I’m not sure if pine pollen season is entirely through, but both vehicles got a wash this afternoon. The Purple Whale had gathered a nice little coating of the stuff and today’s light rain washed some of it off, but the rest was redistributed in a somewhat ugly design. The C.T.B.N.L. has spent the last week mostly outside and mostly stationary so it too had a relatively thick coating of the yellow stuff. For now they are both clean, but for how long?
Saturday the CTBNL got an oil change and tire rotation at 49,149 miles.
Saturday the Purple Whale got a bath and a massage at Lulu’s.
Sunday the Miata stayed home and the Sonata went geocaching.
Sunday the fantasy football team named after the Sonata went down for the fifth time this season.
24V on 22V
Washed both cars this morning. Started with the Sonata because I knew if I did the Miata first, I’d look over at that big car and just put away the hose. After drying the Miata I was struck by how the license plate frame, painted with the same silver paint as the patch on the bumper, looked sort of greenish too. I was fully prepared to believe that the silver paint I ordered from automotivetouchup.com was the correct shade and I screwed it up with the off-brand clear coat I used, but I never clear coated the plate frame. So I looked at the information sticker inside the driver’s door and found the color code of the car, 22v. Then I went over to the shelf where I had the touch up paint stored and looked at the can, it read 24V!
There was only one silver on the Miatas in 2002 and it was 22V, AKA Sunlight Silver Metallic. How could I have gotten the wrong paint? I went back in the email and looked at the order confirmation I received and sure enough there at the bottom was “Description: 12 oz Aerosol Spray Paint, 2002 Mazda MX5 Miata: Cerrion Silver Metallic 24V.” I went to the paint web site and found out what the problem is, you can choose MX5 Miata or just plain Miata and each page has a different list of paint codes.
I went to the contact page and filled out my name, email, phone and this is what I put in the text area:
I believe I was led astray by your web page color selection process. On August 15th I ordered a 12oz spray can of silver touch-up paint for my 2002 Mazda Miata on Order #9167888. The paint code for that year Miata is 22V, but I received 24V.
Admittedly I probably had several chances to realize I had the wrong color paint, but I didn’t notice it until I had painted a portion of my rear bumper (and license plate frame.) My fault was my trust in my knowledge of Miatas in that I knew there was only one silver offered on the Miata in that year.
When I selected my color I must have chosen from the drop down boxes “2002 – Mazda – MX5 Miata” because the generated list of colors shows one silver, so I selected it. Unfortunately that was 24V, a color not available on the Miata in 2002. To get the right color you have to chose “2002 – Mazda – Miata” to get to a list that shows the right color code, 22V. Why 2 different selections anyway?
Attached are screenshots of the two different pages. And now that I look at them closely I see several errors on the two pages, both in omissions and additions.
Could you please ship, at your expense a replacement 12oz spray can in the color I really need – 22V?
Thanks for your consideration,
Brian
After I sent that off I did a little research over on the Miata Forum and found out that 24V actually was a Miata color in 2002, it was used on some Special Edition cars in Japan and Australia. Ahh, maybe that is the reason for the two Miata options on the touch up paint maker’s web site. If they are using MX5 Miata for non-US cars their chart is still wrong as there was 22V silver available in both those countries as well…we’ll see how they respond.
When we got home from work tonight I was feeling energetic, so I decided to go outside and wash the Purple Whale. I took one look at the car and thought, man that’s a lot of metal and decided to wash the Miata.
After dinner and the evening news we opted to do our weekly grocery shopping tonight instead of Saturday or Sunday morning. On the way to the store we made a quick stop at Lulu’s to run the Sonata through the automatic car wash. Normally we just do the “Molly Wash” which is basically a wash and a tire shine for $10, but not tonight. All I had in my wallet was a twenty and we wondered if the automatic check-in machine would give change. The answer to that question would go unanswered because as we pulled in there was an advert for the Manager’s Special for twenty bucks so we decided to shoot the moon.
The top of the line wash is $18 and there are like 4 different add-ons that range from $2 to $4 each, the Manager’s Special tossed everything in for a mere $2 more. We got Bug Shielded, Simonized, Buffed and more than I can remember. What I did remember was something called Lava Wash where the Sonata was coated in three times as much soap as usual and instead of it being plain white, the suds were a mixed combination of red, orange and yellow colored.
After shopping I filled up the Purple Whales tank and when I looked to read the mileage from the last fill-up I notice the total mileage showed 61,117. Hmmm, missed the transition from 60999 to 6100 which probably happened some time last week. Shame on me.
Stopped on the way over to visit a friend and took this picture. It is worth two points and I’m counting zero miles because we would have passed right by it anyway.
