Took the afternoon off to do some car stuff. First up was to try and get rid of my gingling sound when going over bumps. I removed the brake caliper, its mounting bracket and the rotor. This was as far as I had gone before and sure enough the noise was still there. Here is where I ran into a bit of trouble. The next thing that needed removing was the nut on the axle, I don’t have a wrench big enough to tackle the job, plus once I got it off I would have totally exhausted my knowledge of car guts. What the heck, I have all afternoon, buttoned it back up and took it back the the local tire store which caused the noise and let them have it. I took one of the technicians for a ride and pointed out the sound. When we got back he pounded on the tire with his fist and could get it ringing, he said, “Give me a few minutes” and disappeared into the shop. 20 minutes later he came back and told me that when the last guy replaced the lug he didn’t get a shim in the right spot behind the bearing and it could move around causing that noise. He fixed it up and now I am noise free again.
After I got back from the LTS I washed the car. It wasn’t real dirty, but there is a Master’s Miata Club event tomorrow and I couldn’t show up in a dull car. I had intended to wax the car after the last washing a couple of weeks ago, but didn’t get to it, so today I did. As it happened at the end of December when I last waxed with Black Magic Wet Shine Liquid Wax it went on real easy, but came off a lot harder. When I was using my old skool paste carnuba wax it came right off with a towel. I’m actually thinking of getting a random orbital buffer to take this new fangled stuff off. The gurus over in the Car Care Products section of the Miata Forum swear by the Porter Cable 7336 which is about a hundred and a quarter. A can of paste wax would be a heck of a lot cheaper…
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 147