Miatatude

Little Boy Blue

The Folks in the MMC don’t know it yet, but tonight is Donna and my last Club meeting. Regular readers will remember that a couple months ago I was virtual car shopping, well we have decided on a car. It was not on the original list in either category because it fell outside the theoretical budget limit, and if recent events have taught us anything it is you only live once, so you might as well enjoy yourself while you can.

The local dealer didn’t have what we wanted, but a quick search turned up almost a perfect match, satellite radio instead of the Ip Odd interface, in Charleston, SC. We will be able to pick it up on Friday at Taylor BMW in Augusta. With trading in the Emperor, $2k additional down, we ended up financing $28,000 @ 3.95% or $475 a month for the next 6 years…

Meet Little Boy Blue: a BMW 128i Convertible.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 578

Way Behind

I am either way behind in blogging about the oil changes on the Emperor or just way behind in actually doing one. My routine has been to change the oil every 3,750 miles, which is exactly twice as often as Mazda recommends and while I’m at it I rotate the tires from front to back. But the last time I mention an oil change was on September 6th, which judging by my Miata Mileage posts would put it at around 95.5K or about 9,000 miles ago!

This Saturday I’m going to do the oil change slash rotate the tires thing. Unless I forget to buy oil or it rains or…

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 551

Onions Are Like Underwear…

…you gotta have ’em. Or so said a contestant on Chopped this evening.

This morning we met the MMC for breakfast in Augusta and Donna and I left a bit early with plans to do a little geocaching on the way. Well it turned out we weren’t that early and didn’t stop anywhere. There was a cache that was located right behind the shopping center where breakfast was to be, so we walked around to grab it before going inside. With the title and the hint we think we found a part of the cache, but the actual container didn’t appear to be around. Dang.

The eleven of us finished eating by 8:15 and we were then stuck, the bowling alley, our post breakfast entertainment, didn’t open until 9:00. We stood around outside the door of the restaurant chatting and watching someone in a truck in the parking lot tossing bread out of his window feeding seagulls. After the novelty of that wore off, we trooped down to Kmart (the only other place that was open in the center) and shopped for blue light specials. Tiring of this Donna and I said, “We’ll meet you there.” There was geocache right down the street. Found it, yeah!

A couple of games of bowling was quite enough (my wrist was sore by frame 5 of the second game) and most of the group were busy picking out a lunch place while Donna and I and another couple walked 2/10 of a mile to behind a restaurant to try and find a cache that was hidden there. It was sprinkling slightly and GZ was between the back of the restaurant and its dumpsters, it wasn’t the tidiest place, so we gave up looking after about 3 or 4 minutes. Darn.

After our failure the 4 of us went our separate ways. Donna and I were going home, but couldn’t agree on what we wanted for lunch, so when we drove by the place the rest of the club had picked, we pulled in. It was BBQ place, not atypical as they had other meat items and seafood on the menu, called Flyin’ Cowboy. The food was slightly better than good and I could probably eat here 2 or 3 times a year, but probably won’t because it is 25 miles away. One of our group ordered a “Manhandler” which consisted of 6oz of pulled pork piled on top of a softball sized loaded baked potato. John was up to the task and finished the whole thing, along with both his side dishes, earning himself the title of “Potatohandler.”

To recap, on today’s Miata Club event, we all drove separately to a restaurant and had breakfast. Afterward we did some shopping together followed by driving to a bowling alley separately. We bowled a couple of games together and then drove separately to another restaurant and ate lunch. Well, at least some of us actually drove Miatas…

Here is the top count from yesterday, the first nice day since it seems like Thanksgiving. Today it was cold in the morning and now hasn’t stopped raining since this morning.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 521

Gonna Need A Bigger Garage

We have been virtual wishful car shopping recently, maybe it is because we are under a year in the countdown to a New Miata or maybe it is talk of taking this year’s trip out west in a car instead of a plane or maybe it is because automakers are offering great deals at this time of year (Mazda is offering $4500 off left over 2009 Miatas), but I have been hitting the web and having fun.

