Year: 2003

I Guess Psychologically I’ve Given It Up Already

With the purchase of a new Miata (actually, it is with the selling of the old) I no longer have barndoors. I am mulling over what to do about the Barndoor Fan Club that I have dabbled with for the past 4 years. I want to give it up, but I hate to see it fade into Internet obscurity (it’s already there) oblivion. I would like for some one to take over, but who. Plus, my Blogdom resides there, so I will have to relocate, ay!

Someone sent me some pictures for posting last Thursday, a couple of nice shots of his Miata in various situations, usually I post them the same day or at the latest the next day. It is a week later, and I still haven’t posted them. I feel bad, but not bad enough to actually do anything about it. Maybe tomorrow…

SSK

Installed the last of mods to the Miata for the near future, the Moss Motors Short Shifter Kit. Taking the console off the new cars is not much harder that it was in the old one, just, surprise, different. They hid the middle screw under the power window switches instead of the ashtray which had me stumped for awhile, then I went to the garage section of the mother lode of all knowledge that is Miata, Miata.net.

When I pulled the stock shifter out I looked down in the turret to see what color the oil is in there (it was icky black and thin when I installed the SSK on the old Miata) only to discover that it was very dry in there. Not totally, but the level was much lower than I expected. May have to put some in there next time I visit Clunk & Thunk.

After installation the shifter seems shorter than I remember, I’ll let you know what I think tomorrow after I have driven it.

It Doesn’t Seem Like Too Much To Ask

I have looked high (internet) & low (local Wal-Mart) and I cannot find a simple litter bag for our new car. We want one just like we had in the old car just in tan. It was a small thing, maybe 6″ x 9″. All I can find when I search the net is the Lewis and Clark bag and it is like 12 x 18, yikes, it must be for SUVs. It would overpower the Miata interior. All I can find in the local stores is stuff in black and sized somewhere in-between the above two (which is still too big even if it was the right color.

I’m going to track one down, don’t worry, I’m on it like a dog on a bone.

Money Mod #2

Today I did the 10th modification to the new Miata, front & rear mud flaps, but it was only the second mod I spent money on. The other eight were leftovers I removed from the Laguna Blue car before I traded it in. If you ever want to see what I’ve done, just click on the BtR Equipment Package link over to the left.

I’m sure the mud flaps would have been quicker to install on a lift in a well lit garage, but in my cramped quarters with just a drop light, I figure an hour and a half wasn’t bad. The second flap always went on a lot faster that the first, so with that familiarity I’m sure I could put on a set tomorrow in under an hour. I wonder how long the dealer’s book says it should take?

Electronics Are Different Than Electrical

Electronics Technician – Ha! My statement in last night’s post was way off (sorta.) Swapping the red and black wires is not the same as actually tapping into the ground wire and cutting the hot wire. Once I sat down and drew out the circuit on paper I could see just how different they were. So the instructions that Lynn has on the sheet for correcting the non-blinking situation doesn’t work if you don’t have the black wire tapped into the ground.

Ray came over this evening and we had him up and flashing in a matter of moments. I’m not sure how to solve Lynn’s instruction problem though, there just doesn’t seem to be a way to make hooking this up foolproof if the fool doesn’t have a multimeter to actually correctly identify the ground wire.

Broken

We bought a new toaster oven on Sunday. We were on the way to the airport to pick up Donna’s mom and needed to kill some time, so we went into a new Wal-Mart in North Augusta. It has only been open a few months and it still has that newness about it that makes shopping there a lot less of a hassle than at an established store. We picked out a nice round shaped unit that we thought would look cool in our newly painted 50’s kitchen. When we got it home and unpacked it there was a piece of the black plastic on the bottom broken off. The box wasn’t even damaged, did it get broke at final packing and they just stuffed in the box? It is really non functional and in such a place that it doesn’t show, so we will live with it. That is much easier than boxing it back up and driving over there to swap it out. We just can’t have nice things….

Blinkie, Blinkie

At the Miata Club Holiday Hoe-down on Saturday I managed to sell a couple of Lynn’s Brake Lite Blinkers. One fellow couldn’t get his to work no way, no how (even blew a couple of fuses trying.) He came over this evening and we tried a couple of other units and had the same results. I told him to let me try some on my car (haven’t done this mod yet) and if I got some to work I would write down how I did it and we would do it on his car.

My first attempt was like he tried, green as ground (so the black blinker wire hooked to them) the yellow to the light and the red to the wiring harness, it didn’t work. I tried swapping the red and the black wires as per instructions and it still didn’t work.

Black is ground on my car and probably will be on his car too. When I hooked the black wire from the blinker to my black wires in the car with the yellow wire to the light and the red to the wiring harness they all work as advertised.

Don’t ask me to explain why this worked because I can’t (and I was an electronics technician in the Navy for 10 years) because the second set up is the same as the first setup with swapped wires. So if that didn’t work, this second option shouldn’t have either – but it did.

Mine is up and running, hopefully tomorrow so will his.