Miatatude

Happy Birthday From Officer Krupke

WarningIt is actually fall around here, so for my birthday we were going to drive down to Folly Beach in an attempt to get a Moss Motoring Challenge photo of their fishing pier and to get some seafood for lunch on the beach.

We started our road trip today in the usual way, by going to the local DD and getting my coffee and Donna’s hot chocolate, when we left the parking lot it got slightly unusual. It was early, so there was very little traffic on the 5 lane Whiskey Road and it was still dark, so picking the spot to exit was easy. I waited out the two cars coming from the left that were close together and there were two more coming from the right that had a enough separation to get between, so I swung left, out between them and got in the far right lane because I was turning right at the next intersection about 200 yards away.

As I stopped at the light and prepared to make a right on red, that second car that I had got in front of, pulled to a stop behind me. It was a white car and I instantly recognized the headlight signature as that of a Dodge Charger, which probably meant one thing, city cop.

My blinker was on and the car behind me put his on. I turned right and moved to the left turn lane in preparation for my next turn. Sure enough the white Charger followed in step and when he got in the left lane, he lit ’em up. I hung another left into the back parking lot of the quick oil change place there.

We were in the Miata with the top down and as the officer approached the car, Donna “helpfully” told him it was my birthday and it was her fault we were going this way as she forgot something at home. I think our LEO was more nervous than I was because as he tried to explain why he was pulling me over he was stumbling over his sentences and was a little confused as to where I came from when I got on Whiskey Rd. He did get out that the reason we were gathered here together was that when making a left turn onto a multi-lane road you should enter the leftmost lane first before moving into the right one.*

I handed him my license, insurance card and registration and as he walked back to his car he said, “If everything checks out OK, I’ll probably send you on your way.” Well, of course everything checked out, so our friendly young officer reiterated why he pulled my over, then explained he was just giving me a warning, which generated the piece of paper he was giving me. He then wished me a Happy Birthday, told me to drive safe and sent me on my way.

I blurred out my driver’s license number in the image above (I didn’t do any of the rest of the info as it is already readily available elsewhere on this site.) I did change the name of our police officer** and blurred out his badge number as well.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1424

*South Carolina Code of Laws, SECTION 56-5-2120. Required position and method of turning. Paragraph (b), Left turns … Whenever practicable the left turn shall be made to the left of the center of the intersection so as to leave the intersection or other location in the extreme left-hand lane lawfully available to traffic moving in the same direction as the vehicle on the roadway being entered. I’m guessing that if I was to get a ticket it would be for a violation of that bit of very confusing legalese. It is the only thing in the vehicle code that I can find that is remotely on point.

**to the first name that popped into my head, it’s from West Side Story in case you were wondering.

Dyno Movies From Panic Park

They’re kind of fuzzy because I cropped and resized them from the camera’s native 640×480 to a blog sized 800×450. The first video is of the first run:
httpvh://youtu.be/vsC54TNTkyY

This video is of the second run:
httpvh://youtu.be/-RhDmb9VlPY

The best HP number came on the third run – 104.3@6400RPM

The Emperor Gets A Stress Test

Emperor's Stress Test

The MMC visited Panic Motorsports in West Columbia. Owner/Evil Genius Steve and his faithful minion Josh welcomed us with open arms. They had even laid out some donuts and soft drinks for our consumption. When I was helping make arrangements for the visit I had made a request for a couple of items for door prizes and instead there was a free buffet of stickers, car wax, hats, hand cleaner and micro fiber towels for use to pick from on a table.

The main attraction after looking at all the colorful Spec Miatas parked inside and out was the offer of 3 Dyno Pulls in exchange for a portrait of Ulysses S Grant. One of our members towed his Formula Ford race car up to take advantage of the offer, but three of us regular folks thought it might be cool to go ahead and see what we got.

I went first and you can see the results up top here. Mazda rated the 2003 Miata at 138HP from the factory, but that number is at the flywheel, which is always 20-25% higher than what you get at the rear wheels and is measured by a dyno. I’m thinking 104.3HP isn’t half bad for a 11-year old car with over 145,000 miles on it. Steve said to me after that he could get another 8-10 horsepower out of it without adding any hardware, just some tuning and a couple more of those pictures of Grant. I told him to email me the details, but I’m really fine with the power the way it is. I’d rather spend the money and handling upgrades…

On the first pull I took a video of the car running and then on the second pull I shot the computer monitor as the readings bounced around. Both of them are around 30 seconds and 20 Meg in size, so if I can figure out how to edit them down a bit I may post them here too.

Emperor On The Dyno

This Is It

2016 Miata Front View

145,000 New Parts

As I pulled into the Valve Store(tm) parking lot the Emperor’s LCD odometer twitched past 144999 to 145000.

Tonight is the unveiling of what might be our next Miata. There is a live reveal on YouTube of the 4th generation car that is going to happen any minute now. Looks will have something to do with whether we buy one in a couple years, but most important will be if they return the passenger leg room back up to something resembling the driver’s. We do road trips in the Miata and when I’m not driving I need to be able to somewhat stretch out.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1418

Peach Parade

Destination - Parade

We had a dozen cars show up to be in the parade and that I think is a record for Club participation in the event. Donna took a couple of pictures for the Parade Destination of the Motoring Challenge with all of us were lined up on both sides of the street.

Donna was not going to ride in the car with me and was going to try to get an “action shot” as I drove by in the actual parade. She was standing at about where the parade started and took one photo with me moving, but you couldn’t really tell I was in a parade as there was no crowd in the background. She then moved up to the first turn to get another picture, but I was in the outside lane and didn’t hear her yelling at me to hold up the challenge poster, so we missed a second chance at the action shot. Oh well, the line up photo will have to count.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1383

42,000 Bits Of Metal

Metal Dragon

Day One: Aiken, SC to Robbinsville, NC. – 305.9 miles*
This dragon, that is made up of about 42,000 metal pieces and vehicle parts, sits right outside a relatively new souvenir stand that has popped up just across the street from the original, more motorcycle oriented, souvenir place, at the junction of NC28 & US129 near the start of The Tail of the Dragon.

As I guessed Thursday, by washing the car then, I pretty much guaranteed that the 30% chance of rain we were traveling through today, would 100% fall on us. We had to put the top up just about the time the roads started to get all bent and crooked when it is the most fun to have it down, but it was no real disappointment as it was not raining hard enough to make us put the windows up at all times, so we still got to enjoy the cool mountain air and dulcet tones of exhausting waste gases of burnt gasoline.

The sun did come out long enough after dinner here in Robbinsville to allow a quick run up to the beginning of Deals Gap to capture the Welcome to Tennessee and Welcome to North Carolina signs. As a bonus we also snapped a photo of the Swain (NC) County sign that was steps away from the state sign. This brought our total Moss Motoring points for the day to 10 with the 1 other county, 3 cities, a National Forest, a waterfall and the above photo which will be used for one of this quarter’s Bonus Points.

We drove the Sonata to work on Friday and when I got behind the wheel I realized that the odometer read 42006. Because we had been driving the Emperor to and from the Valve Store(tm) the rest of the week, I couldn’t recall on which day those six miles occurred, oh well, let’s call the 7th of May as the date the Purple Whale ran past the 42,000 mile mark.

*Pre-drive Google Maps estimate: 239 (-66.9) – Total miles so far: 305.9

Started down, went up, went down, back up, down again, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1331