What did Chief do to his Mazdas today?

[chiefmg]

Miata: After I got the battery and installed it, tried starting her but she didn't want to fire. Gave her some gas and she fired, but sounded like she was running on fewer than 4 cylinders. Pulled the plugs and it looked like only firing on one cylinder. After some downtime while I cogitated, I yanked everything down again to see where I had made a mistake. Checked to make sure I hadn't screwed up on the timing belt or left an electrical connector disconnected but everything checked out. After it was all back together fired her up again with the same result. After some more downtime to beat myself up, I bought a set of feeler gauges that went down to 0.0015 (my other set only went to 0.005) and checked the valve lash. Apparently I am an idiot because all but one of the intake lash clearances were very tight, and the exhaust clearances weren't a whole lot better. I am not sure of the cause of this, my caliper did malfunction but I don't think to the degree that would have resulted in this. Anyway, with my new digital caliper and feeler gauge I checked everything and figured out what I would need for new shims to fix it. Got those on order and now just waiting on them to show up so I can see if this will correct the problem.

[chiefmg]

Miata: Stopped by the dealer yesterday on my way to Cars & Coffee in the Camaro to see if the shims had arrived. They had (not sure why I did not receive the promised call) so picked them up. First thing this morning I got busy. Got the shims installed per my last clearance readings, put the cams on and checked them again. There were several off so pulled the cams again and moved things around. Ended up doing this a couple of times but ended up with all the exhaust clearances in spec, and only a couple of the intake clearances off by a little. Assembled everything, turned the key and she basically started right up. Let her run for a bit to warm up, then hoisted the front into the air and ran her some more to make sure all the air was out of the coolant system. At this point everything is back together, unfortunately it's raining so I'm not going to do any test drive until tomorrow.

Takeaway from this is to triple check your valve lash and make sure you have a set of feeler gauges that go nearly to zero.

[chiefmg]

Miata: Got up this morning and despite the threat of rain, pulled her out to give her a bath (first one since September some time). She cleaned up well. Piddled around and checked the normal things (tire pressure, oil/coolant levels etc) once that was done. Just got finished up and sat down to post this, look outside and the rain is pouring down. It looks like no test drive today either.

[chiefmg]

Miata: Weather cleared a bit and the roads were dry, so I took her out for a short test. Drove fine, did notice some stuttering at higher engine speeds so I'm going to check and see if any water got into the spark plug wells when I washed her. The new steering wheel feels great, and no airbag light came on. It feels so different from the wife's Camaro which I expected, but I prefer this. Yes, it's hard to argue with a honking-big American V8, but the Miata is so tossable that there is no comparison handling-wise. I can feel the road and it is so much more responsive (some of that is due to the front negative camber I know). It is just a much better balanced package overall, and for my tastes more enjoyable.

[chiefmg]

Miata: Had to take two days off while doing a head gasket job on one of the kids' cars. This morning I pulled the COPS, three of the plug recesses had water in them. Looks like I need to take even more care when I wash down the engine bay. Blew that out with compressed air, initial shot didn't get it all so I put a paper towel into the hole and then blew it again. Left everything open for a while to make sure it was all dry. Also noticed the 'charger belt had walked off one tooth so put that back in place, will monitor to see if I need to adjust the 'charger position.

Then, since it is a nice day, I went for a drive. Took my favorite local backroad. It's amazing the difference between this and my wife's Camaro. Weight does have an impact on handling, if you doubt that then take a modern car with the latest suspension and drive it back to back with an older well-sorted sports car. With the water cleared out of the plug holes she pulled hard to redline. Even small throttle openings provided a push of effortless acceleration. It's sneaky fast compared to the sledgehammer speed of the Camaro's V8. I love this car.

[chiefmg]

Miata: Finally got my thumb out and got in touch with EFI Analytics to see about getting my TunerStudio and MegaLogViewer registered on my laptop. They got back to me quickly with the necessary info so now I am all set to get to tuning. FYI, they have this information available on their site if you use this link:

https://www.efianalytics.com/registe...ationEmail.jsp

Once you enter the name and e-mail address you used for registration you will be sent e-mails with the codes needed for activation.

[chiefmg]

Miata: A while back I put some new foam pads on the soft top latches to keep them from rattling when I didn't have the boot cover on. I cut these from some adhesive foam I had on hand. After that I found that you can actually buy new pads from Mazda, so I did that. Here is the number:



This morning I got around to installing these. The foam I made mine out of was about 2mm in thickness. As you can see the factory ones are much thicker:



I removed the old ones from here (in case you are not sure of what I am talking about) and then after a good cleaning installed the new ones:





Latches are nice and tight now. Once that was done I also replaced the forward splash guard on the passenger side front fender. It's this piece:



I managed to break the old one at the bottom where the large opening is when I was putting everything back together after the head replacement. It wasn't really hurting anything but the new one was only $32 so I figured why not?

[chiefmg]

Miata: I spoke too soon about the driver's airbag delete being a success. Beginning of the week I saw the light flashing six times, which is the code for the driver's airbag. I decided to just get the resistor arrangement from Garage Star. That came in two days ago so I pulled the one I had made (checked the resistance of that and it was 0.5 ohms), swapped over the connector and plugged that sucker in. No joy, the damn thing still flashed. Note I checked the resistance of the GS part before installing and it was 3.6-3.7 ohms. I removed the part and checked the resistance again with the factory connector in place and it read 0.5 ohms. So this morning I took the connectors that GS uses, opened them up so I could put them back on and then took the factory connector off. Before I did anything else I checked resistance of the GS piece and it was back to the same as my initial measurement. I checked for continuity between the ends of the factory connector and both were normal. I also checked the resistance of the resistor I used when I made mine up and it was 3.4 ohms. I have no idea why this wasn't working using the factory connector but oh well. Put the GS connectors back on and soldered the wires for good measure, then put it all back together. I'll find out later if it works or not.

[chiefmg]

Miata: I spoke too soon about the driver's airbag delete being a success. Beginning of the week I saw the light flashing six times, which is the code for the driver's airbag. I decided to just get the resistor arrangement from Garage Star. That came in two days ago so I pulled the one I had made (checked the resistance of that and it was 0.5 ohms), swapped over the connector and plugged that sucker in. No joy, the damn thing still flashed. Note I checked the resistance of the GS part before installing and it was 3.6-3.7 ohms. I removed the part and checked the resistance again with the factory connector in place and it read 0.5 ohms. So this morning I took the connectors that GS uses, opened them up so I could put them back on and then took the factory connector off. Before I did anything else I checked resistance of the GS piece and it was back to the same as my initial measurement. I checked for continuity between the ends of the factory connector and both were normal. I also checked the resistance of the resistor I used when I made mine up and it was 3.4 ohms. I have no idea why this wasn't working using the factory connector but oh well. Put the GS connectors back on and soldered the wires for good measure, then put it all back together. I'll find out later if it works or not.

[chiefmg]

Miata: No dice on the airbag resistor, the light started flashing again. Took me a few days to get motivated. Disconnected the battery this morning, when everything was back together the airbag light started flashing immediately. Double-checked the resistor and it is still showing the correct resistance. Probably going to try plugging the stock airbag back in to see if that clears the light, if not then I know something else went bad.