Miatatude

Last night about 9:15 my wife came up to me and said, “Let’s go for a drive.” Because I’m all about marital harmony, I said, “Sure.”

It was a beautiful night for a drive, the bright, dusky full moon was just clearing the trees and the temperature was in the upper 70s. We headed out on one of our usual 25 miles country road loops, but when I should have made a right turn, I missed it. As we passed by the road I could see why, somebody had knocked over the street sign, so I didn’t see the bright green rectangular cue to turn. We kept on rolling.

The last time we went this far down this road was way back when we moved to Aiken in 1989 and went exploring. That time, right about where we were, the road turned to dirt. Back then we kept going on the dirt road just to see where it ended up. We followed it to the end where it tee’d into a paved road, which we followed a while before figuring out where we were and found our way home. What was once dirt was now paved, so we decided to follow it and see if it was that way to the T. Sure enough about 6 or 7 miles later we came to the same intersection.

We ended up covering about 50 miles and were gone for an hour. The only downside to our trip is that the weather has warmed enough now that the bugs are out in full force, so when we got home the front of the car was peppered entomological remains.

Alas I was out of Meguiar’s Quik Detailer, so I had to go to work today with a dirty car, for shame. But please forgive my transgression, as soon as I”m done with this post I am going to go out in the garage and clean the nose with my newly purchased bottle of QD.

Unless Donna shows up soon and makes good on her threat to go for an evening drive with the top down, the Miata will have sat still in the garage for both of the weekend days. Highly unusual.

To alleviate the close your eyes and gun it strategy of crossing between the Aiken Mall and Publix, our thoughtful city planners placed a small traffic circle at the 4-way intersection. We are rarely there because I hate the traffic on that end of town, but tonight we needed something from a particular store so there we were. We also needed a few small items from Publix so the traffic circle would get run.

On the way in I only got to do 1/4 of the circle because we were just turning right. I threatened a 450 degree turn, but thought better of it when I got the look. After some shopping I did get to finish the circle on the way out. To make up for the ho-hum entrance I wound it up to about 5000 rpm for the 270 degree exit thereby cramming all the groceries into the right side of the trunk. The lateral G portion of the ride was fine, but I got another look when I accelerated from 5k to near redline upon straightening out. I then had to just coast the last 50 yards to the traffic light at the main road.

I’m sure if there was anyone else around they would have smiled at my idiocy of rushing through the circle to have to wait 3 minutes for the light to change, but who cares I had fun. And in spite of the second look, so did my passenger.

I thought I had a possible slow leak near the end of February. I took it to the LTS (Local Tire Store) and they couldn’t find any leak. They had the tire off and submerged but found nothing. They took the tire back off when I told them I thought I found something and marked the tire.

I went to rotate the tires in the middle of April and when the LTS put the tire back on earlier they must have stripped a lugnut because I could get it off. When I returned to the LTS with my tale of woe they replaced the lug.

When we were chasing the Tour de Georgia we both noticed a faint chirping noise that is coming from that wheel area. It sounds like a brake squealer, but it doesn’t seem to be brake related. It happens when braking or when not. It is not constant, but random and frequent. Seems to occur going over bumps and or rough road, but it is also present when turning corners. This past Thursday I returned to the LTS and mentioned the noise. They pulled the wheel and looked around, but couldn’t find anything wrong. One of the counter guys took it for a ride and couldn’t hear anything, so they gave me back the keys. I got halfway home and the noise returned. 🙁

Friday while washing the car I noticed that the brake pads on the offending side were facing a different direction than the other side. AH HA! So Saturday morning I went back to the LTS and got a counter guy to come out so I could show him that somebody had put the brake pads back on wrong. We looked at one side, then the other. We went back to the “bad” side and he said, “They are on right.” I felt about as tall as a valve stem.

The brake pads are shaped like fat C’s, they have wide middles and tabs on the ends. Well on the passenger side the tabs face to the right. On the driver’s side they face to the left. But that is correct, the calipers are on the back sides of both wheels, so the pads may be facing in opposite directions, but they are both facing the front of the car. Duh! The LTS guy was polite and told me to bring it back another day and they would re look at it.

This afternoon I decided to take a look myself. Put the car up on jack stands and removed both rear tires. The first thing I noticed on my noisy wheel was that the W springs that move the pads off the rotor when the brakes are released were not there. Eureka! But when I checked the other side they were not there either. So maybe that isn’t it. The caliper slider pins were both pretty dry so I greased them good, but a short test drive revealed that wasn’t the problem. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you posted.