Miata Washings

Notice Anything Different?


Right now it still smells a little like new plastic inside. As we left the top shop the fellow came outside and said to be sure and leave it up for week to let the top stretch & settle. I’ll try and make it a couple days, but by Monday at the latest it will be coming down for the morning drive to work.

The vinyl top makes a different sound when driving than the cloth did, but overall it seems slightly quieter. The previous cloth top, number two for the car, was always noisier than the original OEM top. I may have mentioned it here before, but top #2 was quieter at highway speeds when it was down and the windows up than it was when the top and windows were up.

The Emperor also got his second royal bath in 4 days once he got home. HRH had to spend last night outside under the stars with flying feathered creatures.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 0

Wash Day

The Emperor got a bath this morning. But it was a stinking hot day Brian, didn’t you work up a sweat? There was no need to work up a sweat, I was already sweaty from the morning bike ride and a little yard work that I did just before starting the project.

After washing the Miata I pulled it into the garage and washed the first 1/31 of each side of the green metal awning that the Purple Whale parks under, AKA The Aquarium.

I cheated for the Sonata, after lunch we ran it through Lulu’s.

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1517

Wash Time

The dead bird was cleaned out of the Emperor’s mouth a few miles after he crash landed there on Sunday, but it took until today to clean the dead bugs off the nose. The Sonata got a bath tonight too, but unlike the hand wash the Miata got, the Purple Whale got a Molly Wash from Lulu’s.

Brian & Donna got a laundry basket full of clean clothes and even some of the English Ivy near the A/C unit got a shower of Agent Orange tonight.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1477

Bath Day

It is Pine Pollen Season(tm) here in my Fair City and the poor Emperor was literally freckled with yellow dots. Dots form because it rained yesterday on the evenly dusted surfaces of the car and that makes the water bead up. I used the California Duster(r) this morning in the garage this morning, the lose pollen came off, but the dots remained. Along with both our finger prints on the doors and trunk.2 At the end of the day there was another fine layer of pollen all over the car. Seeing as tomorrow is supposed to be a rainy day and we’ll take the Sonata to work, with the Miata staying in the garage, when we got home tonight, I decided to wash it.

Because I wash the cars under the metal carport the Sonata normally lives under, to wash the Miata, the Sonata has to be backed to the end of the driveway. Even thought I can count the pine trees in our neighborhood on one hand3 the blueish hued Purple Whale was nearly green from its thick coating of pollen too making it hard to see where the end of the driveway is.

So after washing the Emperor, I went ahead and washed the Purple Whale even though I know it is kind of a waste of time.4 Sure it needed it, but right now as I sit inside typing this, the car is slowing being re-covered with a dusting of yellow pollen. Plus with tomorrow’s rain by the end of the work day the Sonata will be covered in yellow freckles just like I removed from the Miata.

Started down, went up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1471

Cars & Coffee

Daily DriverA little thing called Cars & Coffee, an informal car guy gathering, started out in California 7 or 8 years ago and has been spreading around the country. Mostly in big towns, but now some of the smaller places are picking up on it.

Turns out there has been one in Augusta, GA on the first Saturday morning of the month for a year now, but I never knew about it. Someone in the Miata Club brought it up at the yearly planning meeting and requested I put it on the MMC’s event calendar.

Shoot, I like cars and I like coffee, so Donna and I are going to go over there tomorrow to check it out. We also have an ulterior motive, it will count as a car show point in the Moss Motoring Challenge…

The 11-1/2 year-old, 149,000 mile Miata got a bath tonight. I even used a bit of some spray-on wax to gussy it up more gooder. When you get that close to the Emperor you can see it is starting to show its age in paint chips, scratches small dents, so I made up the little sign you see above to place on the dash.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1467

The Emperor Returns

I finally had a chance to go get the Miata back from Panic Motorsports yesterday. About a month ago when coming back from some around town errands in the Miata it started making some ugly groaning/growling noises under the hood. A fellow MMC member came over and listened (thanks Kurt) and figured it was the water pump. Kurt was right. The water pump that I had prophylactically changed at 120,000 miles when the timing belt was changed, failed after 20,000.

Not only did it fail extremely prematurely, but it did so in a weird manner. Steve emailed me a photo of what it looked like inside the pump housing and asked what I was putting in the cooling system because it looked like there was green baby poop in there. He’d never seen anything like that before. And when I told him I put nothing but 50/50 antifreeze in there he had no explanation for the sludge.

Both cars in the livery needed washing. The Purple Whale from the trip to Florida and back and the Emperor from sitting outside for the last 10 days or so. Because of someone’s idea of saving time and the tilt of the planet’s axis, the sun sets pretty early this time of year leaving little time after work, so the Miata by virtue of being smaller, got the bath tonight. The Sonata might just get run through a car wash because by the weekend, when there is more time, it will be too cold for doing it by hand.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1429

New Look & On Again, Off Again Rain

With what should be self evident, I am pleased to announce that there is a new look here at mr-miata.net. It is the same theme, Atahualpa, just with a new shirt. And because of what the topics have been during this past week’s posts you would have thought I would have gone with a Hawaiian theme, but to tell you the truth, I just thought of that right this minute, or I might have.

Last night I gave the Emperor a sponge bath in the garage and I put the top boot on in preparation for today’s MMC Breakfast run. Got up this morning and it was raining! On Friday when I checked the weather they were calling for 30% chance of afternoon showers. This morning the 30% had changed from afternoon to all day and we were apparently in the middle of that percentage. So, off came the boot and the top went up.

By the time we got to the meeting place the cloud cover was still there, but the light rain had stopped, so we put the top back down. The rest of the cars either arrived with their tops down or put them down once they arrived. We were at a gas station off Exit 1 of I-20 and we were going to a small cafe off Exit 22. Most folks would get on the Interstate, go 21 miles and get off, but we drive Miatas. I mapped out a convoluted 30 mile trip with 12 turns and crossed over or under I-20 five times.

The rain held out for the whole drive and the whole time we were in eating breakfast. It didn’t start raining again here in Aiken again until the late afternoon.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1396