If you have a sports car, and you haven't done an autocross yet, DO IT!!!
This past Saturday (Jan 14) was supposed to be the day my roll bar got installed. But one of my helpers remembered he had a SpeedVentures autocross event to work, so he wouldn't be able to come. He did say, however, that I ought to go and do the autocross event. It was in an infield parking lot at the Fontana Autoclub Speedway. I had been meaning to do an autocross event at some point but wasn't real familiar with what goes on - but since my friend was going to be working it, this looked like a good opportunity.
The day before the event, I cleaned the solenoid again, hoping to rid my car of the aforementioned high idle. Starting the car afterward I found a check engine light. A little investigation showed that I had knocked the other end of one of the little hoses loose, so I fixed that up. Didn't really cure the high idle though. I cleared the CEL, but it came back on later.
Anyway, I caravaned with two Miata friends for the 50-minute drive to Fontana: the guy who's gonna help with the roll bar (very skilled driver/racer, owns a heavily modified, one-of-a-kind Mazdaspeed Miata; and the other owns a nice looking NB, and writes on the web for Motor Trend).
Fifty to sixty cars showed up for the SpeedVentures event: Miatas, S2000s, Camaros, Mustangs, a Lotus, an old Datsun Z car, BMWs (including a sedan), a '69 Camaro, a Hyundai hatchback, etc.
My friend working the event walked me around the course before it all started, showing me the lines I should use, and also let me ride with him for a run in the first session; great help! The fastest drivers were running the course in the 39-second range (including my friend who was working the event), and I think I saw a 38 or so at some point in the day. My first few runs were in the 45s, and then I had a long string of 44s. Occasionally I would have a really sloppy run, but otherwise I was consistently improving, by a tenth of a second or two, each run. About the time I had gotten under 44.1, my said friend rode with me for a couple of runs. The first was more or less in line with what I had been doing, a low 44. He pointed out a couple things for me to do differently, and we headed out again. Coming to the timing sign this time, he pointed to the time without words, and I looked to read it as well. I mainly saw the .4 at the end, and as I had held no anticipation of getting that deep in the 43s, I was thinking it wasn't a good run; that I was back up in the mid-section of the 44s. So my response to him was pretty was underwhelming.....until I finally realized it was forty-THREE point four. It's pretty obvious in the video when I finally realized, hahaha. Here's that run:
Pretty excited to have finally smashed the 44.0 barrier and gotten so far into the 43s. Went out on the next run by myself, attacked the slalom much better, and got a 42.8! I was ecstatic! Unfortunately I had to leave the event early at that point, as I had other obligations that day. But I am SO looking forward to another autocross event!
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
CATCHING UP
I see that my last entry was July 2010. Life got off-kilter and complicated right after that, and suddenly a year and a half has gone by. Time to catch up and get back to my car's biography. The 'Speed has gone from just under 35k miles in mid 2010, to hitting 60k during this past weekend.
Going back to what was last mentioned, I installed the new antenna. Easy install, but you need a helper just for the second pair of hands.
Right after that is when things got complicated, and I ended up moving clear across the country - from Georgia to California, metro Los Angeles. I've lived in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, but I've also lived in the New Jersey suburbs of New York City, in metro Washington DC, and in the Chicagoland area (not to mention the Czech Republic), so LA is no culture shock as some might expect in a move from Georgia to SoCal.
However, it WAS a culture shock for the Mazdaspeed. Previously, it was always garage parked and never driven in the rain. The first few months in Long Beach were a rude awakening. For one thing, I left my old Isuzu Rodeo SUV in Georgia to be sold, so the Miata would be my constant transportation here (for several months anyway; then I finally bought a '94 4Runner to replace the Rodeo). For the first five months in Long Beach, I was in an apartment with no parking except on the street, and it was the rainy season. Of course how bad can the rainy season be in Southern California? Well, in 2011, horrendous. I have never seen more rain, more consistently, in my life. Ever. Anywhere. Very strange weather for SoCal. And so much for not driving this car in the rain.
Then came the day I'm sitting at a traffic light and, too late to do anything, I spot a woman in the rear-view mirror who had slowed, but not stopped. Bam! -and my mint Miata now had a marred rear bumper. It's just surface damage, and it isn't so bad, but it was the first damage on the car.
While I was examining the scrape, she took off. I jumped in the car and pursued, but she had gone immediately around a blind corner with another blind corner just beyond that, and I wasn't able to spot her. So the bumper will remain that way until I move from LA.
Then a few weeks later, I noticed someone had scraped the paint off my front bumper, apparently while trying to parallel park outside my apartment. This time the damage is much more noticeable, and I've found the shop to do the re-spray. More on that in a later post.
I now live in a house, with a garage, and I have the aforementioned 4Runner. So the 'Speed is very happy to be once again in it's favored circumstances: never being driven in the rain, and parked in the garage with its Mazdaspeed banner hanging over it. :)
And then there are the good things about my 'Speed Miata living in the LA area: canyon roads and KINOD. There are a lot of good roads in the mountains in and around LA, and they've provided a lot of fun: the Ortega Highway, Angeles Crest Highway, Rim of the World Highway, Mulholland Drive, Topanga Canyon Road, Tuna Canyon Road, etc. And then there's Turnbull Canyon Road, which I discovered because it's on the way to KINOD. KINOD is a group of Miata owners who began meeting every Friday night back in 2006. That's every Friday night for over 5 years now. They're mostly young (with exceptions), mostly Asian (with exceptions), and most of the cars that show up are modded and tuned much more than mine (with just a few exceptions!). Mine looks pretty bland in the KINOD meets!
