Miata

Slow Miata to Texas Day 3

Escape to a tropical paradise like no other–the Isle of Capri Casino – Vicksburg, MS! 1-800-THE ISLE
Bill,
Day 3 of 14 of the "Slow Miata to Texas" tour. Tupelo, MS to Vicksburg, MS. 215 miles. Our original destination was Jackson to see a minor league babseball game. Arrived just in time (2:30pm) to see the last out. Didn’t know it was an afternoon game. Vicksburg has 4 hotel/casinos. The hotel, shops and restaurants are on land, but the casinos are floating on the Mississippi! Tommorow we will see some antebellum homes and tour the battlefield.
Brian & Donna, Aiken, SC		 Bill Kirby
The Augusta Chronicle
P.O. Box 1928
Augusta, GA 30903

Slow Miata to Texas Day 2

NATCHEZ TRACE PARKWAY – SUNKEN TRACE
During the late 1700’s and early 1800’s thousands of trvalers walked the Natchez Trace, a primitive pathway through the Choctaw and Chicasaw Indian Nations. The trip of nearly 500 miles between Natchez and Nashville required as much as four weeks. In places the trailwas eroded deeply into the land giving rise to the term “Sunken Trace.”
Bill,
Day 2 of 14 of the “Slow Miata to Texas” tour. Fort Payne, AL to Tupelo, MS. 280 miles. Would have been shorter, but got to zig-zagging around looking for covered bridges. Found 2 of 4. Arrived too late to get into you know who’s birthplace (Elvis.) Tomorrow we travel the Natchez Trace to Jackson, MS.
Brian & Donna, Aiken, SC		 Bill Kirby
The Augusta Chronicle
P.O. Box 1928
Augusta, GA 30903

Miata World ’99

Twenty years ago today Donna and I got back from a 2 week vacation which consisted of a drive to Dallas, Texas. We were going to a national gathering of the Miata Club of America to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the car. We were going to take 4 days to drive over, spend 4 days in Big D and take our sweet time on the way home. The big draw at this event was they were giving away, to one lucky attendee, a brand new 1999 10th Anniversary Edition Miata (it wasn’t us.)

Bill Kirby, who was the Metro Editor for the Augusta Chronicle, wrote a column for that section 4 times a week. He’d collect postcards from readers when they went on summer vacation. Each year, his goal was to get one from every state and as many different countries as possible. This served three functions: 1) Local folks get their names in the paper with the added bonus of bragging about their travels, 2) Bill got to go on lots of vacations, and 3) Bill got an easy way to fill his column in the summer months. A couple years prior Donna & I had made the paper, because we took a trip to New England and that seems to be a neck of the woods little visited by folks from the CSRA. So I vowed to sent him a postcard every day of our trip.

I had intended to start on May 2nd and post one of those postcards each day until today, but forgot, so better late than never, here is the first, with the rest follow.

LITTLE RIVER CANYON FALLS
Desoto State Park, Fort Payne, Alabama
Bill,
A little early for vacations, but this is ours for the year. Day one of fourteen of the “Slow Miata to Texas” tour. At 300 miles, the Aiken, SC to Fort Payne, AL leg is the longest of the trip. Staying in a lodge in the State Park. Saw Desoto Falls today, this one and others tomorrow.
Brian & Donna, Aiken, SC		 Bill Kirby
The Augusta Chronicle
P.O. Box 1928
Augusta, GA  30903

Back Home

For those of you who read everyday and also glance at the Instagram feed, you’ll be happy to know that the CTBNL is home tonight safe and sound tucked away in our garage. Turns out, that ugly noise was a crack in the exhaust pipe near the resonator and a loose clamp on the exhaust. While the mechanic was trouble shooting the exhaust he noticed that I had some severely deteriorated motor mounts, so those got replaced too.

I didn’t ask if the cracked exhaust pipe was because of the loose clamp or the broken motor mounts, but either way the car is now ship shape. To celebrate, Donna and I drove over to the Pink Dipper in North Augusta and had some ice cream.

