Want 2

I also want to park my everyday car in the garage, but the convertible is more vulnerable, so it gets the spot. It's OK in the summer, because that's what I drive. It will get old in the winter when "well the miata" feelings start welling up again.

The subject of new cars comes up entirely too often here. I would love something as everyday as a GTI that drives as nice as the Miata, but more comfortably, that has AWD, but doesn't cost as much as a BMW or come with the attitude. I've driven a few of them, and need to drive more.

• MINI I've driven at least four of these including the new turbo 3 cylinder. I have not driven the new BMW-based 4 cylinder turbo Mini-S. I really want to want one, but just don't like the way they drive enough to get motivated to send the money.
• Miata: with that new suspension, it is a real blast to drive within the speed limit. No AWD. Ours is a bit beat, old, rattley and brings reliability fears.
• Tesla S 70: WOW!
• Tesla 3: N/D
• WRX: fast, and a bit bad boy, I got stared down by a waitng cop at the beginning of my test drive. As they say, the turbo is either on or off.
• GTI: I drove it later the same day. Beautiful car. The turbo is smooth and the DSG is great. No AWD, a bit dorky.
• CX3, besides being a cute-ute, it drove very nicely, if a bit underpowered. Mandy loved the toys, but not the weak SUVness of it.
• BMW 2-series: N/D
• BMW 3-series: ....can I submit to the car that turns people into assholes?
• Miata ND is supposed to bring the excitement back to the "chick car" that the NC lost.
• Mazda3 iSport 2.0
• Mazda3 s Touring 2.5. Get real. This is the car. Not quite as much power as the GTI, and no turbo to make up for Denver's altitude, but given what I've seen in the CX-3, it should be awesome.
• Subaru BRZ?
• BMW K1200RS
• BMW F800RS

Want

My nephew dared ask what was next after the new springs:

• sway bar
• bushings
• cold air intake
• muffler
• header
• roll bar
• real oil pressure sender
• set covers, Wet Okole
• new front bumper cover
• butterfly brace
• steel brake lines
• new disks, pads and bad-ass 2  4 piston calipers
• ...and some paint on the underside for what I have scraped off coming into and out of the garage.

Smelly

Miatas are known for having gasoline smells in the cabin, and this one is no stranger to that issue. As Usual, I've consulted the oracle and come up with a few things to look at:

• The various hoses accessible from the shelf behind the seats include a backflow valve that gets stuck and causes problems.
• The main hoses from the filler into the tank get old and leaky.
• A partially empty tank with a hot exhaust pipe underneath it can cause problems. There are articles about how to add a shield around the pipe to protect the tank.
• Some folks worry about the charcoal canister and the fuel filter, but the above two seem to be the problem more often.

Sticky, Clunky, Jammed electric window

My windows were always a bit slow. A shot of silicone from my mechanic helped a bit a few years ago. More recently it would clunk part way up. Then the one on the driver's side wouldn't go down all the way. I did some googling to read about common window problems on Miatas and found this:Ebay Guide Kit. It's for replacing a guide that often breaks.

The guide wasn't broken, however the kit included a zip tie for fixing a piece of plastic that often breaks as well. I had to take a few different things apart to figure out what was broken first.

Turns out there are cable guides like the plastic tubes that are part of a bike's brake cable in there. A piece of plastic holds on in place, and it broke. Broken, it let the cable get caught by the lowering window, keeping it from going down all the way. There are various methods for holding this in place with either a doohickey that punches through a single hole, or drilling a second hole for a zip tie. I found a nearby hole and used that. We'll see how it does.

Coil Overs 2

So I had to wait for new strut mounts or "top hats" to arrive before I could finish the front side. The top hats arrived on Wednesday and I finished the front two on Saturday. It was a really hot, salty sweat dripping on  your glasses, day. I think I lasted 5 or 6 hours to get those put together. I took the car for  a ride after measuring the distance from the middle of the hub to the fender opening: 12 inches. FM suggests 12.5. It was a bit scrapy low, and it made the back look a bit odd. The car sat higher back there since I hadn't done those yet. Driving it was a little weird. The front wanted to turn like nobody's business, but the back was hanging on for dear life. I finished the day with the intent to let it go for another week and enjoy a "proper" Sunday.

I failed. I at least wanted to order another set of top hats if I'd need them, and loosening the bolts would require soaking them in some penetrating oil. I'd read enough that venerable WD-40 isn't that well respected, especially for the job of loosening rusted bolts. PB Blaster is the winner of such esteem. I bought some and sprayed it on the bolts. Later Saturday night, Mandy and I went to Home Depot (hey, we know how to have fun) to look at paint colors, and I couldn't resist looking at the new battery powered impact drivers available. It's amazing $150 gets you a 500 ft-lb device that might be small enough to fit in the trunk of the Miata to pull these bolts out. I left them at the store.

