Subie Snow Tires and Wheels, Bolt Patterns

I bought some steel wheels and snow tires for our Subaru and it looks like they shipped wheels with the wrong bolt pattern. On the left/top is the new steely, on the right/bottom is an alloy that came with the car. The specs are for 5x100: a 5 bolt pattern with a 100 mm diameter. You measure from the middle of one bolt to the outside between a pair. I got the ruler pretty close for the alloy. Not so much for the Steely, but you should be able to see how much wider the bolt pattern is on that wheel. I'll call the tire place in the morning.

Update: I called. They looked at the pictures. They sent packing instructions. They shipped the new tires. I'll return the old ones in the packing material from the new ones. Smooth as silk. NO HASSLE. It's the third time I've bought wheel/tire combinations like this. It's the first time I've had any issue, and it should turn out just fine.

Bled Brakes

I flushed and bled the brakes and hydraulic clutch Sunday. The old fluid was dark and a little rusty. I sucked what I could out of the resevoirs and then pumped clean, clear fluid out until it ran clear. The brakes feel just a bit firmer. The clutch about the same, but I suppose you don't hit bottom on the clutch the same way as brakes.

Top is back

Taking the top off

New Top

Working on putting on a new top. I have the old one off and the new one is basically just on the car, no screws at all for now.

Polishing Compoung, Dr. Colorchip

I worked on the paintjob today. One project was simple polishing. I used polishing compound and a cheap orbital polisher. It pulled the pink out of the color and made it more red. The second project was to use a product to make the rock chips less notable. The first picture is of the untouched car on the left and the worked on part on the right. The pictures below are before and after.




Dr Colorchip is a kind of touch up paint that stretches a paintjob's life. It doesn't take a paintjob back to new, but makes it so you can't see the white stars of chips in the paint from five or ten feet. If you get within inches, you can still see the chips. It's totally worth the $50. It works just like it looks on the video, though maybe I got good results because I'm working with a solid color. Checkout the site.

http://www.drcolorchip.com/

Compression Check

I like my mechanic and respect his work tremendously. However, he didn't report compression numbers when discussing a new engine recently. Curious, I measured it myself.

167, 166, 157, 157 ....at Denver's altitude. It doesn't seem to spell doom.

Changing Plugs

Two of the plug alleys had this odd rubber thing blocking the wrench. It turned out to be an annoying part of the plug wire that didn't come out with the wire.. I bought some long-reach needle nose pliers at the car parts store. One of them came out in once piece.








There is some ash on the plugs:

Much Better: $2300

Brakes: pads,disks and labor: $400
Tie-rod end: $200
Alignment: $100
Timing Belt: $1100
Valve Shims: $150

Still has a leaky rear main seal. We're waiting for a clutch or engine to make that a no-brainer.

need: clutch and brake fluid flush, wipers, plugs.

Bad News: scratched cam journal

I took the car in for some chassis work (brakes, alignment) as well as a new timing belt and valve adjustment. By chance the mechanics noticed that the journals were swapped. The exhaust journals (? the part that comes off, not the part cast into the head) were over the intake valves. One of them had a scratch that I don't have a picture of. You can see the scratched shaft and journal in the pix below.
It's dicey, but we decided to try in-shop polishing and re-assembly over putting new headwork on short-block showing its age or going for a different engine just yet.

3 trips in one day, no problems

We drove the miata a lot yesterday, ending with a trip to Conniffer. I was a bit trepidatious about re-creating the conditions that resulted in the car refusing to run, but it was fine.

New top has arrived

Does a bad CAS throw a code?

I hadn't seen the car throw any codes and was using this to support my argument that the no-start behavior was not caused by a bad CAS. To check my assumption, I wanted to see the computer work and throw a code when the CAS was broken. I started the car, popped the hood and pulled the CAS connector. The engine stopped. I pushed it back in, restarted the engine and saw the CEL. Here's the code on the reader.

Cam Angle Sensor (CAS)
Check Engine Light (CEL)

New Fuel Pump

Here's some pictures of the fuel pump replacement.

The electrical connector is stiff to get off.

At one point, I realized the bottoms were different and the rubber grommit that connects to the bottom won't fit the same way. It's all sort of jammed together, so I went with it.
On the right, the box-end wrench doesn't help screw what is not a nut, but helps put pressure on the connector thing evenly on both sides.



Here's the whole assembly.

and the grommit.

