Battery Blues

The Miata purchase last Saturday wasn’t the only automotive excitement of the day.

I had a 9:30 appointment at the Mazda dealer, so when I hopped in the Mini to drive over and flipped the start toggle switch it almost didn’t start. Rrrr…rrrr…cough…cough…catch. Pheew. I made a slightly longer ride over to the Mazda dealer in hopes that it would charge the battery up some.

I forgot all about the battery until when all the Miata paperwork was done and was going home to wait out the retrieval of my new car from McMinnville. Rrrr…rrrr…click. Rrrr…rrrr…click. So, I went over to my salesman and asked if someone could give me a jump. While I waited, I searched for an auto parts store and luckily enough, there was an Autozone just up the street on the corner. Successfully started, I made a beeline to the parts store. The fellow waiting on me showed me a long line of batteries they had in stock that would fit and I opted for a couple notches up from the cheapest at $250. He asked if I was taking it with me and I said, “The one in the car is dead, don’t you offer to put it right now for free?” He grabbed their tool kit and we headed out to the parking lot.

I had changed out the battery on our previous Mini easy-peasy. Two plastic latches, peel back the cover, undo the the two terminals and remove the nut holding it in. Well, that was a 2nd generation Mini and this is a 3rd gen car, which as it turned out, was a whole new ball of wax. First you need to peel back half of the hood seal. Then there were 2 plastic nuts that hand turned off and then three 1/2 twist screws so the cover could be removed. Instead of the typical 10mm nuts holding the wires to the battery posts there were a couple of auxiliary wires coming off the posts too. Looking at the opening, the battery was too big to pull straight up thru it, but it looked like lifting up one end and angling it out would be fine. The battery had a couple of fold up handles to facilitate this, but tug as hard he could the battery just wouldn’t budge.

He shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know what’s holding it in there, but I can’t get it out.” I told him, “Fine, refund the battery cost and I’ll buy one of those jump packs to get me home.” So, I bought something at half the cost of an actual car battery to get me going. And there was just enough juice in it to do just that. When I got home, I plugged the jump pack in and called the Minin dealer to set up and appointment for a replacement battery.

On Wednesday I used my new toy to start the Mini for the drive over to Beaverton. They changed out the battery and as it turned out the Mini battery cost almost exactly the same as the Autozone one, but the installation cost was as much as the battery itself. But hey, that was the original battery, so 8 years is a pretty good life for as much all the electrical crap on cars nowadays.

Brian Rekindles His Miatatude

Last Thursday I decided to go test drive a new Miata. I wanted to see if I really wanted a new ND or should go ahead and start trolling Bring A Trailer or Cars & Bids for a low mileage NB. When I got to the dealer and a salesperson greeted me, I said I was interested in new Miata in Grand Touring trim if they had one. They did, it was right out front. I wasn’t going to buy it, but I did want to take it for a spin.

We took a decent little test drive and while I did like the car it three strikes against it. It was white, it was the folding hardtop version and lastly it was an automatic transmission. When I voiced these concerns my sales person said, “We have a used soft-top in Red?” “Go get it, I’ll drive it,” I said. It was a 2016 Club model with less than 16,000 miles on the clock. I was a little rusty with the clutch a couple of times, but driving a stick is like swimming or riding a bike, once you know how to do it, you never forget.

When we got back to the dealership, I thanked Manny for the drives and told him I was a month or so out on buying a car and I’d let him know. When I got back home and sat on the couch, I started justifying me buying that used Miata. Not a fan of red, but I could deal with that. An 8-year-old car averaging 2,000 miles a year, not a problem. The car looked practically and the previous owner had added a sweet sounding RoadsterSport SuperStreet exhaust. Once I had a taste I was hooked. I called Manny and right then and asked, “What time do you get to work on Friday,” his reply was, “It’s my day off.” “Saturday?” “9:00” “Okay,” I said, “See you at 9:30 on Saturday.” So, I drove both cars again, but in reverse order, the exhaust note on the Club was calling me. I was almost ready to pull the trigger on the 2016, but still wanted another spin in the new car.

