Miatatude

Made Up My Mind Mostly

I opted for a mildly modified Version 10AE. The blue was a little too bright for my taste, so I had Adam change it to the gray on the Delta gauges. Now comes the needle color quandary, the photo above shows what it will look like if I leave them alone, hover over it and see what it would look like if I do some extra work.

For those of you who would like your own eye candy gauges for your Miata, now is the time, every Thanksgiving week Adam runs a big sale called Sharksgiving Sale (named for his car Sharka.) All stock gauges (no custom work) are down to $99 instead of the regular $129. Other stuff is on sale too, so forget that cheap Black Friday TV, get your RevLimiter on.

Bad news for me was that my gauges weren’t sale eligible, but the good news is that I got my order in before the sale, because before the sale it was a 2 week wait for orders, now it is 5 to 8 weeks…

RevLimter Gage Face Paralysis

I’ve got a RevLimiter problem.

When I bought the CTBNL a couple of years ago, it came with some of Adam’s stuff. The previous owner (Hi David) had one of his GarageStar oil caps with the Prototipo2 logo already on the car and he also gave me 3 of the small Prototipo2 badges that he hadn’t used. For a while I considered using them as fender badges, ALA BMW, but never did. One of them would made a perfect replacement for the Mazda logo on the trunk lid, but I never did that until just recently, when my Fairy Godfather gifted me with the larger matching front badge.

When it came to brightening up the wheels a little I bought some Wheel Center Cap Inserts from the RevLimiter Store in the same Prototipo2 style.

But this RevLimiter problem is not new. I’ve wanted a set of his gauge faces for at least the last decade, but never could talk myself into spending the $150 entry fee. That problem has been recently solved because I sold my retirement watch for almost the exact amount needed to buy a set of RevLimiter gauges.

The money was not the only problem though, which style to pick is arguably the harder one to solve. For the NB (99-05) car I have, there are 32 different styles to choose from. It is even worse for the NA (90-97), as there are 41 stock styles available. To make matters worse he does custom work too, everything from minor color changes to complete custom for a price. I think I have narrowed my choices down to three styles, the 10AE, the Delta and the Apollo.

I like the 10AE because it has some blue in it to bring inside the stripe color, but the best thing is, it doesn’t require moving the high beam light from it’s stock location. In almost all the other custom gauge faces the high beam indicator light is moved to the location of the current cruise control light and for me, that light is mostly blocked by the steering wheel, and not too noticeable.

The Delta does move the the high beam light, but the color scheme is better suited to the black and silver interior of the car. I think I would have him do a bit of custom work and remove the inside arc of KPH numbers on the speedometer.

The thing with these two gauge styles is I think they both look best with the white needles as shown on his website because of their predominately black faces. White needles where stock only on the 1999-2000 models, while the 2001-2005 (mine is a 2002) has red needles. Hover over the above images for a second to see what they look like with red needles.

When I changed out the gauge faces in my old ’95 Miata the stock faces were were black with white needles. When I changed to white gauge faces, I scraped the white paint off the needles and painted them red. I guess I could do the same this time, in the opposite direction, but I’d rather not.

Of course if I’m willing to live with the relocated high beam indicator light, I could possibly go with the Apollo, which doesn’t look too bad with the red needles. Once again hover over the images to see a mock up.

Happy 29th Miataversary

A 34 year old man and his 34 hour old car.

Twenty-nine years ago today I became a Miata owner and I have had one ever since. Along the way there have been a total of four and I’ve logged nearly 425,000 miles in Miatas. At this pace, by the time I’m 70 I will have reached a half a million Miata miles and probably will be on Miata number five. For now though, I’ll be enjoying the heck out of this current one for the next, say, at least 4 years.

A 63 year old man and his 16 year old car.

Been There, Done That…

…Got the Dragon Sticker.

Hard to believe that it has taken over two years to get the CTBNL onto the Tail of the Dragon’s 318 turns in 11 miles, but it finally happened this morning. We applied our usual trick of an early start to get two full clean passes, both northbound and southbound, from the top of the Deals Gap Motorcycle Resort.

Hot Lazy Cupholder

The other week, on one of the frequent trips to the north for bagels, we both noticed that the center console area of the CTBNL was hotter than normal. From past experience, I know that it is most likely caused by torn shift boots. Under the console are two rubber boots, one that closes the hole from the bottom of the car and one that closes the top of the transmission. I ordered them both from Jeff Bezos.

