Month: September 2002

The Research Continues

Made it to work with it down, but put it up. It did rain for most of the day, thereby negating the wash job, but what did I expect. Got an email from Moss Motors, the short shifter kit is on backorder and they don’t have an ETA on the next shipment, so they cancelled my order. I think that it is a good thing. I read some of the reviews on Miata.net and now am slightly confused as to which way to go. The Brainstorm one sounds like the right one except for the disclaimer on their site about letting in more transmission noise. Shift boots came today, guess I’ll just put them on this weekend as the research continues….

Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 252

Dust

My wife watches way too much HGTV so she is prone to fits of “redecorating.” Last night she decided that she wanted me to move my CDs out of the living room and put them in the computer room where they would be closer to me. She wanted me to clear off the shelves on one side of the room that were full of books and put my music CDs on them. She wanted the selves in the living room to put her teddy bears on. For now the books reside on the floor in the computer room.

If you don’t use the books for a while it is amazing the amount of dust that gathers on them and the selves they reside on. Dust disposal takes on two forms at my house: 1) When Donna is around, you have to wipe the dust off with a damp washcloth, so it doesn’t fly everywhere. 2) When she is not around I just wipe it off onto the floor (where I could vacuum it up later) I know I read somewhere that dust is mostly dead skin that has sloughed off of you, but what else is it? Really, really small dirt? Tiny meteorites? Insect shit?

Ordered The Short Shifter Kit

Washed the car this afternoon even though it is supposed to rain tomorrow. It was just too filthy not to. It was covered in an even coat of gray, except where I had placed the little RoadsterChat & Master’s Miata Club magnets, it was perfectly clean under them.

Ordered the short shifter kit from Moss. They are proud of their Shipping and Handling department – $15 to UPS that 2 lb. shifter….

Started down, went up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 250

Mr. Smart Internet Guy, Huh?

I have been accessing the internet since before there was an Internet Explorer even. Most people I know when they have a question about the Net, email, viruses and computers in general come ask me. I don’t know everything, but I do know where to find the answer to almost everything. So tonight in a brilliant show of just how smart a guy I am, I sent out a change of email address via email to everyone in my address book, nearly 200 folks, and gave the wrong suffix on the email addy. I had dot com instead of dot net. So all 200-ish people got 2 emails from Mr. Smart Guy tonight.

Two Rubber Shift Boots

The car is way filthy from driving around in the rain all weekend. I couldn’t wash it because Donna needed it to go swimming. Busy after work week, so it may be all the way until Friday before it gets washed. Ordered the 2 rubber shift boots that go on the transmission under the leather boot you see. When I installed the leather a few weeks back I noticed that the top one had a big tear in it. I didn’t place too much emphasis on it until I was lurking over on the Miata.net Forum and discovered that those torn boots would lead to extra heat in the cockpit. It was then that I put 2 and 2 together. The transmission has been radiating heat for a while now, I just thought it always did that. Now I think that after reading the procedure for changing these boots I will have to move up the purchase of the short shifter kit so I don’t have to do the job twice and potentially pay for the bottom boot twice.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 249

Windshield Wipers II

Why is it that when you finally get some new wiper blades, it stops raining? It is Sunday in South Carolina and because of the archaic blue laws you can’t open stores until after 1:30 in the afternoon. So I can’t get any new windshield wipers until we get back home to Aiken and by then the rain had quit. Oh, well, it is supposed to rain on Wednesday, so I’ll get to use them then.

Not Lint Free

More rain dodging on the return trip. We left early and it was raining so we put the top down after filling up with gas. The top was way wet from sitting out overnight, so I tried to dry it as best I could before putting it down. Seeing as I was filling up with gas, I thought that I could try using the window-washing squeegee. I tried it and while it got a lot of the water off, because of the pebble grain on the vinyl it left a lot behind. To get as much of the left over water I used those blue towels they keep right there. While not completely dry, it was good enough for now. When we stopped to put the top up at a later time I noticed that there was lots of light blue fuzz all over the top. I guess those little towels are not lint-free.

Started up, went down, went up, went down, went up, went down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/02: 247