If you had told me 4-1/2 years ago that I might be driving anything other than a Miata I would have told you you were crazy. But now I’m not so sure. It all harkens back to our first ride in the current generation Miata back in October of 2005, we were underwhelmed, so the seed of doubt has been planted. The Miata is still at the head of the list, but there are a couple of other contenders on our radar, cars that are in our cost comfort level, around $25k and are convertibles and are available in blue. From worst to first they are:

  1. Sebring. This only makes the list in that it fits all three criteria, but its faults are many, chief among them is that it is as ugly as sin.
  2. Mini. High fun to drive factor, but we were underwhelmed when we drove one back in 2003 and the convertible version takes a big hit in the looks department, both up and down, over the closed car.
  3. VW Beetle. Donna has always liked the looks of these, I have to admit that I do too. Downsides include no manual transmission and cockpit wind with that big an opening.
  4. Mustang. The base V-6 falls in our price range, but the blue is kinda odd and it is 7″ wider and over 2 feet longer than a Miata, contributing to the title of this post.
  5. Miata. Needs another test drive and to take advantage of the the current deal we would have to accept a color that sucks.

Now let’s go a little further out there, what if we don’t get a convertible at all. Wild huh? Suppose we consider a little larger “sporty” car instead of a convertible. The car would have to be in the same price range and it would have be a coupe (I may be getting older, but I’m not ready for a 4-door Buick just yet.) From worst to first they are:

  1. Accord. We were Honda folks (2 Accords, 2 Civics and a Prelude) before the Miata revolution, but my how this car has grown. It weighs as much as a Mustang and is a foot longer than one too!
  2. Gensis. The front look leaves me cold and there is that still lingering Hyundai crap car association.
  3. Altima. Really like the looks of this and the blue is a terrificly bright shade, but I know nothing else about it.
  4. Mustang. With the convertible we were stuck with the V-6, but a coupe means we can squeak a GT with a V-8 in under our spending cap.
  5. Mini. It has lots of techno gizmos to go wrong and doesn’t have the best reliability record, but it is fun to drive, good looking and will fit in the garage.

A wild card in the coupe class would be a Miata with the detachable hardtop, leave it on nearly all the time and just pop it off for nice weekends.

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 519

Didn’t Help

Can you find the Miata in this picture?
school bus

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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 474

Cabin Air Filter

The Miata cockpit can be a very warm place for various reasons. It is not helped that the outside air vented into the cockpit is heated 15-20 degrees above the ambient outside air.

With Out FilterSeveral years back I decided to try and cool this air down. I used nearly every trick that I could unearth on the Miata Forums, ensure the heater flap closed fully, close holes in hood with tape, stuff a piece of insulation in the seal between cowl and engine compartment and tape over holes in firewall leading to the windshield cowl area, yet I remained defeated. On my own I thought maybe if I removed the big plastic piece over the inlet for the cabin air I might get some outside air directly in the system. This exposed a big opening directly to the vent system’s squirrel fan covered only with a wide mesh appropriately sized to keep out overweight house cats.

With New FilterHaving had to clean small leaves and pieces of pine straw out of that fan from inside the car a few times in my Miata owning career (major milestone approaching) I thought it would be a good idea to cover that up. The only thing I had handy was a spare 20×20 house HVAC filter. So I cut out a piece of the fiberglass mesh roughly the size of the opening, edged it in some maroon duct tape I had left over from covering the holes in the hood and taped it over the opening.

Old FilterI change the “cabin air filter” out each time I change the oil which is about every 3 months. Do I breath cleaner air because of this filter, I doubt it, what with all the time I spend with the top down, but it must be doing something judging by how dirty it looks when I swap it out. If you look in the clean filter picture above you can see a bunch of debris to the right of the filter, I don’t think this would have made it into the fan without the filter because of the 2″ vertical wall of the opening (probably designed that way to keep out water), but stuff has made it in there before, probably due some sort of perfect storm scenario, and since I have been using this filter method nothing has made in there yet.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 467

Tips From The Web

The Art of Being A Miata Passenger
Donna always gets this one right, but sometimes the driver just doesn’t listen – …you must be sure to remind the driver to get gas, and have money on hand in case you want to buy something in one of those small towns that don’t have ATM’s or take credit cards.

100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do
My favorite – #18. Know before approaching a table who has ordered what. Do not ask, ?Who?s having the shrimp??

50 Amazingly Helpful Time-Tested Tips for the Kitchen
Chalk? Really? – #14. To banish ants from the kitchen, find out where they are coming in and cover the hole with petroleum jelly. Ants won?t trek through the jelly. If they are coming under a door, draw a line on the floor with chalk. The little bugs also won?t cross a line of chalk.

Helpful Hints for Life
No time for a bath? Wrap yourself in masking tape and remove the dirt by simply peeling it off.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 466