Two mechanical issues have come up in the past months: a high idle, and an oil leak related to my oil filter relocation kit. Both of them are still to be resolved. The idle stays normal until I get into the turbo, but after I do, it will often go to 1500 to 2000 rpms, and stay there until the engine cools to ambient temperature. Informed that I should do the "bog fix" since a high idle is characteristic of the bog (which thankfully I've never had), I did so. It's an easy process of cleaning a solenoid, for which there is a great tutorial on the Mazda-speed.com forum ( http://www.mazda-speed.com/forum2/index.php/topic,21621.0.html ). Immediately, no matter how much or hard I got into the turbo, the idle behaved itself perfectly. I was thrilled. Until a few days later when the high idle returned. It's not as consistent as before (a good thing), but still sometimes shows up.
The oil leak is at the adapter on the side of the block, where the oil filter would normally be. I've tried simply tightening it with the car on the ground, but it's hard to get to (the whole reason for the relocation kit!), and I couldn't get good pressure on it. I need to get the car up on a lift and go at it better.
Well that about catches me up to date. Well, there is another good thing about having the Miata here in LA..... Another post to come, from this most recent weekend.
Going back to what was last mentioned, I installed the new antenna. Easy install, but you need a helper just for the second pair of hands.
Right after that is when things got complicated, and I ended up moving clear across the country - from Georgia to California, metro Los Angeles. I've lived in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, but I've also lived in the New Jersey suburbs of New York City, in metro Washington DC, and in the Chicagoland area (not to mention the Czech Republic), so LA is no culture shock as some might expect in a move from Georgia to SoCal.
However, it WAS a culture shock for the Mazdaspeed. Previously, it was always garage parked and never driven in the rain. The first few months in Long Beach were a rude awakening. For one thing, I left my old Isuzu Rodeo SUV in Georgia to be sold, so the Miata would be my constant transportation here (for several months anyway; then I finally bought a '94 4Runner to replace the Rodeo). For the first five months in Long Beach, I was in an apartment with no parking except on the street, and it was the rainy season. Of course how bad can the rainy season be in Southern California? Well, in 2011, horrendous. I have never seen more rain, more consistently, in my life. Ever. Anywhere. Very strange weather for SoCal. And so much for not driving this car in the rain.
Then came the day I'm sitting at a traffic light and, too late to do anything, I spot a woman in the rear-view mirror who had slowed, but not stopped. Bam! -and my mint Miata now had a marred rear bumper. It's just surface damage, and it isn't so bad, but it was the first damage on the car.
While I was examining the scrape, she took off. I jumped in the car and pursued, but she had gone immediately around a blind corner with another blind corner just beyond that, and I wasn't able to spot her. So the bumper will remain that way until I move from LA.Then a few weeks later, I noticed someone had scraped the paint off my front bumper, apparently while trying to parallel park outside my apartment. This time the damage is much more noticeable, and I've found the shop to do the re-spray. More on that in a later post.
I now live in a house, with a garage, and I have the aforementioned 4Runner. So the 'Speed is very happy to be once again in it's favored circumstances: never being driven in the rain, and parked in the garage with its Mazdaspeed banner hanging over it. :)
And then there are the good things about my 'Speed Miata living in the LA area: canyon roads and KINOD. There are a lot of good roads in the mountains in and around LA, and they've provided a lot of fun: the Ortega Highway, Angeles Crest Highway, Rim of the World Highway, Mulholland Drive, Topanga Canyon Road, Tuna Canyon Road, etc. And then there's Turnbull Canyon Road, which I discovered because it's on the way to KINOD. KINOD is a group of Miata owners who began meeting every Friday night back in 2006. That's every Friday night for over 5 years now. They're mostly young (with exceptions), mostly Asian (with exceptions), and most of the cars that show up are modded and tuned much more than mine (with just a few exceptions!). Mine looks pretty bland in the KINOD meets!
Two mechanical issues have come up in the past months: a high idle, and an oil leak related to my oil filter relocation kit. Both of them are still to be resolved. The idle stays normal until I get into the turbo, but after I do, it will often go to 1500 to 2000 rpms, and stay there until the engine cools to ambient temperature. Informed that I should do the "bog fix" since a high idle is characteristic of the bog (which thankfully I've never had), I did so. It's an easy process of cleaning a solenoid, for which there is a great tutorial on the Mazda-speed.com forum ( http://www.mazda-speed.com/forum2/index.php/topic,21621.0.html ). Immediately, no matter how much or hard I got into the turbo, the idle behaved itself perfectly. I was thrilled. Until a few days later when the high idle returned. It's not as consistent as before (a good thing), but still sometimes shows up.
The oil leak is at the adapter on the side of the block, where the oil filter would normally be. I've tried simply tightening it with the car on the ground, but it's hard to get to (the whole reason for the relocation kit!), and I couldn't get good pressure on it. I need to get the car up on a lift and go at it better.
Well that about catches me up to date. Well, there is another good thing about having the Miata here in LA..... Another post to come, from this most recent weekend.
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