Miata

I Don’t Even Take My Own Advice

I am patiently waiting for the UPS driver to arrive. What I bought requires a signature, so I can’t leave the house until that Big Brown Truck pulls up outside. What am I waiting for? Well, first let’s start with, I don’t even take me own advice.

It is that RoadsterSport muffler I waxed poetically about in that same post linked above. I bought the twin-tip version to match what the stock exhaust looks like.

I haven’t joined the local Miata Club, but I did start reading the Miata.net Forum, specifically the ND section that applies to my current generation. Ostensibly so I could learn more about the car and all the new fangled stuff on it that didn’t even exist when my last Miata, the CTBNL, was made.

But, sadly, it is not just the muffler. I was looking to get a stubby antenna to replace the stock one and I found a recommendation about one called, appropriately, The Stubby available from Cravenspeed. While checking out the antenna I noticed that the company is located in Portland, Oregon. Wait a minute, I live there now. So I scrolled through their stuff and found a couple other items that I just had to have, a side mount for the front license plate and the soundtube delete kit. A road trip was planned and executed. Money was spent.

I’m probably going to take a drive over there again next week, I have decided I’d like to get their clear wind deflector to replace the stock plastic basketweave looking one.

Brian Rekindles His Miatatude

Last Thursday I decided to go test drive a new Miata. I wanted to see if I really wanted a new ND or should go ahead and start trolling Bring A Trailer or Cars & Bids for a low mileage NB. When I got to the dealer and a salesperson greeted me, I said I was interested in new Miata in Grand Touring trim if they had one. They did, it was right out front. I wasn’t going to buy it, but I did want to take it for a spin.

We took a decent little test drive and while I did like the car it three strikes against it. It was white, it was the folding hardtop version and lastly it was an automatic transmission. When I voiced these concerns my sales person said, “We have a used soft-top in Red?” “Go get it, I’ll drive it,” I said. It was a 2016 Club model with less than 16,000 miles on the clock. I was a little rusty with the clutch a couple of times, but driving a stick is like swimming or riding a bike, once you know how to do it, you never forget.

When we got back to the dealership, I thanked Manny for the drives and told him I was a month or so out on buying a car and I’d let him know. When I got back home and sat on the couch, I started justifying me buying that used Miata. Not a fan of red, but I could deal with that. An 8-year-old car averaging 2,000 miles a year, not a problem. The car looked practically and the previous owner had added a sweet sounding RoadsterSport SuperStreet exhaust. Once I had a taste I was hooked. I called Manny and right then and asked, “What time do you get to work on Friday,” his reply was, “It’s my day off.” “Saturday?” “9:00” “Okay,” I said, “See you at 9:30 on Saturday.” So, I drove both cars again, but in reverse order, the exhaust note on the Club was calling me. I was almost ready to pull the trigger on the 2016, but still wanted another spin in the new car.

Echoing in my head is a sentiment that I got from Todd & Paul of Everyday Driver that we enthusiasts almost have an obligation to buy a new sports car if we want manufacturers to keep making and improving sports car. We have to be the market, so that others after us can get their hands on this kind of car. So, for purely altruistic reasons, I told Manny that if he could find a local dealer with a 2024 Grand Touring, a 6-speed and black interior we might could make that work.

They found an Aero Gray one in McMinnville, about an hour and a half away. After doing all the paperwork Manny headed to McMinnville in some car that they were swapping and I headed home to wait for them to call me when the car was ready for me to pick up. I’ve never seen Aero Gray in person and neither had they, so it was going to be all new to all of us. I got tired of waiting around the house so I Ubered over to the dealer and parked myself in their waiting area and watched college football and ate their free snacks.

According to Google Maps the two dealerships are 46 miles apart and the odometer on the car read 52 miles when I got in it for the first time. In spite of my rambling on about the lack of color in today’s car paint spectrum, this color has a strange attraction to me. It is not too dark, nor is it too light, and it looks good with the black soft top and the small black accents on the car. Either way, right now, I don’t want to wrap it a solid real color and nor do I feel I need to put stripes on it to brighten it up.

Now I just have to avoid joining the area’s Miata club or hanging around in the Miata.Net Forums so I can avoid the usual rampant customizing I am prone to doing…

Happy Anniversary To Me

Today would have been our 48th anniversary and if Donna is looking down at me, she is probably a little disappointed in me. Not because I bought another Miata, but more because she really didn’t like the looks of the 4th gen car. And she might even think that taking a loan out on the car was a blunder.

Sorry dear, but I do like the more modern sharper edges design of the ND. And the loan was just a way to not take a huge chunk out of the checking account we use for the non day to day spending. Don’t worry, I can pay off the loan early and in full once State Farm sends me your life insurance payout.

Last night when I picked up the car all I did was drive it home and park it. This morning, I took it out for its initial shakedown cruise. I had no particular destination in mind, I just knew that I would be heading east. First thought was to drive over to the Mt Hood area get some mountain road twisty. I started out down Sandy Blvd and ended up in Troutdale and drove right under the big arched sign reading Gateway To The Gorge. {visible lit light bulb appears over my head} Historic Route 30 runs through the gorge all the way to the most visited waterfall in the state, Multnomah Falls, some 15 or so miles away.

