Daily Driver?

The Miata has been my daily driver since May, what was it like?

My work schedule is all over the place so I don't have a regular daily commute but during the month or so here and there when I did have to commute every day across town the Miata always put a smile on my face. It starts from clicking open the little door via that one finger door handle. You just know it's special - it's not some generic plastic parts bin door handle found on lesser cars.

Put the top down on sunny days and get that morning fresh air blowing through your hair you arrive at work beaming. The Miata's responsiveness and sharp steering make it great for zipping through traffic. With the top down you can see all around you and can easily fit into small spaces. And if you cut someone off it's okay; you're driving a big blue Pokemon. And it gets great mileage: My overall mileage which includes freeway and city driving was 8.7litres/100km (27mpg), in the city I averaged 10.6litres/100km (22mpg) and on the highway 8.4litres/100km (28mpg). Sure a Prius gets 5l/100km (46mpg) but driving a Prius is punishment and driving a Miata is joy.

Because the Miata is small and low to the ground people sometimes don't see you (oddly these people are usually driving a Camry or Corolla, the automotive antithesis of the Miata) and will change lanes as if you're not there. The Miata's horn is no help since in Japan the horn isn't meant to say "Hey fucker go fuck yourself and your family!" but something more a kin to "Hello friend nice to see you, let's have coffee sometime." So it's pretty much useless. You've got to be vigilant when driving.

Parallel parking is a cinch since the Miata is so small you can always find a spot, but again it's so low to the ground that people in larger cars reverse into it. I've got a nice scratch on the top of the nose where some body's bumper rubbed up on to it and the front license plate is nicely deformed. As a result I avoid parallel parking or I try to park so I'm the first car in a line.

You can't furniture shop in the Miata. This summer I bought furniture twice, once it was some patio chairs and serendipitously a friend of mine (who owns a pick-up) happened to be also shopping in the store at the same time and was able to take the chairs and drop them off right onto my patio. The second time I bought a used bed, and a set of drawers that no matter what size of car I had would not have fit into it. I had to steal a cargo van from work to do the move. Also Costco shopping is kind of out for the Miata as well. Only a few boxes will fit into the trunk. But weekly grocery shopping fits perfectly, and the whole trunk size problem only came up once or twice.

Roadtripping is possible but you need to take your time. My girlfriend and I were able to drive to Las Vegas and back this summer in the Miata. We packed 5 days worth of clothing, a video camera and photo camera, and still had room to bring back some knick nacs. Actually we ended up saving money because we made the mistake of stopping at an American Super Walmart where the prices begged us to buy everything but since we couldn't fit it into the car, we didn't buy anymore than some beef jerky. The big problem is noise. On American freeways at 120kph the Miata is LOUD; wind noise, tire noise, engine noise, exhaust noise, for hours on end gets tiring fast. Even with the headrest speakers the radio was drowned out. If you are going to road trip, stay off the freeways and take secondary roads. This is where the Miata really shines. The only problem is if your girlfriend gets car sick easily since the curves beckon you to go faster and faster.

Everything is great as long as the weather is mild. When things turn cold and wet the Miata stops being so much fun. To begin with when the top is up the interior becomes dark and stuffy and not very pleasant at least nowhere near as pleasant as when the top is down. The Miata's short wheelbase and rear wheel drive platform are awesome fun for spirited driving on twisty dry roads but in wet slippery conditions the car becomes nervous and twitchy. Here's a true story: I'm driving along on a straight road at 60km/h, there's a mild hump that runs across the road on an angle. As the rear of the Miata crests the hump it breaks loose and the Miata spins out sending me into the median skidding on grass narrowly avoiding a tree. Thankfully the median had no curb cause it would have been a repeat of the crash earlier this year. I was just driving straight minding my own business. And it's not like my tires are super worn. Going around any turn in wet conditions with the slightest press on the gas the rear will step out. When it's expected, it can be controlled and can be a great source of fun for the driver and terror for the passenger but it becomes terror for both when it's unexpected. That's why in the winter it's best to park the Miata and drive something else. Something bigger and more stately (more on that later).

Fixed!

I bet you thought the Blue Miata was dead, considering I haven't posted for so long. But no it's not dead and the reason I haven't posted for so long (amongst work, family, laziness etc.) is that I've been driving and driving. But more on that later. First here's the process of getting the thing back on the road.