Toys and Commitment

Mandy and I have been considering a new car for years. We did fine with just one car for four years and really just wanted something more fun to drive than the Subaru. It has an automatic transmission and the smaller engine. This summer brought a little more car pressure as I've been taking the Subie to Boulder with my bike to ride some steeper canyons in preparation for a big ride. Not only did we want a fun car, but a second car would be more convenient when our plans diverge. With Denver's mostly sunny weather, we could afford to fill the second car slot with a rear wheel drive convertable. We considered Miatas, S2000s, BWM Z3, even Boxsters. Most of these cars would run $10,000 to $20,000. The Boxster would come with cache as well as expensive repair bills. $15,000 for a car that we might put 3000 miles/year on was another issue. Oscar, the Outback, is three and half years old and still doesn't have 25,000 miles. And that includes 2 trips to Santa Fe as well as a trip to the Grand Canyon and Phoenix! It was hard to get motivated to spend that kind of money for something that wouldn't be used that much. That's when I saw the '99 Miata. It had 117,000 miles on it, but they only wanted $4600. It was easy. You don't expect a car that old to fall apart, but you don't expect it to be perfect either. The paint is a little rough and faded. The valves have the famous tick that means the lifters need to be cleaned. The suspension feels like the bushings are getting a little dry and loose. It smokes a bit if you push it hard. It may need $1000 in misc. work. It was only $4500 and it will sit in the garage all winter. I spent more on my motorcyle. Who cares?! We'll have fun driving it, and I may have some fun doing some of the work on it...or at least just "farkling" it. When my neighbors drove by, the ones with the perpetually nearly new Audi, I was a bit embarrassed, but they were very intrigued. I think they liked the idea of a low-commitment car. Janice said "how cool" (she's cool). Lanc, surprised, told me about a buddy at work that had one and said "I"m going to have to get one" He's been driving serious, impressive luxury cars for a while, and I think he yearns a bit for a fun-to-drive second car. Lanc is a principle in business and has responsibility. Perhaps he also yearns for something fun and easy.

Ordered a New Top

Miata.net is all about $600+ Robbins tops. I wasn't sure if the Beater Miata deserves that much (surely it deserves that much, I just didn't want to spend that much). I found miatatopsource.com with cheap tops and not so cheap tops. I got a vinyl top with a defrosted glass window, and a rain-rail pre-installed for $467 shipped. I understand they are a royal pain to install, but plan to attempt it anyway.

Here's a review of a top from miatatopsource.com

...and some mixed reviews of the newer Robbins tops.

Stuck at the Mall

We took the miata out for an errand and had it stall on 1st and Milwaukee. Mandy, reliving her experience with the beloved Suzuki Samurai, the shitheap, knew exactly what to do. We waited for the red light, crossed two lanes of stopped traffic and got into a parking spot on Milwaukee. It was doing the same old thing: not starting. This time, the pump was exposed and I could hear it buzz. We walked the rest of the way, did some errands and came back. It ran well enough for us to get it a block further before it quit running. Lots of space here and a bar across the street. We called AAA and they showed up before we could finish a drink. The three and half miles home were within the four mile radius, so there was no extra charge.

Then the debugging process started again. I was assuming that the noise meant fuel. I'm also assuming that the computer is working and that no error codes means the computer thinks the sensors work. To test part of this hypothesis, I unplugged the cam position sensor, aka cam angle sensor, aka CAS, and tried to start the car. I thought I had read that if the computer doesn't like the signals it's getting, it won't power the fuel pump making a lot of other problems look like fuel pump problems.

The pump buzzed. The car didn't start. I went and read posts on miata.net.

There seems to be some consensus that lots of problems have the same symptoms. Most posters imply their solution to be the one I should follow since it fixed the symptom in their instance. I resolved that it's very hard with a home toolbox to find out exactly what the problem is and prepared to fix more than one thing.

My new fuel pump arrives at the store this afternoon. Time to mow the lawn and get a short bike ride in.

Fuel Pump?

After changing the oil, I noticed gunk from an oil leak. I'm hoping the leak is from the loose filter I replaced, but I cleaned the engine in order to get a better idea. Problem is the thing wouldn't start a few hours later. After checking for the usual wet plugs (dry), popped fuses and bad relays, I traced things down to the fuel pump power connection.


The picture on the right shows the shelf behind the seats after removing the bar that holds the wind deflector and (I guess) keeps junk from flying into the cockpit from back there. The access panel in my car was missing. It covers that big hole. The picture on the left is a close up. There's a wire-tie holding the connector to its socket now.

I tracked this down with the help of some resources at miata.net. After not smelling gas, seeing dry plugs and spark, I assumed it was a fuel problem.

First I checked the fuses:

This is under the dash on the left under a door. You can see the clutch pedal below. The connector at the top is the OBD II connector. The fuses are behind.

The fuel problems list then directs you to the pump and it's supply. I checked that there is power to that connector while the engine is cranking (sorry, no pictures). There was, so I wondered about the pump. I found a 12v supply (a trickle charger) and tested the pump: it ran. I even tested that the car would run with the pump running this way: it did. Out of curiosity at that point, I put it back together and it worked!

..then it didn't. I jiggled the connector and it worked again: hence the wire tie.

Oil and Filter Change

Only the filter was hard to find. In the picture below, shot from the front left, it's that flash of orange above the red parts on the alternator. Basically the filter is below the intake manifold on the firewall side of things.

Here's a shot from the left. The filter is below the third pipe from the left.

It's much easier to see in real life. I used a cap-style filter wrench with a short extension on my socket wrench instead of a strap style. Once it's loose it drops to a place where it's easy to reach.


Nothing unusual except the filter location.

New (to us) Miata, New Blog

We bought a new (to us) '99 Miata with 117k on it. While we had been talking about buying one for a while, I wasn't as careful as I could have been. The low price and its ok running shape made it easy. After purchase, I was able to make it smoke more easily than I would have liked, but a solid run down I-70 to Airport Rd and back blew the soot out of it: it had been sitting for 6 months garaged. Some time spent waxing it and cleaning the wheels was well spent.

It will need tires, a timing belt and water pump soon. In the mean time (2 weeks now) we've enjoyed driving something more fun to drive than the "comfortable" subaru.