emperor appear to be wearing a polka dotted robe, but instead when we got home I spent 45 minutes or so with some Quick Detailer wiping off that gunk.

During one of the top transitions while cleaning the outside of the car (I also cleaned and protected the leather seats) I noticed that the top was bunching up on the passenger side at one of the metal bows. Turns out, right where the bow has the radius between vertical and horizontal, the inner dark layer of fabric has been separated from the tan exterior layer. This means that this spot where the top material is very taught, only has one layer of fabric there which will probably tear in the not too distant future. I’m going to call the top guy over in Augusta to see when he can look at it and determine if it is fixable or it is new top time. If a new top is required it will be a big disappointment. The OEM top lasted 5 years and this one will have only made it half that long.

Started up, went down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 979

‘Bout Time

If my tagging of posts is 100% accurate, which is doubtful, the last time I washed the car was November 14th and that was really only dusting and Quick Detailing. Well, whenever the last washing the Emperor actually was, he got the real deal today and it is amazing how purrty he looks from 10 feet away without any of that nasty road dirt on him.

About a year ago Donna lost her wedding ring and we replaced it with a cheapo one we found in a local Dillards. We both got two copies of the same ring in our size and in the past three hundred and sixty odd days we have worked our way through both. Mine currently has one of the diamonds (AKA piece of glass) missing and the gold plating no longer exists on either of our rings. I thought what a nice thing to do for Valentines Day would be to buy some actual gold replacement rings. After hunting around on the web for a bit last night we came up with a ring we both liked. Unsure of our correct sizes we opted to wait until we visited an actual Zales store and had our sizes determined by a trained professional. Which we did today and they measured Donna’s finger as a 7-1/2, which shot a big hole in our plans, as our chosen ring was only available online and only in whole sizes. Back to the net and in short order we found our second choice and ordered them.

We watched The Town today and were tempted to turn on the English Subtitles the Boston accents were so thick. We had an easier time understanding the liverpudlian ones in Nowhere Boy.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
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Sunday Afternoon In The Driveway

Changed the oil and rotated the tires on the Emperor this afternoon. I used the California Duster to remove the road fur from yesterday’s trip and washed all the windows. Sprayed a little Quick Detailer in places to get off some random gunk and treated the tires so they shine. Even vacuumed the interior.

As long as we are doing the Georgia State Park Challenge we might as well do the the GA County and GA Delorme Challenges as well. There are 42 State Park caches, 159 counties and 59 map pages, but you really need 63 caches because this challenge requires you to find a cache on the page inserts too. That would be 264 unique finds, so unlike in South Carolina we are going to take the easy route, any cache found, can and will be, used towards multiple Challenges. So right now we have 4 State Parks, 19 counties and 17 pages.

On yesterday’s trip there were several caches along our route we didn’t even try for because of time and motivational issues and there was one in particular that I’m glad we didn’t get, Cache Across America – Georgia. That’s right, a challenge with the requirement to find a cache in all 50 states and not just any cache, but the 50 picked out just for it.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 893

Laborless Day

Typically this is the day we native New Englanders consider summer over. School would start this week and the mornings are cool enough for a light coat or sweater. Then I moved south and all that went out the window, school’s been in session for a two or three weeks and the mornings won’t cool off until the end of this month. But today it felt like I was transported back north. We went for a small bike ride this morning and when I stepped outside the garage, I turned right around,went back inside and got a long sleeve shirt to wear. At the end of the ride Donna and I sat outside at the Atlanta Bread Company eating our bagels, drinking our coffee and reading the morning paper and it felt like fall. I would have liked to have been able bottle a bit of that to break out one grim winter day this coming January.

I spend the rest of the morning giving the Emperor his quarterly wash and wax. Amazing the amount of tiny little bits of paint that has chipped off the front end of the car in the 111.5k miles it has traveled and they are all the more noticeable because the primer underneath the dark Garnet Red is white.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 819

BANG!

This morning as I opened the garage door there occurred a loud BANG! Over my head the garage door spring banged into the support bracket. I was headed out to wash the car, but instead I made a trip to Home Depot. Bought new springs and a couple of new eye bolts. I really needed just one to replace the one that got mangled when the spring smashed into it, but figured why should one new spring be jealous of the other over an old eye bolt.

