Miatatude

Mid Grade

The 2001+ Miatas, which the Emperor is one of, requires premium (91 octane) fuel because they bumped the compression, among other things, to increase the horsepower. Because of this I have been paying 20¢ more a gallon than must folks.

The car will run on lower octane gas because the ECU (brain) will compensate and adjust the timing so the engine won’t knock. When this happens the car will lose a few horses and the gas mileage will also suffer some. I have never cheated and run lower grade stuff, because even when the car is on E it only takes 10 gallons to fill up, so considering the downsides, saving two bucks more a tankful is just not worth it.

When I first got the car I was startled by a sort of abrupt surge in engine power as it passes up through 3000 RPM when the car is not fully warm. I wondered if there was something wrong because none of my previous Miatas did that. I checked that fountain of Miata knowledge, the forums on Miata.net and learned that that behavior was common in the 2001+ cars. They added a mechanical variable valve timing thingamabob and that in conjunction with ECU created that little surge which smoothed out after the engine was up to temperature.

Funny thing happened last Friday though, because Hurricane Ike created havoc with the gas supply in our neck of the woods, when I finally found a place that actually had gas for sale they weren’t selling premium. I filled the car up with mid grade (89 octane) and so far my butt dyno has noticed zero difference in pep. And as a bonus that, still surprising after all these years, 3000 RPM surge is gone. I didn’t check to see if the mileage was down, so tonight I filled it up with mid grade again. At the next fill up I’ll see if I end up getting less than the usual 27 MPG.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 360

Gully Washer

Literally.

I went out and took off the cockpit cover, so I could put the top up around 2:00 PM. I had checked the radar and it looked like we might get passing thunderstorm in the next half hour. I was right about the storm, but wrong about the time, it took about an hour and a quarter to get to us. I was also wrong about the passing part, that sucker stopped over us. It was still raining hard at our 4 o’clock quitting time. We decided to wait a while, the way it was pouring we would have gotten soaked getting to the car, even with the umbrella.

It was still coming down in buckets at around 4:30 and there must have been a dozen or so front office types hanging out by the door waiting for the break in the rain that seemingly might never come. Not being able to take it any longer, one of the QC engineers shouted, “I’ll show you how it is done!” and sprinted into the rain, disappearing front sight within 25 yards. Next a woman from HR removed her shoes and walked out under her umbrella. The exodus began.

At the end of the sidewalk at the the edge of the parking lot there are the storm drains, but they were not keeping up and causing a section that was under 4-6 inches of water between everyone and their cars. Our feet got soaked right from the start. Because of where the Emperor is always parked we had a long walk across wind swept pavement while some extremely large, unseen, being sprayed us with his garden hose.

I don’t even want to talk abut the drive home, there were several places that we almost floated….

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 243

A Sign From The Gods?

Our company auctions off excess stuff that no longer efficiently serves us in the furtherance of our lofty goals of solenoid valve manufacturing. Usually it is crap, so I pay no attention to the auctions, like the one that ended this morning.

Until I noticed something that didn’t even get one stinking bid, Item#2 – 3 frames. I went out to the red tag area (what they call the section when the items for these auctions sit) and saw that the frames were the typical black aluminum filled with motivational posters.

A·D·V·E·R·S·I·T·Y
Do Not fear the winds of adversity.
Remember that a kite rises against the wind, not with it.

The best thing was that they were more than big enough for my coveted Blue Sun Travel Posters. The frames are 24 x 30 and the posters are 17 x 22 so I could put 3-1/2 to 4 inch matting around three of the posters to make them fit. We have a big blank wall in the hallway where they will look great. The other two would probably end up on my wall at work.

I went into HR and asked if it was too late to place a bid on an item that had received none. It was not. I guess technically I could have bid 50¢, but that would have made me seem vulture-ish, so I offered them what I would have if I was going to actually bid on them – $5. I am now the proud owner of three motivational posters in black aluminum frames.

So tonight I bought some fiction travel posters.

