Chugga chugga Miata speedometer

My Miata's speedometer used to do this. My good friend Eric described the sound as akin to a choo-choo train. My memory is fuzzy, so I'm going to pretend he used those exact words. He's a grown-ass man. I tried replacing the speedometer head before, but that didn't help.

As part of the engine rebuild, I replaced many (many!!) parts. One of them was the speedometer cable, which is easier to replace than I expected. Problem solved! I lived with that annoyance for way too long considering how simple the fix was. With a little dexterity, flexibility and profanity, I was able to replace the cable without removing the instrument cluster.

Wear your safety equipment, kids.

This video is horrifying. Not for weak stomachs.

Killed Myself When I Was Young from The Jalopy Journal on Vimeo.

Via Devour.com. Found on the 24 Hours of LeMons forum.

Righting past wrongs.

This car is finally gone. I had it for almost exactly 3 months, and oh holy crap am I glad it's gone. That's the Mazda 323 GTX that I picked up in July, without a transmission or turbo, and with a blown engine and hacked-to-fuck wiring harness. The car itself was free, but it did cost me a vacation day and about $100 worth of gas -- and a LOT of sweat because I wisely picked it up on the hottest day of the year.

I did manage to scavenge a few things from it. Most notably, several aftermarket gauges, a battery terminal and some battery cables, and an old 5-point safety harness.

I sold it to a local man for $300. He owns another 323 (non-GTX) and will use this as a parts car. I hope he can put it to good use. Pictured is my dad hooking up the winch on the guy's trailer.

As for that spot in my parents' driveway? I hope to fill it with my brother-in-law's been-sitting-in-his-parents'-garage-for-several-years 1988 or '89 Toyota Supra Turbo (with hot start issues!) while he's away for a year or more. And I still need to rebuild the Miata's engine.

Off Topic: Power supply fire

A little over a year ago, Amanda bought a new Dell Studio desktop. During an electrical storm recently, it awoke from standby and started smelling of burning electronics. This smell woke Amanda up (it was the middle of the night), and she, naturally, woke me up. She had tracked the smell down to her computer by this point, and noted that one of the fans was running loudly.

I opened the thing up so I could tell Amanda something comforting and go back to sleep. I made sure important components weren't actually on fire.

The smell dissipated by morning and her computer was still working, though it would regularly hang for a few moments, the power supply fan would kick on high speed, and it would then it would continue working.

The following evening I opened up the power supply and found these things:

Burn marks on the board (center, dark brown spot), and...

capacitors and other components showing signs of overheating. The capacitors are swollen, though that's hard to tell here. That small ring with the wire coiled around it and the cracking white stuff is called a choke, and, as I suspected, is used for reducing electrical noise/interference. I didn't know what it was until I went looking on the magical interwebs. The white stuff is not supposed to be flaking off like that.

I don't know what, exactly, sprayed onto the heatsink (large aluminum block) like that. Anyway, all these stressed components resulted in the power supply working inefficiently and causing the fan to kick on whenever you demanded processing power from the computer.

I found a replacement among mine and my dad's pile of computer parts. All is well.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

I took a day off work this week to drive down to Bloomington in a borrowed Chevy 3500 van loaded with garage door repair supplies and tools. I'm thinking the thing got 12 mpg.

It was also about a bazillion degrees outside. I drank about a gallon of Gatorade and was still dehydrated.

I went there to pick up this car. It was free. I was also offered a shitload of extra parts and stuff that I couldn't take because the van was full of the aforementioned garage door parts.

It's a 1988 Mazda 323 GTX. Turbo 1.6L B6 4-cylinder engine making 130-some horsepower. Yeah, the Miata got a version of the B6 that made 120 hp without a turbo. That may be what I put in it if I ever get it running. Oh yeah, and this engine is blowed up. 

This thing also has 4-wheel drive with a lockable center differential. The transaxle is not in the car. It's not even currently in my possession. I've been told it's "rebuildable." So who knows.

The owner was getting rid of it for the magical price of zero dollars for all these reasons, combined with the fact that the city told him to GTFO OR BAN. Well, get rid of the car or pay $100+ every day it's not gone. So now I wait for my parents to get the same ultimatum, as it sits in their driveway with a hacked up wiring harness, Vice-Grip pliers for a steering wheel, an engine hanging on by one motor mount, and... whatever. I have no idea.

And as it turns out, it's a BF chassis, not a BG. So who knows if anything will actually bolt up to it. I had planned to swap the drivetrain bits to make an AWD Escort, but now compatibility is suspect. Hopefully I can still use the rear hubs for my eventual mid-engine Escort.

This is a project for later. Picking this up made me realize I already have more projects than I can handle. It was a healthy reality check. I've gotta focus on LeMons.