Inside the box with the springs were two long pieces of wire that were probably there as some sort of safety thing, but the instructions on the box didn’t really spell out how they were to be used. I installed the new springs and because they were a little shorter that the current ones I had to adjust the cables a little. It wasn’t until then that I figured out how the cables worked. Trouble was to install the safety cables I would need to totally disassemble what I had just completed. That was not going to happen. I may have to engineer something to retro fit the safety wires. I got lucky this time because I didn’t have the safety wires and the spring broke on the end it did. If it had busted on the eye bolt end and not the pulley end it might have hit the door and bounced around instead of just slamming into the support.

The reason I was opening the garage door was to go out and change the Emperor’s oil and rotate his tires which I now proceeded to do, just a couple hours later. While I had the car up on jack stands with the wheels off, I did a couple of maintenance items. I have had a high pitched chirping noise that was only noticeable in the early morning when driving through our quiet neighborhood. It would totally disappear when I pushed in the clutch pedal. The most common cause of this is the clutch actuating fork vibrating against the slave cylinder’s operating rod. The cure for this to slap a bunch of grease on the fork where the rod hits it. Luckily I had some bicycle wheel bearing grease in the cabinet that fit the bill. The other thing was to check and see if the brake slider pins needed lubricating.

Last year when I had the stuck pin someone at work recommended using a copper based lubricant instead of the usual tube of whatever that you get at the auto parts store. I checked with the hive knowledge of the Miata.net forums and while I didn’t get a unanimous opinion that it was a great idea, I didn’t get enough negative comments to rule it out, so I decided to run a test, one side got the usual lube and the other got the copper stuff. Today when I checked them one side was fine, but the other was stuck pretty good. Guess which one was bad? Go ahead guess. Right, the one where I used the non-traditional copper based anti-seize lube. I could back out one pin by twisting and pulling. The other was going to need more persuasion, so I unbolted the bracket and locked in the bench vise. I grabbed an open ended wrench and a hammer and started to tap on the wrench to force the pin out. After about 3 or 4 taps is wasn’t moving, so I decided to hit it a bit harder when BANG! I hit my thumb. I did a little dance accompanied by some vocals before returning to the task where I did get finally get the pin out. I now have a pencil eraser sized black spot on my left thumbnail.

One pin was pretty scarred up and the hole in the caliber bracket the pin slides into wouldn’t come clean either. To fix this I cleaned up the easy to remove pin, a pin I had extra from last year’s brake job and I re-used last year’s bad bracket (which had been cleaned up and saw a brief stint as a napkin holder.) After getting everything all buttoned up I made a tour of the neighborhood to test out the brakes, they worked just fine. I am going to take the scarred up pin and bracket into work and drop them on the desk of the fellow who suggested the copper lubricant…

To finish off the Emperor’s spa day I gave him a bath and an interior vacuuming tonight.

I bet you’re wondering how we did geocaching today. We didn’t have a single DNF, of course we didn’t have a single find either because after our extreme up and down days on Saturday and Sunday we figured a day off might be good for our mental health.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 717

Yo Saf Bridge Returns To Space

After a stint as a con woman that was a pain in the side of the crew of the Firefly a couple of times in the early 26th century and recently seen stuck on Madison Ave, Earth in the middle 20th century on TDTVS2, Christina Hendricks returns to the ‘Verse sometime in the far future where space travel costs an arm and a leg, literally, as an android in a music video from Broken Bells.

The Emperor got a well deserved bath after work today.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 661

At The Car Wash

Last night we cleaned house, the outside anyway. I blew off the roof and deck, Donna mowed the front and back yards and I used the blower to clean our driveway.

When we got home tonight you could barely tell I had cleaned the driveway, enough oak pollen clusters had fallen to leave a sparse coating the whole front yard. Oh, well, I was still going to wash the car, had to because the MMC has a breakfast event tomorrow and we couldn’t very well show up in the pigsty the Emperor was. Plus I have that awning-carport thing that will at least keep the stuff off the car *while* I’m washing it.

Started down, went up, back down, back up, down again, up again, still up.
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