Monday when we got home from work, Donna checked the mail and she came out with a padded envelope, looked at me and asked accusingly, “What did you order from Moss Motors?!?” I thought for a moment, couldn’t come up with anything…..then it dawned on me, it was our prize package for finishing as one of the 50 runners-up in the 2015 Motoring Challenge. Sure enough, that’s what it was, a nice t-shirt, a cool little sticker and our $50 gift certificate.
This year for the Motoring Challenge instead of a T-shirt they are giving everyone who scores 50 points a nifty hat, well last week’s “Slow Children Playing” sign put us over that mark. All they wanted as proof was a photo of your entry sheet with your progress so far marked off. So Wednesday after work I took a picture of ours sitting on the trunk of the Sonata and wrote 52 pts, so far with my finger in the coating of pine pollen. I then spent the next 1-1/2 hours washing the pollen off both the Sonata and the Miata, even though I knew they would be covered again to the same thickness in a couple days.
This morning was the monthly breakfast drive with the MMC and we had a turn out of two cars, us and the folks who were leading it. Maybe some were scared off by the chance of rain, the weather have been promising all week that it would start raining last night, continue through the whole day and not quit until tonight. It was sprinkling lightly when we got ready to leave for the drive, but halfway to the meet up spot we paused on the side of the road and dropped the top. We just returned from grocery shopping and it is still down. Radar is showing a line heading our way, should be here within the hour, but I would not be surprised if it dissipates before it gets here.
In this afternoon’s mail was another padded envelope from Moss Motors. This time, she didn’t ask what I bought because we knew the hat was on its way. Now I have to figure out what I want to spend the fifty bucks on so I can get another padded envelope from them in the mail again.
The Purple Whale just got back from his 60k service appointment and before they give you car back as a “free” perk they wash and vacuum it.
We dropped off the car yesterday, so this morning I called the Service Adviser to see how how much this was going to set me back I was told it would be $491. When we showed up to get the car back he told me the total was $527 which I figured was the price + tax. We I got home and looked at the back page of the sheet he gave me there were itemized costs for labor, parts, misc and tax with a total of $580.33. Right underneath that he had hand written in -$53.08 bringing the total to the paid $527.29. WTF? The math isn’t even right! The original $491 plus the 7% sales tax should have totaled $525.37.
The recommended service is to inspect a zillion things, the major items are changing several filters and draining, flushing and replacing the big three fluids (oil, coolant & transmission.) Where did the $580 come from, hard to tell, because the inspections aren’t itemized so all the cost is lumped in the blocks for the 3 fluid changes.
While he was in the shop he also had a couple recalls taken care of. One was some sort of brake pedal stopper which might cause the car to not start needed to be replaced. The second was inspection for engine block noise which might indicate possible main bearing failure. Some engines apparently didn’t get all the chips flushed out during manufacturing. The Purple Whale was fine on that count.
A couple of other observations:
1) They noticed a clunk when turning and replaced a steering coupling under warranty. I have been hearing something like that when backing out of the driveway when transiting off the little curb there, but thought nothing of it. In the write up section for this it says, “Replaced steering coupler per TSB 14-ST-002. One time good will for customer satisfaction.” So they changed something per a Technical Service Bulletin and it is goodwill?
2) In another shining example of car dealer math, Hyundai recommends changing the oil every 7,500 miles and in a little note towards the end of my service print out it says “next oil lube service due @ 63,258 miles, or about 3,746 miles more than the car has now.
Last Friday when we were at the gap, as we left the dam overlook, the Emperor took off with a horrible bit of belt squeal for the first 50 yards or so. Talk about embarrassing, especially as the few cars that were there were tricked out Subaru WRXs and tarted up Nissan Z cars. On Sunday morning we got so early a start for home it was still dark out. Turns out this was a good thing because not many people were awake and those that were couldn’t see which car was emitting that howling banshee squeal for the first 1/4 mile going east on NC 143 out of Robbinsville.
Tuesday evening the Miata got a bath, so Wednesday when we went to back out of the garage, the belt squeal started right up, and if you think this is noisy when driving outside, inside our one-car garage it is ear piercingly loud. I didn’t even let out the clutch and turned the car off.
Have I mentioned that there is still oil accumulating on the garage floor? At first I could explain it away as left over oil from the previous leaks aided by gravity finding its way down, but after wiping up a paper towel’s worth for three Saturdays in a row I’m thinking this is not the case. My best non-mechanically educated guess is that these two things are related. Who knows, maybe wherever the oil is coming from now it is splashing some on one of the accessory belts.
This morning I squirted a little belt dressing on them to prevent scaring little children and setting the neighborhood dogs barking as we left to drive the Emperor back to Panic Motorsports.