Sunday morning, we ran out to the farmer's market and avoided all the wheat-laced goodies and picked up some Palisade peaches. Palisade, home of Flyin' Miata. I couldn't stop thinking about the bolts and whether or not I should order some top hats.  I googled some more about how to loosen such bolts and decided to run to the hardware store for 6-sided sockets and a breaker bar. My standard sockets are 6 sided, but my new set of deep-dish from the previous week are 12 sided. Apparently, the 6-sided sockets grip better. Ace keeps their Craftsman tools locked away and someone didn't show up for long enough for me to wonder if the brand at the car parts store aren't a bit cheaper. I'd bought a single Craftsman 21mm box-end wrench from Ace Hardware (they only had one) and another from the car parts store to pull the upper A-arm "long bolt" last week. I liked what I found at the car parts store because it was a little narrower and fit into some tight places better. Down the street I went. I found a 6 sided deep-dish sockets in both 14 and 17mm. I picked up a 1/2 inch drive, 15 inch breaker bar. Since many of my sockets are 3/8 inch drive I also grabbed an adapter.

The trunk was open. The PB blaster had been sprayed. Hopes were high.

Miracles happened. The breaker bar is almost 3 times longer than the socket wrenches and the torque you can get from that length is amazing. Combine that with the grip you get from a 6 sided socket and the results are just magical! I'd used a hammer last week and it seemed dangerous, hap-hazard and desperate. The breaker bar works so well, I felt a huge relief and sense of accomplishment. This is the tool!

The trunk is a bit tight. Recommendations to move the gasoline filler out of the way are great!

The bulk of the job looks a lot like the fronts. Instructions were more simple, but didn't work as well until I removed the upper control arm bolt here as well.

All went reasonably smoothly from here. I had to remember to stick an allen wrench in the end of the sway-bar end links to get them out, but the memory came soon enough. I put it back together with anti-sieze for the threads and grease for the flat parts of the bolts. It took a little over 4 hours on  Sunday, not counting an earlier trip for the sockets and breaker bar.

Test Drive. The test drive was amazing. This car is serious about turning, but still quite drivable as a daily driver. If I had fillings they would stay in my teeth.  There is no body roll on sharp turns and the car definitely seems 2 inches lower, though I'm not exactly sure how much lower it is.

It was scraping on the driveway into the garage. I raised it about 1/2".

Here's picture of the new strut:

Coil Overs

My brother's struct spring compressor has been following me from house to house, garage to garage for over 20 years. He first bought it to spruce up the suspension in a pair of '79 Lancia Betas he owned in the late 80s...OK, 30 years. I owned a 1996 Acura Integra and never did work on the suspension in the 10 years I owned it. Now its been sold for 10 years, and I own a 1999 Miata. It was time.

I've surfed the web a bit and knew of a performance shop in Grand Junction, Colorado, that specializes in Miatas. Flyin Miata is located among the vineyards in Palisade, a town just to the East. I agonized for a few weeks about wether to get the more street oriented Konis, or the more track oriented V-Maxx coilovers. I went all-in and got the coilovers. There are much more aggressive springs available, but I liked the idea of adjustable height, and being better prepare for a day among the cones at an auto-cross event.

Besides tightening the suspension and making the car fly around corners better, it will sit lower to the ground, so here's a "before" picture.

Keith Tanner at Flyin' Miata has a book full of instructions, so I bought it:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0760316201/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The first step to installing these involves removing bolts that hold the top end of the assembly to the car. You can see these from inside the engine compartment. They are on either side of  that shiny thing in the bottom center of the photo below.

Things got interesting as the nuts were taking more turns than it seems they should to come off.

Look closely. That nut, obviously, came off, but it barely has any threads! Two others came off as they should. The fourth (2 on the left, and two on the right) is still on the car and partially dremeled off (more to come) because the threads were so stripped away they weren't there to do their job.

Above is a picture of the shock mount stud that might have come from. Look at the threads closest to the (red) body. Lovely eh?

Nothing a bit of dremeling wouldn't fix.

With that stuff loose, it's time to loosen the bottom and remove the assembly of the side I can progress on. This picture is from the driver's side. It has the stripped bolt. Other pictures are of the passenger side where I could make progress.

The assembly I'm talking about is the strut that connects the wheel hub behind the brake disk to the top of the fender. It's the thing with a spring around it. Below the spring you can see a big steel letter A pointed at you. That's the upper control arm and plays a role in the story. The challenge here is that even with the car up on jack stands, the spring is still pushing the wheel/hub downwards. In any case, the whole affair is a little to long to just lift out once a bolt at the bottom is removed. More parts need disassembled.

Up top from inside the fender you can see some looseness.

