47,000 Shades of Silver

They say on the internet that silver is the fastest color, that is debatable, and it is, ad nauseum. They also say that when painting, silver is the hardest color to match. I can now speak from experience and I’m in full agreement to that statement.

When we bought the CTBNL it had a few ding and dangs, including a couple of big black parallel marks on the rear bumper along with some other random scrapes. Donna did not like them at all so she asked if I would try and paint over them.

I had some silver paint that I had used to fix the yellowing center caps of the OEM wheels that were on the Emperor for awhile. I took a clear plastic juice bottle and sprayed several coats of silver on it and compared it to the stock color. Hmmm, not bad. So I masked off os square of the bumper and gave it a go. Three coats of silver and 3 coats of clear coat and the results weren’t too bad, just a bit darker.

I thought not bad, but maybe if I ordered a custom can of touch-up paint from automotivetouchup.com I could get it even closer. Twenty five dollars and a week later I was ready to go again. Masked off a slightly larger square and sprayed the bumper area with 4 light coats of the new silver paint. Let it dry about 5 hours in the afternoon sun and then applied three coats of clear. After dinner I went out to pull off the masking tape and the colored square had a markedly green cast to it.

I’m now thinking that maybe I should have burned every one of my Atta Boy points on this one and told Donna to leave well enough alone. I’m fairly sure I could have put up with the scratches as they were naturally occurring, so only one of us would have been frowning when looking at the back of the car. Now there are two of us not happy with the rear view of the CTBNL and me worse than her, because this disaster is by my own hand. Don’t ask what the next step will be because neither one of us has the faintest idea…

This afternoon the odometer of the CTBNL marched past the 47,000 mile mark.

Once More Unto The Breach

Cool Vehicles - New Beetle Convertible

Ever since we took possession of this silver Miata we have been wavering back and forth as to whether we wanted to start all over again doing the Moss Motoring Challenge because of the different car or just let it go.

When we went on our usual Sunday morning bike ride yesterday the many puffy clouds were turning pink and orange with the sunrise and this got us thinking about the Sunrise “Destination” photo requirement for this year’s Challenge. So I suggested that we should get up early when we head to Lexington for bagels on Labor Day and if there is another interesting sunrise that will be a sign that we should start the Motoring Challenge again.

When we left the house this morning the sky was just starting to lighten up. By the time we had driven the few miles to the spot we had picked out for the sunrise photo we could tell there was not a single cloud in the sky. Well, that’s that, I guess we won’t do the Challenge with the CTBNL.

We have owned this Miata now for 27 days and Donna has yet to sit in the left seat, but on the way home she says, “I think it is about time I tried to drive this thing. Pull over here.” She was pointing at a stretch of asphalt along the side of the road that had no apparent reason for being there, except maybe as a spot to park cars with For Sale signs in the window. The one car for sale this morning was a VW New Beetle convertible. As I was stopping, Donna said, “That’s a cool car from another country.”

So, as my good friend King Henry V said, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”

Motoring Challenge II Points Today 4, Total So Far: 4 points.

Third Time’s Not The Charm

Gray Mats 2

Our first two attempts at floor mats came from the cheap throw rug aisle at Wally World. Both the red and the gray didn’t look as nice in the car as they did in our heads while looking at them in the store. Plus they were a bit flimsy and moved around when they were stepped on getting in and out of the car.

Last weekend we were in Home Depot looking at their in-stock commercial grade carpet because we had so much success with the remnants from the Valve Store’s office remodeling. No luck there as everything was browns and tans with nothing in gray. But over in the rack with some other stuff we thought we had the perfect solution to our mat desires. There was something that might have been an outdoor mat or an internal dirt catching carpet protector that was a solid gray, not too dark and not too light with a nice square high-low texture, so we bought it.

When I got home I used my usual procedure to turn carpet into mat: Trace the upside down OEM mats onto the back of the newly purchased mat material with a sharpie. I cut out the new mats using a utility knife and a retired pair of kitchen shears. Then the finishing touch, running around the edges with my butane charcoal grill fire starter to seal them. They were just the right weight and stiffness, plus the back side was covered in a rubbery #10 grit sandpaper-like stuff. They seemed perfect. After several days of use the mat’s Achilles heel showed itself though, the fine fibers it was made from started to shed like the fur of an Angora cat in the summertime.

So, we’ve now tried three different times to find a floor mat that would meet all our stringent criteria, spent around $50 and are nowhere near happy. Might be time to go ahead and bite the bullet by spending the $130 on the Zeromotive Checkered Floor Mats in black/light gray I’ve been eyeing for a while now.