As you may remember the right front suspension of the Miata was all mangled after an unfortunate judgment lapse on my part. After ringing around the local parts shops I learned that buying new parts was cost prohibitive which meant taking a stroll down to my local junk yard and digging out the necessary parts from some wreck. No problem; and it being around fathers day at the time I thought I'd make a family outing out of it. First we had to find a donor car. After asking the attendants at the junkyard they brought over this high mileage rear ended red Miata.


My Pa and I got right to work taking out the pieces we needed.
Look at that team work. My mom was there too, she took these shots and helped out. That's what the Miata does: brings families together.

Finally we pulled out all these bits and then some (which may or may not have been smuggled out in my mom's sweater like a family of gypsies but come on the junk yard is a royal ripoff).
I then got the parts home and compared.You can see how the messed up the angle of the lower control arm is on the old bit. Ouch.

I noticed a neat thing about the the control arms. They're hollow. Every other car I've seen they're a solid piece of metal. I realize they're hollow to be light. Being light saves fuel and improves handling and performance. Just like a race car. I thought that was pretty cool. It also makes it that they fold like origami when hit.

This is what a Miata looks like with no right front suspension.
And there are the new pieces in place.
After a quick visit to a wheel alignment and frame shop, the Miata was good as new. Thankfully the shop reported that the Miata's frame was not bent so all it needed was the allignment. I will never get an alignment anywhere else. In a frame shop all they do is allignments and the technicians and equipment are specially suited for this task, plus it's generally cheaper.

Finally the Miata is on the road for the summer ready for more adventures. I'll hopefully be able to control my urge to crash. Overall this actually was kind of fun; going with my folks to the junk yard, taking apart stuff, putting it back together, and it didn't really cost that much money. The Miata: fun even in tragedy.

Ridin the Bus or Van City Blue Miata Gets Political

Before I could transfer the insurance from the wounded Miata back to the non wounded Infiniti I had to go to work, so with no car I had to take the bus. Not having ridden the bus for a long time I made a few observations:

1 - It takes too long. Normally by car in the morning it takes about five to fifteen minutes to get to work, twenty minutes in the afternoon with traffic. It took an hour by bus. And I had to wait in the rain. Ouch. Even with right of way and bus specific lanes the thing is slow.

2 - The bus company has a weird sense of humour. On the bus stop sign there's a number and if you call it and give the stop number, a robot will tell you when the next bus will be coming. This must of cost a fortune to set up. The funny thing is, that it tells you this is an estimate only, so it actually tells you that it's useless. And it was; my bus came nowhere near the time it estimated. At least it was way earlier rather than later. If you didn't ride the bus and if you weren't charged transit taxes on your gas (the highest in Canada) to pay for these "services", this would be kind of funny. Oh another kind of funny thing, a robot on the bus calls out the next stop in case you don't like looking out the window; I hope that cost like a million dollars.

3 - You have time to think on the bus. This was the nice thing. While the bus droned its way from stop to stop I had time to reflect on what I had done. Basically I'm a very lucky bastard. I could have spun out and hit another car or lamp post or human, and that would have been end of story. After all suspension pieces are relatively cheap compared to body damage and insurance premiums. So I should count my blessings and stop being such an idiot.

4 - There are no really hot girls on the bus. If you look at photos from a few posts ago about my trip to White Rock you'll notice that in the one passenger seat of the Miata was a really hot girl. I noticed that in not one of the twenty or so seats in the four buses I rode today, was the same. The bus just doesn't attract hot girls, the Miata does. What the bus does attract is lots of people that looked sickly and downtrodden. Not a judgement but an observation.

I guess I've learnt two things from my brief brush with public transit: 1. I love my cars, I really really love everything about them. 2. As a society money spent on talking robobusses, traffic calming, and shiny bus stops so tourists say Vancouver is pretty, would be better spent helping people who ride the bus by necessity, be able to ride that bus by choice.

Oh wait I learnt three things: Slow down, a bit. Well actually: Don't power slide in traffic.

Tragedy

This is supposed to be the happy blog post where I get to tell you that the Miata is back, successfully insured for daily summer service. It won't be.