Shift turret boot and insulator

When your shifter insulator boot (the big one) is this badly deteriorated, you can see your Miata's driveshaft if you take out the center console. Heat from the exhaust likes to warm up your drinks and/or electronic devices in the cup holders in the summer; cold air keeps cabin temperatures down in the winter. You also get to enjoy the fine smell of exhaust if you have a leak.

About a week ago, I replaced that and the transmission shift turret boot (the small one) on my lunch break. 4 screws gets the console off, and it's all 10mm bolts from there. A short extension helps.

Getting the insulator off is trivial; removing the small boot from the shifter is a little trickier. It's pretty small, and fits very nicely into a recess on the shifter. I cut it off with wire cutters that are on my little multi-tool.

After filling up the turret with fresh gear oil (it was empty, of course) I spent some time trying to figure out how to get the shifter apart to get the new small boot on. I consulted the interwebz, and found out the shifter doesn't come apart. It's just like sex: lubricate, and slip the shaft in the hole. I'll let you guess which is more satisfying.

Put your 10mm bolts back in, screw the console back on, and go back to work.

On my ride home, I noticed a quieter cab and a distinct lack of Disconcertingly Warm Cell Phone And iPod Syndrome. Which is nice, considering heat probably isn't their best friend, and spending money isn't my most favoritest thing to do.

Speaking of spending money, these were real cheap through Mazdaspeed. About half to one-third the price, if memory serves, of what these go for on Good-Win Racing and elsewhere they're available. In fact, I think those places charge about as much, perhaps even more than dealer retail. Since these aren't aftermarket parts, you're probably better off just getting them at your local Mazda dealer and saving the shipping cost (if you don't have a Mazdaspeed membership, that is).

Good luck, and happy wrenching!

This is how we fail

This is how Eric fails. Wondering why he can't get the taillight to fit back on properly, he realized that the wires and sockets weren't quite in their proper locations.

To soften the blow, since I have failed in similar ways many times myself, here's a wonderful photo of how, exactly, I fail.

That's the pushbroom I gave my dad for Father's Day.

(This is why "brokkake" is one of my new tags.)

Ah, consequences

It's usually a good idea to make sure the boots are on and the clamps are properly tightened after you replace certain parts. This in particular is an inner tie rod I replaced sometime last year. The grime and salt and shit that got into the boot caused some surface corrosion on the steering rack as well. I cleaned it up, put a new one on, and put new clamps on the boot. Here's hoping I don't fuck that up again.

New parts, part two

The second package has arrived, straight from Ontario. It includes such exciting bits as: a spare tire hold down plate and bolt; a cup holder; the plastic "xmas tree" things that hold down the carpet; and the original reason I made this order in the first place, a headlight retractor rod. The only "competition" part in this shipment is an aluminum shifter bushing, which replaces the plastic one. I can't remember why it's an upgrade, but it was cheap. I figured as long as I'm replacing both rubber shift boots (also in the order), I might as well change that.

There's some rubber caps in here whose purpose I can't even begin to fathom. I don't remember what they're for, or why I ordered them. So, if anyone knows what a KA01-51-SD6 is for, let me know. I'm at a loss. The description is "Cap, Hinge."

Oh, nevermind. Found it. It goes between that retractor rod and the headlamp bezel.

These parts are going in today, I hope, shortly after I find out what noises Amanda's car is making and why. I'm pretty excited to have a real cup holder.

Moar winzohrs

There have been two more events since my last post, and I managed first place in both. The latest event I won my class with a 3 second margin. If I make it to enough Miata Club events this year, I'm pretty confident I'll get a season trophy. Not that it's a big deal, since it's just the Miata Club, but despite what I said in my last post, I won't be running any SCCA events this year. I'm saving that money for repairs, for LeMons, for whatever else might come up.

In other news, I finally got access to the Mazda Motorsports (aka Mazdaspeed) online store, with the fancy competition discount. So now I can buy all sorts of OEM parts below list price. I'm going to start with a bunch of Ye Olde Miscellany* that need fixing up, like the stupid plastic joints in the headlight lift mechanism.

Expect several short posts to follow this one; I have many updates, and I don't have necessarily the time to lay out a big narrative to cover it all at once. Get ready for a major blast.

Yes, I skipped a night of welding class to do this (among many other things).

*Amanda insists that I give her credit for this phrase. Here you go.

Fuck

Our transmission does not work, and this is why. That shaft? It's supposed to be straight. The tire iron is there for reference.*

We've been working on this heap for about 9 hours. We had just about finished rebuilding the transmission when we discovered that it wouldn't shift into any gear.

So yeah. Goddamn it.

*Please pardon my shitty delivery, and my pointing out the glaringly obvious. We were all very tired at that point in the night.