The Shoe Is On The Other Foot Now

Back when we owned the aging Emperor I considered adding a roll bar to stiffen up the chassis some. I never could seem to pull the trigger on the cost of one though. John Haff of Clunk & Thunk fame runs a ’91 Miata in NASA‘s TTE class and has been threatening forever to turn his wife’s ’99 Miata into another race car now that she doesn’t drive it so much. The ’99 has a Hard Dog Hard Bar installed in it and I have told John several times when he welds a race cage into that car I’d buy the used bar from him.

Donna and I drove over to Augusta’s Cars and Coffee this morning to check out the cars (even had our peekture taken.) John Haff was there with a “booth” trying to entice people to join NASA to go racing on weekends. When we stopped to chat, John asked how I liked my “new” car. His next question was, “How’d you like to swap that Hard Dog Ace roll bar for the Hard Bar?” “No thanks,” I said.

We also went there to see if we could find some cars with stripes on them and ask where they had them done. We struck out. Oh, there were a ton of cars with stripes, but all the older cars had them painted on and all the newer cars had vinyl, but they came from the dealer that way…

Shiny

Shiny

  1. Remove the 4 black lug nuts
  2. Remove wheel from car
  3. Pop out the center cap by pushing from the back
  4. Remount wheel on car
  5. Install new chrome lug nuts
  6. Repeat 4 times
  7. Mask middle of center caps
  8. Paint center caps with shiny silver paint
  9. Remove masking tape from caps
  10. Apply new RevLimiter badges
  11. Snap center caps back on wheels
  12. Stand back and admire

What Color Is The Miata? (Stripe)

What Color Is The Miata Stripe

Back in June when I was dreaming of a 2016 Miata I was also dreaming of what color I make it with a vinyl wrap. I went so far as to order some samples and stick them on the trunk lid of the Emperor. Well, I’ve ordered some more samples. This time it is not going to be the whole car, just two 8″ stripes with a 4″ gap in the center. Donna and friend Jackie picked the outside blue (Satin Perfect Blue S347) while I picked the one on the inside.

This afternoon when we walked out after work Dona said it really didn’t matter which one as long as it was blue. So we peeled off the other 3 colors and left my pick the Matte Riviera Blue (M67). Tonight as we left through the garage to go out to eat, I looked at the one lonely 2″ x 4″ sample and thought, that looks familiar, the blue painter’s tape that surrounded the windshield a few days ago. I pulled out a roll I had in the garage and the painter’s tape is actually a little darker than the vinyl. But I can’t get that image out of my head now.

So I have my criteria, blue for her & matte for him. Back to the color chart and look, there is another slightly darker matte blue available – Blue Metallic (M227). Now, that number sounds familiar and sure enough, it was one of the colors that were applied to the Emperor back in June. Back then it was the inner left one. Looking at it now, that color in that photo doesn’t look any different than the Matte Riviera Blue (M67) on the CTBNL does right now. Maybe we should go with the Satin Perfect Blue the ladies picked or maybe I should buy a couple more rolls of the blue tape…

Hindsight Is 20/20 (Part IV) Third Time’s A Charm

Read Part I, Part II and Part III first.

Thursday after work when we arrived at the glass shop there wasn’t a silver Miata sitting outside waiting. While one of us was saying out loud, “Uh, oh, that’s not good.” The other one was simultaneously thinking the very same thing. As I open the front door I can see through into the shop floor and the guy waving us back. Donna and I go through the second door and see the CTBNL in the middle of the shop. They are just finishing up.

Owner guy says, “I put those rubber pieces on the blocks and you can see how everything is tight.” So I reach over and peel back the gasket at the top and sure enough it feels just like the one on the Emperor did when I blacked out the windshield surround. He then points over to a small bench that has a windshield face down on it. “I went ahead and bought a new windshield to put on your car.”1 “If you know someone who needs one, I’ll make them a good deal on a used one.2” Then, “They’re just finishing up, so give us a minute and we’ll bring it around front to you.”

Donna reluctantly leaves me behind and drives home in the Sonata. After a few minutes I hear a Miata fire up and circle the building. I step outside and there are two strips of blue tape across the upper corners of the windshield. Owner guy asks if I’m going right home or do I think I’ll be driving it around. “Two miles home is all,” I tell him. He says, “If you were going to drive a bit I’d put the tape all around, but this’ll hold you for just that.” I think for a second and say, “Why don’t we just go ahead and tape around the whole thing. Just to be safe.”

Because we rode the tandem to work on Friday I didn’t even pull the blue tape off until Saturday morning and with a couple of drives on Saturday plus a short one today, so far so good.

In hindsight, maybe we should have learned to live with that little divot.