Miatatude

To mount the small side sills I had to remove the perfectly good front mud flaps. Well they were no good to me any more, but they probably would be great for someone else with a Garnet Red Mica Miata. It did take too long to find a match, someone in Orlando, Florida will be the lucky recipient and all it will cost them is some postage. I saved all the hardware when I pulled them off, but I couldn’t really remember what went where at first. Then I went out to the garage and started to piece it all together and I’m pretty sure I got everything where it should go. The only problem is that the double sided tape has lost most of it’s stick when it was pulled off the car. Guess they’ll just have to go get a bit of it from an auto parts store.

I bought the side sills from Trussville Mazda. They are a regular sponsor of Miata.net and they have real good prices on Mazda parts and accessories. Cheaper even than the local dealer who gives us Master’s Miata Club members 20% off. Still with all that discounting, the sills were more than twice the price, quasi-regular reader, Ernest wanted for a set of used one he had. I was scared off by Ernest’s for two reasons, first was they needed painting in my color and second he had no fasteners for mounting them. Ernest got them from a Mazda recycler in a trade that was as complicated as the Nomar Garciaparra deal because he was going to add them to his new Mazdaspeed MX-5. Ernest was selling them because he found out to mount them you had to drill holes in your car. Seven holes on each side that your mid $20k car didn’t come from the factory with. Well, Ernest, after reading the 12 page instruction book that came with my factory fresh sills, I can say you are wrong about needing seven holes, you need 9 or 18 total.

Painting Ernest’s side sills didn’t scare me as the front spoiler painting came out top notch, so they would have done just as good a job again, but the no fasteners thing really scared me. Turns out I had good reason, there are like 4 bits each per those 18 holes, plus a half dozen other screws, clips, etc per side. There is a mounting strip to hook the top front edge of each sills to. There are four different paper templates for locating the parts. There is a tube of some adhesive stuff. The bag of stuff you get is worth $100 easy.

For funsies I scanned all 12 pages and then combined them into one big ol’ 2-1/2 megabyte pdf file. So if you would like to see why I want to set aside a whole day for this project and have a fat pipe to the net: Genuine Side Air Dam Instruction (Installation) Manual

Walking back to the car, with the way the sun was hitting it, it made Donna notice the black lower body pinch seam and it looked ugly to her. It kind of does to me too, there is a spot where the flat black protective paint was kind of globbed on, so it is shiny, and a spot where the seam is bent slightly from sitting on jack stands, so it doesn’t look at all even under there. When I said that I could fix that by getting some side sills, she just collapsed from the weight of all the hints and said, “Buy them.” Called Trussville this morning and they will be here within the week.

It took about 5 years of modifying for me to get the ’95 Laguna Blue customized to my liking (and I was still tweaking it when I traded it in.) With this last modification it will have taken me just 11 months to get this car right where I want it.

Went for a walk in the woods this morning. We haven’t been on a hike in Hitchcock Woods in so long I can’t remember when, but finally getting back in there will hopefully get us back on the every weekend Sunday morning hike. It is definitely becoming fall, as the morning was crisp and cool, but not many leaves have changed color, so it still looks very green.

Off to Augusta Regional Airport (Fly Here Fly Home ^TM) in the MSV to pick up Aunt Mary. She flys direct from Newark to Augusta and vice versa on Continental Express and seeing as they are ceasing operations in Augusta at the end of this month, Mary returned for one last visit while the non-stop flights fly.

This afternoon Donna and I ran some errands and stumbled on a low-key car show in downtown Aiken put on by the Aiken Horsepower Association. We wandered up the street , stopped in for ice cream and then wandered back.

Tonight I’m listening to what could be the last Red Sox game of the year on MLB.com.

The Miata is kinda dirty because we actually had some rain this last week. The Peachtree Miata Club is coming into town for the weekend, but Donna and I will only be spending a bit of time on Saturday afternoon with them. Should I do the whole wash thing? Or should I just use the Californina Car Duster and some Meguiar’s Quik Detailer ?

I can still sense that the car feels slightly quicker and lighter on it’s feet because of the smaller, lighter wheels and their new rubber. I know my Budget Director might disagree, but I think the swap and money spent was definately worth it…

As my co-worker Brian remarked this afternoon, “The spoiler is still on there.”

On the way to Atlanta on Sunday Donna and I were in the middle of the pack, with us, the lead car and the caboose all having CBs. After clearing the Augusta area and getting into the part of the Interstate where there are 10 miles between exits, John in the lead car calls out, “How fast are you going? I’m showing 72 MPH.” To which I replied, “Seventy-five.” Rudy from the back said he was showing 72 as well. John said he would bump the cruise up to 75. After settling in at that speed (the limit is posted as 70) he asked for another check. Once again Rudy was right in line with John at an indicated 75 MPH. My speedo read 80. Why the difference? I’m riding on the same size wheels and have the exact same tire model as John, while Rudy has 17″ wheels & tires. Was my speedometer calibrated differently because my car came from the factory with 16″ wheels while John’s 99 came with 15″ wheels and Rudy’s did come with the 17 inchers?

Yesterday I asked Russ to bring in his GPS so we could take a lunchtime run and see how far off my speedometer is. Back towards the end of last year when Russ first got his GPS he brought it along on a lunch trip to Hardee’s while I drove. He showed me one of its neat tricks was that it could calculate your speed when moving. Over a portion of road that is marked at 55 and my speedometer was reading 60, his GPS said I was going 57 MPH. Today’s drive produced some interesting results. Just like last year on the stock tires when the speedometer read 60, the GPS said 57. We then got on the Interstate from our secondary road. At 70 indicated the GPS told us I was actually traveling at 66 MPH. And just like Saturday, 80 MPH on the speedo translated into 75 MPH. To get an actual 80 MPH ground speed the speedometer was reading 85. While we where going that fast I put the pedal to the floor just to see what it would do. Unfortunately it was up a slight grade to our fast approaching exit, so the GPS reported a max speed of 96.2 MPH. At that level the speedometer was one tick over 100 or 102.5 indicated.

Using today’s figures I show that my speedometer is reading about 6.5% low. If I use the Miata.net Tire Size Calculator, going from 205/45 x 16 (tire diameter of 23.3in) to a 195/50 x 15 (tire diameter of 22.7in) results in a 2.5% low reading. Was the GPS accurate? Are my 195/50 x 15 tires actually 22.7 in diameter? Did Mazda calibrate the speedometer differently for different wheel sizes? What is their tolerance on the speedometer readings from the factory? Does anybody really know what time it is?

*An unprofessional driver on an open course. Don’t try this at home!