Starting to See 171

I'm starting to see a P0171 from the Miata late this summer. "system too lean" I wondered if it was the injectors, so I bought some injector cleaner gasoline additive. Stay tuned...

Oil Changes

I changed the oil on both cars at the beginning of July. The story here is changing out the Drain Plug Washers (DPW). We had drips from both cars and I thought fresh DPWs would fix it. While changing the oil, I noticed the oil filters were on a little too loose (you don't install them very tightly to begin with, but these guys would turn pretty easily), and that's where the oil was leaking.

DPWs anyway are a different story.

The Subaru had a crush washer. It comes with a curled lip around one side that crushes to fit the oil pan and drain plug as you tighten it. It's working well.

The Miata was a PITA because neither the crush washer, nor the assortment packs I got at the car parts stores fit right. Now I have a pretty steady dribble on the garage floor.

New DPWs for both cars ordered from Amazaon in boxes of 25 ($10).

Subie Brakes (at 55k, and 7.5 years)

My last post got such a response, I had to take pictures while replacing the brake pads on the Subie. In fact, it's something that I don't do very often, yet take some pride in.

Replacing brake pads is a bit of a big deal, well because brakes. Its super simple and I think I've done it at least three times now since my brother first showed me how in the early 90's on My Honda Accord. I'd already seen him do each of his Lancia Beta's during the 80's, and I think my Dad did them as needed on his cars.

This is the box the new pads came in. I read on the source of all true and correct information, the internet, that the Autozone CMax pads were good.

 If you are seriously interested in doing this, get a Haynes manual for the car and follow real directions. This is just show-and-tell.

Start out by jacking the car up and taking off the wheel.  The bolts sticking out to the right hold the wheel. The big shiny disk is the brake disk. If it's not shiny and clean, but scratched, its a problem and the disk rotor needs replaced. I've never seen it done, but I don't think it's a huge deal either. The chunk of metal on the left is the caliper.

There's a pair of screws that hold the caliper in place. Loosen the top one. Remove the lower one. Then the caliper can pivot up on the upper one out of the way reveal thing brake pads. You can also see the inside of the caliper's pistons. those are the round things, one of which has a clamp on it (below). I used a piece of string to hold the caliper up. It wraps around the suspension parts. In the picture below you can see the edge of the disk. It has vents going down the middle. Older, smaller cars didn't have this ( like a '79 Ford Fiesta we used to have) ...the vents; they had the disk. The pads are one either side. Secondly, I have a c-clamp squishing the calipers cylinders back in so that the new, thick pads will fit.

Here (below) I've taken the pads out. They are on the ground below the disk. To the right is the old one with a flat piece of metal that comes apart with it called a shim. You save that part, clean it and put it together with the new pad and some goo.

Here I have put the new pads (see how much thicker they are) together with the shims and some red goo back in place.

And the caliper back down. I haven't cut the string away yet.

No picture of putting the wheel back on. $55 for the pads (and these are the good kind. I think the cheaper ones can be had for $30). Total time, including chatting with the neighbor about the oil leak in his new-to-him '91 Volvo 240, was over an hour

Fender Fix

I think it's been a year and a half since I tagged the left front fender in the parking garage at the Medical School. The one estimate I bothered to get came in at $1600. It was close to double what I expected and I couldn't do it. We had just bought a new house and there were a few other things to spend money on. Zoom to the present and it's still not done.

I may not have a picture of the damaged car. Here's one of the fender standing vertically ready to be thrown out. Notice the cut steel. The headlamp would go in that round bit at the top.

I was chatting about the car with a friend who's been maintaining an older BMW 540. He reminded me about ebay motors and suggested I look there for a fender. With luck, I could find one the right color and avoid painting. I thought I'd give it a try, as one of the things holding me back was a repair that would involve perfect pain on the fender and bumper, but leave the rest of the car  in obvious need of a $2000 paint job.  I'd shopped for fenders online before, but hadn't seen the same color in a used one, new Mazda fenders were unpainted and $450, and the cheaper new fenders didn't have a great reputation for fit. So I surfed ebay. Sure enough I found a few fenders including this red one: Used Red Miata Fender on E-Bay. I was so excited that I found a red one, I bought it before I fully noticed the ding in the front. No matter. It was red, and Mazda stock. It would fit and the color would be very close. A minor ding would even go with the Beater Miata.

Installing was all screws, no cutting or welding. This page, Fender Removal Thread ,  has a diagram that shows the bolts pretty well. 'B' on the third picture is a hidden bolt that is helpful to know about. If the fender doesn't look like it's curved right when you mount it, it's because you haven't gotten a slot from the fender to fit into this bolt correctly. You can reach it from the inside easily.

As I got into the job, I realized why the high estimate from the body shop was, in fact, too low. The lamp housing got cracked and the bracket holding the two forward mounting screws for the fender got bent. All this in addition to replacing the fender, painting it and replacing and painting the bumper cover which I haven't addressed.

The bracket is labelled F in the third picture and can be seen in the bottom of the first picture. I don't have pictures of it, or the less than perfect job of bashing it back in place. The fix here isn't a perfect body-shop job, but quite adequate for this car's current state and my budget. The lamp housing is serviceable, and I'm in for $300, not the the $2500 this could have been, and the car doesn't ache for a new paint job by having some bodywork in super great shape and the rest scratched and dull (its pretty uniformly scratched and dull).