BACK FROM THE BACKROADS TRIP TO INDY

When I was in college, I bought an '85 Buick Skyhawk (a Cavalier dressed up evening style). Nothing special as a whole, but at least it was a 5-speed, and I enjoyed the car - especially due to its little pop-out glass sunroof. It was my first open roof. I can still feel what I felt driving along Highway 72 between Athens and Florence in the late cool evening of a summer's day, with the pop-out glass banished to the trunk. The night air, the moon and stars above me, the rolling landscape that made even 60 fun. Ah, yes.

None of my later sunroof-equipped cars have quite matched it, maybe because the more modern low sloping windshields push the sunroofs farther back, leaving less of the opening forward of the driver's head. Or maybe it was just the novelty of having it for the first time that made it special.

Well, I've certainly enjoyed having the droptop Miata, and I have the top dropped almost everywhere I go...but most of my driving has been in the cities or on the interstates. Getting off the beaten path on my recent trip (see previous post), back on the little country roads of Tennessee and Kentucky with the whole roof banished all day long -- it was that old memorable experience of my college days, and then some. Then a LOT, actually. It was just great.


I rigged (and I do mean rigged) a camera setup to do some video as I drove. No fancy suction mountings, or clasps onto a rollbar...no, I got out my full-size tripod, extended the legs part of their length, and placed it behind the passenger seat, the top angled over to just between the tops of the seats, and slammed the passenger seat all the way back to hold it in place (visible in the picture above, if you expand it). It actually worked really well as far as holding the camera steady in a pretty good position. But I've got to incorporate a method of eliminating wind noise and highlighting the engine/exhaust sounds instead. Next trip.

Specifically, the video was for the twisty sections of the roads I took. The car is so much fun on the twisties. Fortunately some of the roads had two lanes for the uphill side --on other roads I eventually got stuck behind slower cars.

The Rock Island area was indeed cool. The river that flows underground, under a road and structures, and then remerges from the rock above the other riverbed as a waterfall, well that was just eminently cool. Aside from the main flow of the falls, the water at the edge of the falls descends over many little terraces of rock before finally joining the rest of the flow in the riverbed. And a walk downstream along the rocks brought me to a pair of river otters playing in the shallows. Just cool.

Work Accomplished

Another purpose in taking the Miata on this trip was to get some work done on it with the help of my cousin Tim, and of the lift at the shop of a friend of his. These plans were only partially realized. We mounted the Thompson Oil Filter Relocation Kit without problem. Why did I choose this mod? Let's just say that knowing the issues beforehand, I took the car to a 15 minute oil change place for the first change, and the workers could not find my filter until the manager came over, who had done Miatas before. Even then it took them some considerable time to actually get the filter off. Doing it regularly, I'm sure I could beat their time, but I know I wouldn't look forward to the oil changes what with the difficulty and the way oil spills over everything from the filter's factory location. Thus, the Relocation Kit.

oil filter at center
We installed my Speedhut boost gauge (w/ silver face, red lighting, and a Mazdaspeed logo, all to perfectly match the factory gauges) in my A-pillar pod from Flyin Miata , and it began operating flawlessly…that day and throughout the evening. Upon being started the second time on the following day, however, the needle was reading a quarter of the dial off from where it should have been. I was getting 5 pounds of boost just idling! –and >20 pounds under WOT. Sometimes it reads correctly, sometimes not, but whichever way it’s reading upon startup, it keeps it until I kill it and restart, at which time it may or may not change. The gauge has a little calibration-like action at each startup, and that’s apparently the function that’s not operating well. Speedhut has agreed to take the gauge back; let’s hope a new one operates as it should.

Finally, we also got the trans- mission and differential fluids changed. Redline MT90 now fills my tranny, and 75w90 NS lubricates the differential. I bought the fluids online from Jegs, and they threw in a nice yellow Jegs cap with the oils.

When the boost gauge issue gets resolved, I can think about the further mods: a manual boost controller, intake kit, and new dowpipe and exhaust. Those will greatly increase my power, make the boost more linear and accessible at lower rpms, and even give me a couple more miles per gallon. Unfortunately, I don’t have the best financial situation right now, so those may have to wait a while.

An Update on my Wiperless Windshield

I’ve been very happy with this mod…but. In my travels out of town since doing it, I’ve been caught in the rain several times, some heavy, some light, and been quite pleased depending on Rain-X alone. Returning from Indiana, though, I ran into a new situation that presented a problem. Beginning in Kentucky, all the way to northern Georgia, the sky held separated pockets of rain clouds. I’d go through a rain shower for a mile or two, or maybe even 5 to 15 miles, and then it would clear again for a while. Each shower left the thinnest of dirt films on my windshield. Didn’t even notice it until after 4 or 5 showers (and 4 or 5 layers of dirt-film). But then it started raining again in busy downtown Nashville, and I noticed the water drops were not moving very quickly at all. They weren’t in good contact with the Rain-Xed surface anymore, and visibility suffered a lot by this point. I had to stop and use a gas station squeegie, and all was good again. Hit maybe 3 more showers, but the Rain-X held its own. Couple more, and another squeegie stop would have been likely. So: repeated, separated showers are the downside of this mod, but overall I’m still very happy with it.