I’ve had the parts for a while now and yesterday I finally got around to replacing them. Much to my surprise the top boot was not ripped. This is the usual cause and because a torn bottom boot really has nothing to do with heat I was prepared to ship them both back for refunds. But I figured, as I was most of the way there, I’ll check the bottom one. It was ripped to pieces, so I changed it. It might have nothing to do with the extra heat in the cockpit, but the small boot does serve an essential purpose, to keep dirt and crap out of the transmission turret. Mazda hadn’t just put it there willy nilly.

Seeing as I still had half a roll of reflectix left over from my 2006 quest to reduce cockpit heat on the Emperor I thought now might be a good time to do the interior of the CTBNL. The console was out, so I went ahead and removed the two seats. I then pulled out a gazillion of those Christmas tree style fasteners holding the interior carpet in place. I peeled the carpet back and used the rest of the roll on the rear self, under both seats and around the transmission tunnel. I didn’t have enough to cover every square inch, but I hope what I did use helps a little bit.

In between my ordering the two boots and getting around to changing them, I received a second reason to pull the center console, the back cup holder lid wouldn’t snap closed. It closed, but might open from a slight graze of your arm or a sharp bump. I knew right away what the problem was because I had the same issue with the Emperor several years back. The tab that holds the bottom of the cup holder’s tension spring in place has broken off.

To fix it with the console out of the car, was a matter of removing the half dozen screws holding the cup holders to the underside of the console to free them up. The original fix from the Miata Net was drill a small hole to tie the bottom of the spring in place, but I have been using the Mark Booth method (found towards the bottom of this thread) of a washer and small screw into the boss. While I was there, I prophylactically applied the fix to the front cup holder.

Miata Wiper Blade Fun

Last Thursday it was raining on the way home from work and when I turned on the windshield wipers the passenger side blade made a really rude noise as it swiped an arc across the glass. At first it happened intermittently and then turned into every time it moved. Because it was still daylight I rode the rest of the way home only using the single swipe function a couple of times.

OK, it is time to buy some new blades. I looked online at Advanced Auto first because they are right down the street a mile and I can get there and back in a loop that consists of nothing but right turns. I picked out a pair of 18″ Rain-X Weatherbeater blades for $14 each. They are old school styled and look more at home on the Miata than the more modern beam or the stealth types.

For the heck of it I checked on Amazon for the same blades. They had them for nearly half that cost at $7.50 and I wouldn’t even have to go out to get them. Because the rain was going to quit, I wouldn’t need them for a couple days, I put them in my cart. I didn’t order them though because they would have arrived on Saturday and we were going to be in Hilton Head. I told myself I’d order them on Sunday so they would arrive on Tuesday.

Because we went away for the weekend in the Mini I didn’t think about Miata wiper blades until yesterday morning when it started to sprinkle on the drive to work. Doh! This is another reason Amazon is helpful, the wiper blades were still sitting in my cart and all it took was basically one click to buy them. If my only option to buy windshield wipers was going to a physical store to get them, I would have forgotten again, because by after work it had quit raining.

Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick

About a mile from home on my way to work Tuesday, out of the blue, there came a ticking sound from the passenger side of the CTBNL. It was a high frequency sound tick, loud, but not enough to drown out every other normal driving noise and occurring at about 2 or 3 times a second. The steering felt fine and I had no warning lights. I put my hand on the seat, the dashboard, the transmission and nothing was vibrating, As I slowed for the next cross street to pull over, the sound didn’t change, so not speed dependent. When I pushed in the clutch in, the sound once again remained constant, so no engine or transmission. Hmmm.

I stopped, left the car running and stepped outside. I could still hear the ticking, it was less loud and coming from the area around the windshield / hood on the passenger side. A long inactive synapse tingled, I was now pretty sure I knew what it was. I got back in the car and turned the HVAC fan from 1 to 0. The ticking stopped.

I just left the fan off for the rest of the commute. When I got home I pulled the car into the garage (baby, it was cold outside) where I removed the glove box and laid on my back in passenger side with my feet out the door to take out the three screws that hold the motor up. Somehow a tenacious live oak leaf had found its way into the cowl area, under a plastic cover, then up and over a 1-1/2″ metal dam and through a loose mesh screen to fall into the fan motor. That 3″ long intact leaf wasn’t the only thing in the fan either, but it was the noise maker. I also pulled out a couple of small acorn pieces, a couple of small broken leaf pieces, several strands of pine straw and a lot of dust that through centripetal force and the design of fan had been wedged into the very bottom.