Another grey and dreary day in this June that seems to be determined to break the record for being the coldest and with the least days of sun finally broke my will. If the weather wasn't going to cooperate I was at least going to pretend like it was. The offers on the Infiniti were few and far between and too low to make selling it a reasonable idea. So I decided to keep it as the winter car and this meant that I could transfer the registration to the Miata and park the Infiniti for the summer. A quick trip to the Aircare money grab, a stop at the insurance broker to transfer the plates, and the Miata was ready to go. I was so happy and the sun even came out. Unfortunately my happiness whipped me into a joy filled idiot frenzy. With a huge grin on my face I zipped off in the Miata and promptly crashed it.

Trying to power-slide while making a yellow light left turn (does it get any dumber than this?) I lost control of the rear-end and spectacularly spun out into the curb bending the front suspension. My Miata summer, over in all of five minutes of adrenaline fuelled driving.

The Miata is back home in the garage. I'll asses the damage and hopefully it can be fixed. The sun might shine again.

Update

Here's some photos I took in my garage:

You can see the wheel is not where it's supposed to be in the wheel well
There's not a lot of damage to the wheel and the tire might be okay
This is a nice view of the front suspension and all the damage. I've labelled it appropriately. The lower control arm got the worst of it.
Here's a view from above. The strut is supposed to be in the centre of that opening.
Now I've got to take all that bent stuff out and get new stuff to put in....

Romantic, Special, and Fun

A few weeks ago the stars aligned themselves, I had a day off, my girlfriend had a day off, I had some money in my bank account, and most importantly the sun was shining and it was hot. A perfect day for a Miata road trip. I insured the car for the day and we drove down to beautiful Crescent beach in White Rock, BC. The whole time in the back of my mind I imagined the crank case pulley popping off and stranding us, but a beer and some fish and chips quickly dissipated any worries. It was a great time; we hung out, watched the sailboats, cruised, and afterwards drove to the Richmond casino to lose some money, finishing off the day with a nice view of the sunset on the Richmond dike. Like the pumpkin in that story the Miata had to go back to it's garage because it's insurance ran out at midnight. Angela put it best when she said that we could have done the trip in our regular cars but going in the Miata made it romantic, special, and fun. She gets it.

I noticed a lot of cowl shake and extremely firm ride on the highway, more than usual. Great, now the body is coming apart too I thought, but it turns out that I forgot to return the tire pressure to normal levels after I had pumped them up for storage. Oops. Gotta remember to do that next time.

Crank(y) Case Pulley

Tim in NC left me a comment regarding the Miata's wobbly crank case pulley. He said "Don't ignore it" so I looked into the matter and it appears the Miata needs a new engine. I kinda wish I didn't kn0w that. According to the Miata specialist mechanic here in Vancouver the only way to fix the problem is to either rebuild the engine or swap in a new one. Since spending $2000 on a new engine is not an option for an out of work actor I have to try something else. I could sell the car but I don't want to saddle someone else with this problem and if I did declare it I wouldn't be able to sell it for as much as I bought it for so I'd be loosing as much as a new engine and the whole Miata itself. For now the Miata runs and it will continue running until the worn out crankcase pulley messes up the timing so bad that it can't pull away from an intersection or the pulley comes off and it's end of story. The only option I'm left with is to attempt the Loctite fix. This basically involves gluing the pulley into the right position. Hopefully it works. Stay tuned.

How many cars out there have an internet community like this one? Or specialist mechanic shops? Not many. The Miata is special.

Bowen Island

Well the Miata had it's brakes done; new pads all around, new rotors on the front, and a new caliper at the right rear, and a new battery, so it was time for a short road trip to Bowen Island where my good friend was having his birthday celebration. I insured the car just for the two day excursion. It ended up costing a lot more than I expected because I had to pay some old traffic violation tickets, (see the busted post a while back). The new brakes worked great. And a good thing because a deer jumped out in front of me twice. I think it was the same deer trying to commit suicide. It would have done more damage to the Miata than to itself tho. It really explained why Bowen has a 40 kilometers per hour speed limit; suicidal deer.


I went by myself because my girlfriend had to work and no one wanted to carpool with me; some crazy rumour that I drive too aggressively (hey I spun out only once on this trip). It's a good thing because I realized just how small the Miata's trunk is. That's a sleeping bag, a pillow, a back pack, a foamy, a camping chair, and some beer and hot dogs in there and the trunk is totally full. If another person came with me they would have to carry their stuff on their lap.

It was really great to have the Miata back in action again. Bowen Island is really beautiful. Life should be lived with a convertible sports car. I hope the Infiniti sells soon so I can drive the Miata more and more.