Echoing in my head is a sentiment that I got from Todd & Paul of Everyday Driver that we enthusiasts almost have an obligation to buy a new sports car if we want manufacturers to keep making and improving sports car. We have to be the market, so that others after us can get their hands on this kind of car. So, for purely altruistic reasons, I told Manny that if he could find a local dealer with a 2024 Grand Touring, a 6-speed and black interior we might could make that work.

They found an Aero Gray one in McMinnville, about an hour and a half away. After doing all the paperwork Manny headed to McMinnville in some car that they were swapping and I headed home to wait for them to call me when the car was ready for me to pick up. I’ve never seen Aero Gray in person and neither had they, so it was going to be all new to all of us. I got tired of waiting around the house so I Ubered over to the dealer and parked myself in their waiting area and watched college football and ate their free snacks.

According to Google Maps the two dealerships are 46 miles apart and the odometer on the car read 52 miles when I got in it for the first time. In spite of my rambling on about the lack of color in today’s car paint spectrum, this color has a strange attraction to me. It is not too dark, nor is it too light, and it looks good with the black soft top and the small black accents on the car. Either way, right now, I don’t want to wrap it a solid real color and nor do I feel I need to put stripes on it to brighten it up.

Now I just have to avoid joining the area’s Miata club or hanging around in the Miata.Net Forums so I can avoid the usual rampant customizing I am prone to doing…

25 Years Ago – Issue V 1999

Presidential Address

– Vince Tidwell

Here’s a new theory I’ve come up with that I call the Rule of Three: If more than three things are wrong with your Miata and you don’t fix them, you will, within the span of six months, become so disenchanted and annoyed by your car that you might even consider getting rid of it.

Yikes!

I came to this conclusion after decades of laziness and automotive frustration. From the age of 25, I’ve had the pleasure of keeping the number of cars I’ve owned equal to the number of years I’ve lived. In reviewing the cars I’m glad I’m rid of, my disenchantment was rarely due to some design flaw. Instead, it was the result of some mechanical failure some mechanical failure which broke the relationship up. In the end, of course, that meant I was to blame, seeing as to how I was the caretaker in question; in essence, I had let the machine down. A deeper thinker might even say I was as disgusted with my own inaction as I was with the cars themselves.

When something acts up on your Miata, it’s performing less than expected. Seeing that happen over and over again only serves to accentuate the problem, for each time you experience it your negative emotions are reinforced. At some point the discontent will even begin to affect your whole attitude toward the car. You might even find yourself taking one of your OTM (Other Than Miata) cars on a short jaunt. These are warning signs not to be ignored.

As my ’90 Miata ages and I occasionally jump in a ’99, the items I need to pay attention to on my older car come right into focus. It’s amazing what we allow ourselves to become accustomed to. A rear window that’s a bit foggy, a door pull that’s gotten loose, that nick in the paint, a floormat that’s past its useful life—they all sort of fade into the background. However, they do add up to diminish the quality of your Miata experience.

I implore you to set aside some time to either fix or have fixed all these niggling problems right now. You only get so many Miata hours a week, so why spend them driving around with problems? One item can be overlooked; two you can usually work around; but when the list grows to three, it is time to “restore” your car. There is nothing on these machines that can’t be fixed, and parts are cheap.

Here’s the argument: If you let your car go so far that you’re in danger of falling out of love with it, you’ll end up selling it. Before you do that, of course, you’ll repair any obvious flaws or defects to get the most money from the next guy. So the new owner gets to enjoy all those new parts, while you were always annoyed with your car because it needed new parts. How kind of you: You’ve just treated the next guy to something you wouldn’t do for yourself!

Wouldn’t it make more sense to accept that you’ll have to do some work anyway, then enjoy the fruits of those labors yourself? It’s a false economy to do anything else.

If you really do get in a pinch, calculate the sales tax alone on a new Miata. Dollars to donuts, that figure alone would fix up your current car nicely. I’m certainly not dismissing the attraction of a brand-new MX5, but you should be moving up for the right reasons—not because you’ve neglected your current car. If that’s the case then your new one will start to look ratty soon enough anyway. Get in the habit of keeping those maintenance accounts short, and you won’t fall into this vicious cycle.