For future reference, a 24 x 30 picture will not fit in the trunk of a Miata. It will not even go inside one if the top is up. It will ride nicely behind the seats sticking out at an angle over the trunk. The framed art would probably even add a bit of down force at speed. I didn’t try that out though as we had no way to secure it down and ended driving home like your grandmother.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 200

Ballast

Last weekend at the races when there was break in the action some of us were sitting around at Camp POS When this fellow walked up and asked if I would do him a favor. I said sure and followed him over to a concrete pad.

There sat his race car. I said, “Nice color.” He started to tell me about how there were only so many made in that color and what years it was available not realizing he was talking to a Miata Geek, I stopped him by saying that I had a 95 in the same color, Laguna Blue, before my current car and still miss that hue.

He was doing an alignment and needed someone to sit in the driver’s seat to simulate having himself in the car, so it would be set up correctly. I said, “Oh, you need some dead weight. I’m just the guy you need.” The car had a full roll cage and a racing seat and even with the steering wheel off it took some major contortionist moves to get in. Getting back out was even a little worse.

Donna and Carol had followed us over to stand around and make fun of me. Carol, of course, had her camera, so she snapped a couple of quick photos of me sitting in the car while I was making vroom-vroom sounds.

After he was done and thanked me for the time I made my way back to Camp POS. John was done with his latest adventure, so I asked if he wanted me to turn in my POS Racing hat because I had helped that other Miata out. He said, “Don’t worry about it, he’s in a different class.”

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 173

Hail To The Emperor

There was a 40% chance of afternoon thunder showers. We took the umbrella to work, but left it in the trunk. My job was to keep track of the radar and if it looked like thunder rolling our way I was to go out, take off the cockpit cover, raise the top and bring the umbrella back in.

I failed miserably at my job. When it was time to go home at 4:00 PM I got up from my desk and walked down to the other end pf the plant to get Donna. As I passed by some windows it looked very dark. Uh-oh! As we left the plant someone was walking in with an umbrella saying that it had just started raining. He was right and they were big fat drops too. As we walked quickly to the car the rain intensity picked up rapidly. We started running (this is the only time I regret parking in the north forty), it was coming down at a pretty good clip by the time we reached the car. I popped the trunk tossed in everything I was carrying and started to take off the cockpit cover. Tossed the roof up and Donna tried valiantly to click it down while I wadded up the soaking wet cockpit cover and tossed it too into the trunk. I started the car and raised the windows as the rain poured down. The interior was pretty dry, but we were pretty wet.

About a mile from the plant the skies really opened up, even with the wipers on high I had to slow down because of visibility. Then it sounded like somebody was shooting at us. Pow! Bam! Rat-A-Tat-Tat! Call 911 we’re under fire. It was hailing. Pea-sized up to grape-sized frozen water was pelting us. With absolutely no place to hide I just kept driving. I’m afraid to go out in the garage to look at the car and see if there are any little dents, but not as afraid as I was during the storm that the hail would get big enough to start tearing through the canvas roof and start hitting me on my noggin. After a couple more miles, and a couple more cloud bursts, the skies cleared, the rain stopped and we donned our sunglasses for the rest of the trip.

Started down, went up under duress, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 172

The Good Ol’ Days

I’ve had a lot of complaints about my uninteresting posts for the last couple of days, well just one complaint (Hi Mark), but with my single digit readership, one is a lot comparatively, so I’ve decided that tonight I will repeat a post from the glory days. I’d link to the post, but it is short enough to just quote it here.

Happy 2002
New Year?s Day. Cold, maybe mid forties. The Miata sits in the garage all day. The farthest I venture is around the block on rollerblades. Donna goes to the store, but uses the MSV.

That was my first blog post on January 1st, 2002. Now that was quality.

While moving from one bedroom to the other a couple of weeks ago Donna was going through some boxes and stumbled on the bill of sale from our first Miata purchased on November 7, 1989 for list price, $16,639. It was a middle range ‘A’ package car with the only options added being air conditioning and floor mats. We financed the car at an interest rate of 12.5%, so we ended up with 60 payments of $344.63.

Funny thing though, fourteen years later when we bought the Emperor, a top of the line LS, because it had sat on the dealer’s lot for nearly a year they were willing to deal for a below invoice price and with interest rates at 4% we ended up with 60 payments of $311.25.