I’d never driven this road before, but was hoping there would be several sections of mountainous turns and boy was I right. It was a narrow road (probably first paved in the 40’s) and there were a lot of twisty sections throughout the drive, all the way to and beyond the falls. I was going to just head home on I-84, but right after I got on the Interstate, I did a Homer Simpson styled head slap and a vocal “Doh!” I got right back off a mile later at the other Multnomah Falls exit and drove that fun road home.

Christmas Eve Pizza Run & Shakedown Drive

We planned on pizza for lunch and when I called our usual place around noon no human answered the phone after about 10 rings. This is not unusual as they can get busy at lunchtime and sometimes I hang up and call again and someone will answer almost right away. As I was about to try this strategy when a machine picked up, they were closed for the Christmas holiday and would reopen on Tuesday. Dang.

Plan B was implemented. I called Papa Murphy’s, a take-and-bake pizza place, and they were open. We have used them a couple of times before and while they are no comparison to Rodeos, this seemed our best option. I opted to take the Miata because the roads were finally almost entirely clear of snow and ice from our post Thanksgiving storm.

Plus I wanted to test my fix for the front tires scraping when making sharp turns. Yesterday I had finally decided to see what the tires might be hitting. Turns out it was just the driver side and it was hitting on a bent down area on the inner fender liner. It was missing one of the plastic twisty fasteners that held the front part of the liner to the middle section. I didn’t have an extra one, so I stole one from an area that had a couple close together.

This helped, but did not solve the problem totally because the plastic liner pieces were still bent down enough to hit the tire on full lock, so I let loose my red-neck engineering side. I drilled an eighth inch hole inside the engine compartment through the inner fender and through the liners. I found a small flat head screw and screwed it through the liners from insdie the fender to hold them tight against the fender. Then I sprayed both sides of my “repair” with some black Plasti Dip to kind of seal it from the elements.

Success, no more ugly sounds when making sharp turns.

Times Miata Driven since 10/28/22: 3

 

Emotional Support Vehicle

A few weeks ago while wasting time on the Insta I came across a sticker that someone I follow had on the their Miata. I just had to have one. So I ordered one. It arrived in the mail a few days later.

It has taken 2 weeks for me to put it on the car though. I hesitated because I thought it was kind of “girly.” Which is kind of funny because the Miata I drive is considered a hairdresser’s/chick/gay car by roughly 75% of the male population and I have zero f**ks given about what people think about it.

Was I afraid that this would confirm that they are right? Whatever, I don’t care, it’s on there because that’s what the Miata is to me. If you’d like one of your own you can get one from Push to Start Design.

Tire Juggling

The last couple of years when it came time to put snow tires on the 2013 Mini for the winter I would take the all-seasons off and mount up the non-studded Blizzaks and MSW wheel package we bought from Tire Rack. Because the Miata and the Mini both had 15″ wheels with the same bolt pattern I could take those all-seasons and put them on the Miata. I’d then take those ultra high performance tires off the Miata and store them. You don’t drive on them when the temperature is below 40 degrees because they turn rock hard and stop handling/riding well.

Even though the Mini’s tires fit on the car they weren’t a perfect fit, they would scrape against the plastic inner fender liners when I turn the steering wheel almost all the way in either direction. This was really okay, because it was not like I was going to drive it in the snow or take a trip in it. This was just so the Miata could be driven on dry roads about once a week to keep the battery charged and give the car a little exercise keeping from having to winterize it while it sat for 4-ish months.

Well, the new Mini has thrown this routine into disarray. The 2013 was a 2nd generation of the “new” Mini and the 2016 we just bought is a 3rd generation, besides growing a few inches in all directions they changed to a 5 lug wheel. So, now what do I do about putting an all-season tire on the Miata in the winter? Turns out the solution was relatively easy.

After test driving the 2016 Mini we realized that we were going to need new tires for the car. CarMax put on two new tires because they were worn down enough as to not be safe and replaced them with a bargain Chinese brand that were very noisy. Maybe the 6-year old OEM Michelins contributed to the sound some too. I went to TireRack and found a Grand Touring All-Season that was the quietest of all the options, the Kumho Majesty 9 Solus TA91. We still wanted to maintain the ease of wheel swapping that we had previously, the Kumhos were ordered mounted and balanced on their own set of rims.

While the lug count on the 2016 Mini changed, the wheel diameter stayed the same at 15 inches, so that meant we could keep using the 2-year old Blizzaks, we just needed some 5-lug wheels to put them on. Those wheels were literally right in front of us, the current wheels that on the 2016 Mini. All I had to do drive to a local tire store in the Mini with the old Mini’s winter tire package and have them flip flop them. So, now the new Mini sports the Blizzaks on the OEM wheels and the crappy tires are on the MSW Type 22T rims, that as you can see above, I’ve put on the Miata as its winter wear.