“Physician, heal thyself” is what I’ll be hearing from any of you that have seen the Club’s ’94 Laguna Blue at our Tech Sessions. We’ve had a small tear in the leather driver’s seat for two years now—a tear that even started happening while the car warranty and the fix was free for the asking. Fortunately, that’s the only flaw the car has, besides a few nicks and scratches and some squeaky antiroll-bar bushings.

Uh, oh—that’s three! Guess I need to get out to the shop one of these days….

Copyright 1999, Miata Magazine. Reprinted without permission.

 

Sport, Off-Road, Touring

Feeling A Little Aero Gray Edition of SORT
As of Monday, September 30, 2024 at 8:00 PM pacific time:

Sport Off-Road Touring
2024 Mazda MX-5 Miata Grand Touring 6MT
It’s a Miata, so it is the defacto sports car. Like I was ever going off-roading in anything. I’ll will be definitely be touring the country in it.

Here is what last week’s cars sold for, or bid to (if the reserve was not met):
Sport: 1974 Triumph TR6 Bid to $11,355 on 9/25/24
Off-Road: 1972 Chevrolet C20 Suburban 4×4 Sold for $29,500 on 09/26/24
Touring: 2023 Audi< RS6 Avant Sold for $109,000 on 9/25/24

Happy Anniversary To Me

Today would have been our 48th anniversary and if Donna is looking down at me, she is probably a little disappointed in me. Not because I bought another Miata, but more because she really didn’t like the looks of the 4th gen car. And she might even think that taking a loan out on the car was a blunder.

Sorry dear, but I do like the more modern sharper edges design of the ND. And the loan was just a way to not take a huge chunk out of the checking account we use for the non day to day spending. Don’t worry, I can pay off the loan early and in full once State Farm sends me your life insurance payout.

Last night when I picked up the car all I did was drive it home and park it. This morning, I took it out for its initial shakedown cruise. I had no particular destination in mind, I just knew that I would be heading east. First thought was to drive over to the Mt Hood area get some mountain road twisty. I started out down Sandy Blvd and ended up in Troutdale and drove right under the big arched sign reading Gateway To The Gorge. {visible lit light bulb appears over my head} Historic Route 30 runs through the gorge all the way to the most visited waterfall in the state, Multnomah Falls, some 15 or so miles away.

I’d never driven this road before, but was hoping there would be several sections of mountainous turns and boy was I right. It was a narrow road (probably first paved in the 40’s) and there were a lot of twisty sections throughout the drive, all the way to and beyond the falls. I was going to just head home on I-84, but right after I got on the Interstate, I did a Homer Simpson styled head slap and a vocal “Doh!” I got right back off a mile later at the other Multnomah Falls exit and drove that fun road home.

Really?

Made a run to Goodwill today to donate a few things that have been stacked on the futon for a couple months. There were a couple pair of half worn down sneakers, a pair of old towels, two bathmats and several other random things.

When I tried to put the gray cloth bathmat in the women’s bin she shook her head no, so I tossed it back in the car. The very next item I tried to put in the bin was the other bathmat. I figured I get waved off again because this one was a dingy looking rubber one that goes in the tub. But, nope, she let me donate it.

I thought for sure the fabric, because it could be thrown in a washing machine, would have been okay and rubber with suction cups on the bottom would have been rejected.

My Beloved Wife

Being a huge Natalie Merchant fan I was probably aware of her song “Beloved Wife” from her solo debut album, Tigerlily, but I didn’t really connect with it until a couple years ago when the confluence of Donna’s ALS, our fast approaching 50th wedding anniversary and Radio Paradise added it to their rotation brought it to the forefront.

If I was going to have an actual service for Donna this would have been the only song that I would have had played at it. Of course, Donna died a few days short of our 48th wedding anniversary, but this tune would still be a perfect fit because we knew each other a couple of years before we tied the knot.

On a side note, there was another song that was an attention getter for me in Radio Paradise’s mellow mix rotation for the last year or so called Harmony Hall by the group Vampire Weekend. Probably wouldn’t have played it at any service, but there is a line in there that gets repeated about a half a dozen times and it was a little too on point for me, “I don’t wanna live like this, but I don’t wanna die.”