12 Rules For Miata Life

A few days ago I blogged about the “12 Rules” phenomena and I mentioned I thought it would take a while to think about the subject before I could create my own set. So, off an on since then, I have been plugging away at doing just that with a little Miata spin. I had a good start, Rule #1, but then it all fell apart. It ended up more like 12 reasons to buy a Miata, so anyway…

  1. It’s a Convertible – Put the top down as often as possible.
  2. It’s Inexpensive – Until you start adding options, every new Miata is priced below the $34,000 average cost of a vehicle in 2019. Nice 5-7 year old ones can be had for $15-20k. Of course there are cheaper cars to be had, but nothing can touch it on a cost per mile of fun.
  3. It’s Reliable – Well taken car of early models are still going strong at over a quarter of a million miles. And not so well taken care of examples can easily be brought to life without breaking your bank.
  4. It’s a Sports Car – On any giving weekend at SCCA, NASA and autocross events there will more Miatas than practically every other make of car. Even if you just drive on the street, do not buy cheap tires, they limit the fun available.
  5. It’s a Slow Car – And it is leaps and bounds more fun to drive a slow car fast than it is to drive a fast car slow.
  6. It’s a Small Car – Always park at the end of a row so at least one side will be free of large vehicles to make it easier to back out.
  7. It’s a Great First Car – The open cockpit will make your teen driver feel vulnerable, so they will be paying attention to trying not to get crushed by the typically much larger vehicles around them, plus it is small, light-weight and maneuverable making it easy avoid them. As a bonus it is a two-seater thereby reducing the peer pressure to do something stupid by 66% as compared to the typical sedan.
  8. It’s as Good as a Pickup Truck – On a sunny day. With the top down it is amazing what can be carried in the passenger seat sticking up and/or back.
  9. It’s More Fun with Friends – So join a local Miata Club, they’re everywhere.
  10. It’s Infinitely Customizable – While some consider them perfect right out of the box, there is an aftermarket for these things that is staggering, from every possible performance modification you could think of to all manner of cosmetic stuff to nice things that Mazda probably should have put on one to begin with.
  11. It’s Photogenic – Like babies and pets. See above. 😉
  12. It’s not a Collector’s Car – So drive it..

That Went Easier Than I Thought


The CTBNL only had forty some-odd thousand miles on it when we got it, so the interior was still fairly new looking. In the thirty some-odd thousand miles we have put on it since, it still looks pretty good, but the cloth driver’s seat had started to fray in three spots over the summer. We figure the velcro closures on the pockets of my cargo shorts were most likely the culprit.

We hemmed and hawed about the possibility of buying leather replacement seat covers, but in the end decided to replace the covers with the OEM cloth. While we have been happy with leather seating in the previous two Miatas, I really like the not too hot or not too cold aspect of the cloth. And as a bonus you don’t slide around on them in spirited driving. The cost of buying new Mazda cloth covers is only marginally cheaper than aftermarket leather, $660 vs. $800, but for now, seeing as the passenger seat is fine and we are not replacing it, we are in for just $330.

The internet “experts” said changing the covers was easy as pie, but because I am not the most skillful person when it comes to do-it-yourself type projects I wasn’t so sure. I read all I could on the Miata forum, watched some youtube vids and figured taking my time, in a couple days I could do it.

Turns out it took me a just little over 4 hours to finish the job. And at least 30 minutes of that was returning inside to do further research in disassembly of the seat. All the videos I watched were of the 1st generation Miata seats and the NB versions, being that there have been ten years of advancement in seat technology since then, were different in several ways.

That $330 spent is really more like $395 because I spent $20 on some Hog Ring Pliers plus 150 rings. Another $20 was spent on a pair of dedicated hog ring cutters seeing as my 40-year old diagonal cutters are literally not the sharpest tool in the box. I also spent twenty-five dollars at the local auto upholstery shop to have them sew a small half moon of fabric on the top back of the seat cover. This will hopefully replace the squeak preventative cloth and look cleaner than what I have wrapped around the roll bar now.

In the above photo I have finished replacing the seat back and was mid way through putting the new cover on the bottom. The bicycle helmet with an LED headlight on it is there because I was working on the floor of the garage and the door opener lights and my hanging drop light never seemed to be enough or coming from the right direction.

Made Up My Mind Mostly

I opted for a mildly modified Version 10AE. The blue was a little too bright for my taste, so I had Adam change it to the gray on the Delta gauges. Now comes the needle color quandary, the photo above shows what it will look like if I leave them alone, hover over it and see what it would look like if I do some extra work.

For those of you who would like your own eye candy gauges for your Miata, now is the time, every Thanksgiving week Adam runs a big sale called Sharksgiving Sale (named for his car Sharka.) All stock gauges (no custom work) are down to $99 instead of the regular $129. Other stuff is on sale too, so forget that cheap Black Friday TV, get your RevLimiter on.

Bad news for me was that my gauges weren’t sale eligible, but the good news is that I got my order in before the sale, because before the sale it was a 2 week wait for orders, now it is 5 to 8 weeks…