Miata

30th Miataversary

Thirty years ago today on a cool November evening Donna & I drove over to Augusta after work in our 1981 Honda Prelude (which looked remarkably like this.) Donna drove the Prelude home alone. I drove home in our brand spanking new 1990 Mazda Miata (which looked remarkably like this.)

Ever since that day we have always had a Miata in the garage. Except for this year. Tonight the Miata is in someone else’s garage. Back in Aiken awaiting our summons. Thank’s for babysitting David.

CTBNL Update

When they got around to looking at the car in the shop on Monday it would not start for them either. The first thing they did was take my trusty backup Cam Angle Sensor out of the trunk and put it in. What do you know, the car started right up. With the car not showing a Check Engine Light nor having a stored code in car’s Engine Control Unit the tech suspected it was the main engine relay or the ECU itself. Because the ECU would be expensive and a nightmare to replace they opted to change the hundred dollar relay first.

After replacing the part they parked it outside and left it running for about 30 minutes and it never shut off. Then in the afternoon the tech drove it around for 25-30 miles. It never quit. He repeated the process again the following morning with the same positive results. I picked up the car on Thursday afternoon and Donna followed me right home.

Since then it has been backed out of the garage and parked out under the awning twice. Once yesterday and once today because we had some looky loos visit the house and we wanted to make our paltry one-car garage look large. Full testing will be on Monday morning. After I do my morning walk, and with Donna at the gym, I’m going to take the car on an adventure tour of about 40 miles. she is suggesting that I just circle our one mile block 40 times, but I’m going to throw caution to the wind and venture out into Aiken County.

Even if it passes that test, both of us, one more than the other, will still not trust the car to get us to Hilton Head and back at the end of the month. There are just too many places while travelling through South Carolina’s Lowcountry where the road is two lanes with no paved shoulders, just maybe a half a car width of soft grass, bordered by water (and possibly gator) filled ditches of indeterminate depth.

We have started doing some of the pre-prep work on our alternatives, tune in tomorrow for details.

Daily, Daily, or Daily?

Ok, here is where we are at, the CTBNL is still in the shop. I don’t know if they are still trying to fix the ‘I don’t like to run in the heat’ problem or they just haven’t got to it yet. Either way, with Donna’s complete lack of faith in the car and her vow never to get back into it, what am I to do?

Option 1) I have actually been given permission to go ahead and price a shiny new 2019 Miata. A base car runs around $27k and comes in 4 “colors”; Black, Ceramic (a semi shiny really light gray), White and Red ($600 extra.) My thoughts would be to get the white and add some stripes, similar to the CTBNL, only red instead of blue. The little negatives are no glove box, unusable cup holders and the droopy looking rear view. The BIG negative is a $400 car payment for the next 5 years.

Option 2) Buy a used NB. There was a nice 2003 Shinsen Edition for sale in Huntsville, AL on the M.net Forums, but between when I looked at it this morning and now, it must have sold. Should I try to recreate the Emperor? There is a very stock looking 2003 Garnet Red for sale in North Carolina on the forums as well. Only $5k. The big negative with this one is it has 108,000 miles on it. But if the ad is to be believed it has been very well taken care of.

Or Option 3) Just keep the CTBNL if the fix turns out to be another bad Cam Angle Sensor or another random $100 sensor and slowly try to get Donna (and me too) used to trusting the car again?

3 Strikes and You’re Out?

Strike 1, Two Months Ago – A Cooked CAS Sensor and Smoked Pig Butts
Strike 2, A Week Ago – Was That Money Well Spent?
Strike 3, Yesterday – Someone was coming to look at the house between 12 and 1 so we hopped in the Miata to vacate the place. We didn’t really have a solid plan on what to do to kill the roughly 1-1/2 hours we needed to stay away, but one was, unfortunately, thrust upon us.

We were a mile away from home, waiting patiently for the light to change and give us our left turn arrow and I noticed a minor roughness in the car’s idle. When the light changed I eased out the clutch and as soon as I depressed the gas pedal the car died. I briefly thought perhaps I had stalled it, but it didn’t feel like that, the car just shut off. When I went to restart it, it wouldn’t. Great. We were first in line with about four cars behind us, talk about major embarrassment.