So maybe the good ol’ days, in both blogging and Miata buying, weren’t so good after all.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 144

How Not To Rally

We read and understood the instructions, at least we thought we did. Take a look at the scan of the instructions (click to zoom), I think you can read them pretty good.

All but the first few instructions consist of a picture, a direction (right or left) and a number. The number represents the opportunity after the picture at which you should turn in the direction specified. … Pictured objects may be on either side of the road. Opportunities: Paved streets and roads on the same side as your next turn are opportunities. Dead-end or “no outlet” streets or roads, if paved are opportunities. Driveways, entrances to parking lots, and unpaved streets or roads are not opportunities. Opportunities are reset by a numbered instruction.

What we both knew would be trouble was the way the photos were to be followed. On the front there were two rows of three, the back consisted of 3 rows of 3 columns and you were supposed to read them the way they are numbered, in columns.

For a change of pace this time, Donna drove and I acted as navigator, she wanted me to experience the pressure of responsibility instead of just whistling while I drove. We left the start point first brimming with confidence.

We spotted our first picture with ease after exiting the interstate and then the trouble began. I started counting opportunities when the driver questioned my counting method, ie. she wanted to know why we weren’t counting on both sides of the street. While I explained my interpretation of the rules to her she kept driving. During this brief interlude I could not maintain 100% vigilance on opportunity counting. Uh-oh, 4 miles into the event and we were already in a cloud of uncertainty.

We arrived at a major intersection which seemed to be a natural spot for our turn, but I was only at 6 and we needed to take the 7th turn. We turned anyway. After driving about 5 miles we started to worry, we had not yet spotted the next clue, a water tower. Was that opportunity 6 we turned at instead of the correct #7? We agreed to go to the top of the next rise and if there was no tower we would turn around. Well there was no tower so Donna did a u-turn. Half way back to the scene of our supposed mistake we passed car #2 going in the opposite direction (the one we used to be traveling in.) We have finished 2nd or 3rd to the couple in this car the last 2 years. The uncertainty clouds just thickened a bit.

Pressing on, hoping that they miscounted too, when we got to the spot where we turned, we took a left and started looking for what might be the 7th left opportunity. We passed a lot of dirt roads, a few driveways and we also passed going in the opposite direction from us, car #3. They obviously thought this was a wrong course of action. We kept on and when we found what we thought would be the “correct” left turn, it was a dead-end. While dead-ends are opportunities, driving down one at this point would not be a good idea. Time to turn around again.

Sure enough, the other turn was the correct one, not a mile past were we had turned around, was the water tower. As we passed opportunity #3 and on our way to taking the next right, we came up behind car #4. They turned and we turned right behind them. I told Donna to go around them so we could make up the time we had lost in our ill-fatted attempt at the start. She gunned it and zipped on by. We were back in the hunt.

But not for long, I then did exactly what we thought I would, instead of going to the top of the third column, I reverted to my early childhood training and read from left to right, skipping right to clue number 8, bypassing clue 7 entirely. Even though we didn’t take a left because of the missed clue we ended up on course somehow, but we started counting opportunities too soon. Wen we got to where the next clue should have been, we found the railroad tracks, but the road in the background looked different than what was in the photo. Figuring it was just parallax error we turned right as if everything was hunky-dory. Sure enough the next clue, #10, was on the road we were on.

We found number 11, 12 and 13 before not seeing #14 at all. Figuring we missed it and coming to a tee intersection, we took a right because that was what we were supposed to do at the first opportunity after the missing clue. Hot-diggity, clue #15 was right where it should have been which led us to number sixteen and then #17 and the end of the rally.

In spite of the “detour” we were the first car to finish and because of a clue at the end of the instructions, we thought we were early. Knowing this and that we missed some clues possibly shortcutting the route I took our time and distance figured and padded them using a SWAG (scientific wild ass guess) and handed in our sheet. In the end, even if I handed in our true figures, we would have still ended up in third, but only because car #3 arrived a full two and a half hours after we did, having made four attempts at running the rally until they were successful just so they wouldn’t have to open the emergency envelope.

Wait’ll next year.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 130