Looking at the hub from the side, you an see where a bolt holding stuff together at the bottom has been removed.

Looking more closely at the 'A', the upper control arm, mostly black here, there is a bolt that holds the legs of the 'A' to the car. If we remove it, the whole affair comes apart as desired, "simply" in the words of Tanner. The bolt can be seen at the top of the picture, nut on the left, bolt head on the right. There's a tube behind the spring that is part of the frame of the car.

I went out and bought the two 21mm wrenches that were required, yet missing from my tool box. The nut was on tight enough that I made use of my new rubber hammer and got it loose. I kept turning to get this long bolt out of position. I eventually ran into an issue:

There's a bracket that holds parts that hold the sway bar in place. A bolt doing that job was in the way of getting this beast out.

Ignore the smaller, bolt above the middle with threads showing. Follow the bigger one from a black bushing on the left to a grimy, red-edged bracket on the right. There's a bolt head on the bottom. What you don't see is the length of that smaller bolt preventing progress on the big one. I loosened it, bringing the bolt's length down out of the way and got the big out out.

Here's a better picture:

And then when it's all in pieces:

The strut has some parts that will be used to put the new coilovers on, so we need to dissassemble that. This is the "assembly" I referred to above. Here's it's showed with the strut-spring compressor, the tool that's been following me for decades. The compressor has been tightened to compress the spring so it all can be taken apart.

Then in pieces...

Next up, putting this side back together, dremeling the remaining bolt on the other side and getting it done. Then the rear.

Outback Airbag

We took the Outback in to get its airbag replaced due to the Takata recall. $0.

The only sign anything was done to the car was the bill that showed they were going to hit Subaru up for $300, missing channels on the radio, and a very clean car (which it needed after a New Mexico road trip.

Break-in Fallout

Stupid tweaker took my lug nut key!

One of each of the four lug nuts on each wheel is built specially so you have to use a special socket, a key, to get it off. The logic behind this is to prevent wheel theft. Practically, it means you need to keep track of the key. It's always lived in the glove compartment that got broken in to. I went out to work on the suspension this morning and noticed it missing.

It not an uncommon problem. Big O Tire, across the street from both my favorite parts store and one of our favorite bar/restaurants, was able to jam a special tool onto to the keyed nuts, remove them, and replace them with new nuts: $33.

I chose not to replace the keys with new keys both because they can be an annoyance and because I doubt anyone is interested in wheels as small or as worn as these. Not a problem.

A Few Small Things

I've dealt with a few small things in recent weeks.

OBD Code: System Lean

I was getting a P0171 code and fearing a bad rear O2 sensor. Other things on the check list included a fuel filter and checking for intake leaks. After I'd bought the fuel filter, I noticed a loose vacuum hose and put a hose clamp on it.

Battery Cable:

Driving home the other day I noticed the radio cutting out and then coming back on in a second or two. The check engine light (see P0171 above) was blinking in a ghostly way. I kept driving. On the freeway. At 70mph. For some reason, rain clouds darkening the sky perhaps. I turned the lights on. Immediately, both the tachometer and the speedometer dropped to zero. No lights. No throttle. Still moving. I pullled over, knowing I could get home and be safe easily. Almost instinctively, I pulled the trunk release and jumped out (I was a lane's width from the side of an exit ramp) to check the battery. The ground strap had sheared cleanly off. Thinking for a moment, I noticed the jumper cables in the truck, I put one clamp on the ground post of the batter and then gingerly used the other to clamp what was left coming out of the insulated ground strap. Started the car, drove home. Turns out the battery slides fore and aft, stretching the cable, straining the cable where the battery connector is.

It was a bit of adventure getting the right size for the battery post, but it was fixed within a few days. Stopping the sliding was a little more interesting, as the bolt that tightens the bar across the battey would only tighten so much before spinning. I haven't mustered the patience to get a socket extension through a structural member on the other side to try and hold a nut steady. I put a 2x4 scrap in the battery tray next to the battery. That keeps it from moving for now.

Break In:

I left the Miata out front for a single night while the Subie was in the garage with a load of IKEA. I'd learned long ago not to lock the car. I learned you shouldn't lock the storage compartment when it's lid was trashed about three years ago while we lived in an apartment waiting for our house to be built. I just learned not to lock the glove compartment. At least it's a cheaper fix. The handle is only $15, however I bought tan not beige... I still need a replacement compartment door and hinge.

Window Clunk:

Long story short:

ebay repair kit

Tank Cover

The shelf behind the seats has a cover under which lie the fuel hoses and electrical connections to the fuel pump. My car didn't have a cover over that area after obvious work (replacing the fuel pump was one of the first jobs done on this car). So I replaced it after buying a new shelf that included this cover: $100. There seems to be less gasoline smell on hot days.