I hit the flasher button and started waving people around me. We were in a nose up attitude because of the slight incline, so if everyone would clear out behind us we could possibly coast back into the parking area of the corner quick stop. Those behind me all made the light, but the lane to the right of me didn’t fully empty before the light changed back to red. At the next light change there were fewer cars behind us and they all made the light, so I let off the parking brake and starting coasting back. I was almost completely into the lot when a white pickup truck decided to exit the lot. He hit his horn, but I kept backing up, so he stopped moving and I managed to get the car 98% off the road. He rolled down his window and when I told him why I did what I did he mellowed out and backed up a bit to allow Donna and I to finish pushing the CTBNL into the lot.

So, first, a quick update from Strike 2: I took the car back to the shop and they ran their code reader on the car and received no fault codes either, the only questionable reading they got was a slightly elevated charging voltage. So I told them that I would just order a new Cam Angle Sensor and see what happens. The new one arrived on Wednesday afternoon and I had been driving with it in there several small trips (all longer than a mile!) and the car had behaved fine. It also ran fine with the back up CAS in it from Saturday to Wednesday.

Because it was midday this Saturday, the repair shop was still open and they have their own tow truck, so I gave them a ring and told them my tale of woe and where we were. They promised to send the truck right over. While we waited Donna went into the quick stop and bought us each an ice cream bar to enjoy. Just as we were finishing our treat our knight in shining truck arrived. After the car was loaded up he offered to drop us off at home as he took the car in. We declined because we still couldn’t go back there for at least 45 or 50 minutes.

There was a Zaxby’s a couple hundred yards further down the road, so we told the driver that we were going to get lunch and when I got home I’d drive over and talk with them. When I arrived at the shop the head mechanic was eating lunch in the front lounge area and I asked him what he’d found out. They had plugged in the code reader and once again there were no stored codes. They were in the middle of finishing up some promised jobs, so he promised to do some troubleshooting on Monday. He also said that if the car started and ran fine on Monday, he would take it for at least a twenty minute drive in the heat of afternoon before he gave it back to me.

At this point, even if he finds another sensor or something bad, Donna has vowed never to get in the car again. She won’t trust it to get to the store and back, let alone an evening drive, or a day trip or a weekend get away. It has now left us stranded on the side of the road three times in the last 10 weeks. The next time it happens it may be in a place or time where or when we don’t want to be. Frankly I am quite near to that point myself.

Was That Money Well Spent?

The Miata Club’s Bug Splat is coming up and this year we thought we might return to the loop where it all began. We used to start after a meal at a Zaxby’s in Evan, GA by heading north and crossing over the Strom Thurmond Dam into SC before turning south and returning to Georgia for ice cream at a Dairy Queen. It has beeen at east a dozen years since we’ve run that route, so yesterday evening we thought it might be a good idea to run the loop to make sure that suburban sprawl hadn’t obliterated those long stretches of uninhabited roads.

About halfway to Zaxby’s for dinner, after a right turn the Miata hiccuped. Several feet later it hiccuped again. Donna said, “Turn around and take me home.” I took the next right to prepare to make a u-turn and the car died. I coasted to a stop a the side of the road. Like homicide detectives, I don’t believe in coincidences, so I called the shop who just did the work on the car. We were about an hour past their Saturday closing time, but we were hoping someone was still there, maybe catching up on paperwork. No such luck, so I left a long disappointed sounding message about our situation.

Before making the second call for a tow truck, Donna said, “Try and start it back up.” I did and it did. We drove home slowly all the while waiting for the car to stop running again. It didn’t quit, but we did get two widely separated hiccups that causing some breath holding. It was a very hot afternoon, the hiccups and the engine dying, made me get a big whiff of déjà vu. A little more than two months ago, the CTBNL did the same thing on the way to lunch with the Club.

This time it didn’t trigger the Check Engine Light. When we got home I ran Torque Light app and it too showed no fault codes. Anyway for now, I did what I did last time, I put my backup Cam Angle Sensor back in the car. I’m not sure if I should buy a new one or what. Right now the plan is to take it back to the shop to have them look at it. Maybe their OBDII reader will show a code…

On the bright side, the Moto g7 phone is still working after more than a week.

Slow Miata to Texas Day 14

AIKEN, SOUTH CAROLINA
Famous for its tree-lined streets and their names, Aiken abounds in flowers most of the year.
Bill,
Day 14 of 14 of the “Slow Miata to Texas” tour. Decatur, AL to Aiken, SC. 412 miles. A really long day in the saddle and mostly on the dreaded Interstate. OZ is a wonderful place, but there is no place like home. There is no place like home.
Brian & Donna, Aiken, SC		 Bill Kirby
The Augusta Chronicle
P.O. Box 1928
Augusta, GA 30903