Life of Brian

Big purchase today, nearly $300. As mentioned a couple of posts ago, the Bridgerocks were fast approaching the wear bars. After poking my head in on the Tires and Wheels forum on Miata.net I discovered that Onlinetires.com is running a special on the much ballyhooed Toyo T1-S in my 195/50-15 size. $59 a piece. From the discussion I read they have a much softer side wall than the Bridgestones I’m coming from so turn in will not be as crisp, but the grip is right up there. Right now I think I would like a softer side wall, we’ll see how long it takes to transition between these two tires. One thing is for sure, the Toyo’s have a much more aggressive looking tread, I’ll be the envy of all the rice boys. ETA, 2 weeks.

Purchased Today: $283.46
Money spent since 03/03/03: $595.47
Started down, went up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 105

Flush with my successful car maintenance this weekend I am now ready to tackle the leaking hot water shut off valve under the kitchen sink. It didn’t leak until I used it the weekend before last when I installed the new faucet. It didn’t even work completely as a shut off valve then. It let a small dribble loose, so much so that I had to go outside and shut the water to the whole house to do the faucet change out. When I turned everything back on the valve leaked around the stem. I tightened down the nut and I backed out the valve as far as it will go, but it still drips. There is a bowl under there catching the 20 drops a day it leaks for now. Tonight I bought a similar valve at Lowes in hopes that they are somewhat universal and I may be able to swap out the internals. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Purchased Today: $0
Money spent since 03/03/03: $312.01
Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 104

Jacked up the back of the car and put its ass in the air on jack stands. Took apart the brakes and cleaned ’em up real good. I put new grease on the backs of the pads, the old stuff was a bitch to get off. The pad on the passenger side was real dry, that is the side the noise was coming from, so I thought that might be it. While I had the wheels off I did the brake bleeding thing to swap out the old fluid for new. Won’t be entirely new, but the fluid color in the reservoir on the master cylinder is looking cleaner already. On to the fronts. On a side note I need a hydraulic jack. All this up and down was accomplished with the scissors jack that came with the car. That is a lot of cranking!

Remember how I said the noise sounded like the squealers warning of low pad thickness? Turns out there was a very good reason for that, they were worn. They were worn at about a three degree angle so that one side was plenty thick. This was the side I saw on the outside pad when I removed the wheel the other day. the wear groove is in the middle so it looked OK, but the end of the pad with the squealer was very thin. Bolted the front tires back on and headed to the local Mazda dealer for some new front pads. Looked in the Moss catalog to get an idea of how much they were going to cost first, looks like around $80 for the front 4. When I got to the dealer they had in stock something they called the value pack, just the pads for only $34. Seems they learned that they could cut the cost some by leaving out the all those springs and clips that never really need replacing, thanks Mazda. While I was there I also bought an oil filter. On the way home I bought four quarts of oil and a can of Gunk Engine Flush, hoping this would solve my new annoying lifter tick. I guess those pads were worn out, the new ones were twice as thick as the thickest part of the old ones. Swapped out pads and “bled” the fronts to match what I did in the back.

The brakes were done, now it was time to flush the motor. Instructions said pour it in and let the car idle for 5 minutes. When I started the car up I really heard the ticking loudly. I had the hood up and when I looked in I could see the number three spark plug wire bouncing around. I shut off the car and pulled the wire off. I then tightened the spark plug back up and it took an awful lot of turns, a few more days and it would have backed itself out entirely, yikes that would have been fun. Restarted the car to finish my 5 minutes. Took off the drain plug and drained my thin black oil out. Took off the oil filter. I then hand tightened the new filter on. When I went to snug it up with the filter wrench, it wouldn’t go, the wrench just spun freely. I realized that the filter I got was about a 1/2″ in diameter smaller than the one I took off. I called the parts department and asked if they gave me the right filter, somewhere in the foggy recesses of my mind I thought that M2 filters were different sized. Parts lady said nope, I got the right one, it was a new part that was superceding the old. I asked if she had any old ones and when she said yes I drove back over and swapped, but I guess I will need a new (smaller) wrench for next time.

Took the car for a drive this evening. A little 25 mile loop on some back roads, nice and quiet, no squeal and no tick. I will sleep the sleep of contentment tonight.

Purchased Today: $56.35 in stuff
Money spent since 03/03/03: $312.01
Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 104

Phones back. Needed a new line run from the pole to the house. According to the repair guy, squirrels had eaten into the line!

Went out shopping tonight and bought some stuff for tomorrow’s brake procedure. New high temp grease for the sliders and pad shim connections. Brake Cleaner in a can for cleaning up any crud that is on these surfaces before re-greasing. Some brake fluid and a one-man bleeding kit for the possible fluid change out. There will be grease under my fingernails all week.

Purchased Today: $19.93 in stuff
Money spent since 03/03/03: $255.66
Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 104

I missed you. Since sometime Wednesday afternoon my home phone has been dead or severely wounded, thereby severing my ties with the digital outside world. Called for help on Wednesday evening and bellsouth promised a visit on Thursday by 6:00 PM. Thursday AM we had a dial tone on the phone, but no DSL line sync. Called the service center and called off the technician, figuring I could troubleshoot the DSL when I got home. Sometime at mid-day Thursday the dial went away again. My mother-in law called in for help and they said we can’t guarantee a visit today because you called after 12 noon. True to their word, no one came. As of noon today still no one has arrived to fix the phone. We now have a dial tone and so much crackling that a conversation is impossible. I am blogging from work where I have Internet access. I can even check my email on the web, but don’t want to spend too much time online as around here that is a firing offense.

Purchased Last Couple Days: $zero
Money spent since 03/03/03: $235.73
Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 104

The cockpit cover saved my bacon this morning. The Weather Channel had no mention of rain for today so the top was down and the cover on when at around 9:30 there came a 15 minute downpour out of nowhere. At our normal walk around the parking lot at 10:00 PM we peeked underneath the cover into the cockpit and there were a few moist spots, but nothing like there could have been.

This morning when we left for work there was a light scraping noise coming from the right front of the car. It sounded like the squealers warning of low brake pad thickness. It was there when we left work to come home too, but both times at the end of the commute it was gone. When I got home I jacked up the right side of the car and checked the pad thickness front and back. Both were nowhere near the worn out indicators. MMM, next diagnosis is a sticky caliper. With any luck it is just a sticky slider pin. This weekend I’ll pull them apart and re-lube the particulars and see what happens. I had to remove the tires to get a good look and I realize that they are getting down close to the wear bars. Only put these on last February about 19,000 miles ago. I think I am going to step back one notch in performance this time, maybe go back to getting 25K from a set. The current Bridgestone S-03 Pole Positions are awesome tires, but I don’t really drive enough at that level to warrant them.

Purchased Today: $13.25 in gas
Money spent since 03/03/03: $235.73
Started up, went down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 104