Miata Wintercrosser

The one in the 911 flashes and dances like some crazy 90's digital slot machine. Look at me! I'm a radio! berkeley you radio. Nobody cares.
Sorry to hijack things Woody, you know how we are around here.

The Blaupunkt Toronto also looks really cool, but ironically Crutchfield Canada doesn't carry it.

Your thread really makes me want to either paint my corroded valve cover or install the ricey chromed one I took in part trade years ago.

I got an email from Lime Rock stating that they've added two more dates to the calender and also have openings for two days this week. As much as I'd like to get there this week, I've been hitting the Benedryl pretty hard lately and I don't think I'm going to feel up to it. I've registered for next Friday instead.

I'm running out of things to do to this car...

I had a few minutes to kill this afternoon after moving snow all morning, so I decided to install the rear tow hook. Unfortunately, it was more of a PITA to install than the ones that I had on my '96 Miatas, and nowhere near as strong. But at least it's there in case I go nose first into a snow bank next week. Hopefully, that won't happen.

Tow points seem like good insurance for that type of driving.

You should un-upholster the seat and install a heater pad and then put it all back together. Heated seat in the wintercrosser would be sweet.

In reply to mazdeuce:

Actually, the heater works pretty well in this car. The temperature was in the low single digits the last time that I was at Lime Rock and I was still pretty comfortable. I suspect that I might have felt differently if the car had leather seats, but it wasn't bad with the cloth.

I took care of a little more maintenance and changed the oil in the transmission and rear differential.

I used two quarts of Red Line MTL in the transmission and a quart of Valvoline Synthetic 75-90 in the differential. The lift wasn't absolutely necessary for this job, but it sure made things a lot easier, especially when you take into account that you really want the car to be level so that you get the volume right.

Always make sure that you can remove the fill plug first before you drain the old oil out.

If you don't own one of these little bottle pumps yet, go out and buy one. They make the job so much easier than trying to fill it from above with a long funnel.

The procedure is the same at the other end of the car.

In combination with the shifter refresh that I did last week, this car now shifts like it was brand new.

If you're going to try to pump trans fluid in the winter, keep it in the house for a while first

Keith Tanner wrote: If you're going to try to pump trans fluid in the winter, keep it in the house for a while first

That's exactly what I did! It was inside on one of the heater vents for a few hours this morning.

Remember those Moog sway bar end links from Page 3?

When the car was up on the lift, I discovered that when the suspension was at full droop with the steering at full lock, the end link's lower grease fitting would just barely come into contact with the steering arm. For normal street driving, full droop / full lock would be an unlikely occurrence, but when playing in the snow, it became a real possibility.

The solution was simple: with the joints filled with grease, I removed the lower fittings and replaced them with rubber caps like I did with the upper ends of the rear links.

And...as you'll see from these photos, the car has been getting some exercise out in the winter slop.

As you may have read elsewhere, I was starting to get a strong smell of fuel inside the car. Fortunately, the solution was cheap and easy.

I removed the metal panel in the trunk that covers the fuel filler hose. The filler hose hides behind this panel and the metal cover behind it (three bolts):

Below the connection to the fuel tank, there is a big rubber seal and there was a small pool of oily, gas-smelling sludge. It's pretty obvious that with the tank completely topped off, gas was sitting in that near-horizontal section of hose, weeping out past the clamps and accumulating on that rubber seal. The light solvents would evaporate off and the sludge stayed behind. I cleaned it up, aired out the trunk and tightened up the hose clamps, which were fairly loose as the old hose wasn't as pliable as it was when it was new. I think that should take care of the problem. I may replace the hose just to be safe.

You can see the little pool of sludge below the hose. There wasn't a lot, but it was enough to stink up the interior. Hopefully, a few turns of the clamps will take care of the problem.

Damn this stupid beautiful weather we've been having...

After a miserably cold and snowy winter, the past two days have been sunny and in the mid 40's. I've actually been able to work on the car outside and I've got it pretty much where I want it to be. There were two events added to the Lime Rock schedule for last week when it was still in the teens everyday, but I was too sick to get up there. I'm signed up for this Friday.

I just opened this email:

Dear Participants

Thank you for your patience. Lime Rock Park

The nights are forecast to be in the 20's, but the days will be sunny and in the upper 40's all week. The snow is disappearing fast. What really bums me out is the fact that I just bought a Go Pro camera specifically for this event.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for more miserable weather.

Lots of rain this week and 60 degrees and sunny yesterday. Season over. I may apply my registration fee toward a couple of their open autocross days, which I was curious about but doubt that I would have tried otherwise. I may do that in a different car though.

Skip's thoughts on winter autocross:

Skip Barber

Miatas continue to be the jack-of-all-trades sports car. Absolutely love it!

I also just noticed that GRM used pictures of you and I on a post today!

In reply to Bubs:

Thanks, I hadn't seen that!

It appears as if I've fallen in like with what I thought was going to be my Disposable Winter Miata. The nice lady from FedEx stopped by yesterday with four of these:

I haven't decided what kind of summer tires I'm going to get for them, but but the size will probably be 205/50-15.

The car was still smelling like fuel after filling the tank.

I finally broke down and ordered a replacement fuel filler hose, figuring that it has gotten old and brittle and was probably the source of a vapor or liquid leak.

I had a hard time finding the the right part number, as it wasn't as obvious as you might expect on the parts diagram. I called Mazdaspeed, confirmed that I was ordering the right item and they had it in my hands the next day for $31.

FYI, my car is a 2000.

I removed the trunk panel and fuel hose cover and loosened the clamps on the old fuel hose. I should note that the fuel gauge was reading about 3/4 full at this point. If you're doing this, make sure it's a bit lower than that.

This was the first sign that I might be on to something...

The fill pipe that feeds the hose is galvanized but there was a bit of rust at the seam where it was welded. Hmmmm...

When I pulled the other end off of the fuel tank inlet, here's what I found:

Also note that you can see the fuel level just inside that pipe. I got very lucky that it was just low enough that I didn't end up with a trunk full of fuel when I removed that end of the hose.

I'm not sure whether to blame ethanol, age or some combination of both, but it was pretty clear that no amount of clamping force on the fifteen year old hose was going to result in a good seal.

Here's a good look at the inside of the hose ends:

I cleaned the tube ends up as well as I could with gray Scotch-Brite (I didn't want to make any sparks) and then coated them with grease to ease installation of the new hose, help it seal better, and to keep future corrosion at bay.

With the new hose in place, all I have to do now is reinstall the cover and carpet.

I'm not ready to proclaim "Problem Solved", but I have a pretty good feeling about this.

Installed new wheels and tires today.

What tires did you decide on?

In reply to mazdeuce:

The cheap ones. Dunlop Direzza somethings. 205/50-15. Although I may do a non-competitive autocross or two, this car will serve no real purpose to me beyond being a daily driver. New tires were more about getting the wheels on the car than anything else.

And I'm weird when it comes to tires. 90% of the time I go with Yokohamas for daily drivers, mainly becaues I loved A008s back in the 80's. Miatas came with Dunlops, so it just seems right to put Dunlops on them. American cars get Goodyears. European cars get Michelins or Pirellis, though if they're Swedish, I would make an attempt to find Scandinavian tires.

Dunlop Direzza DZ102 SL

Where did you get those wheels? Also, I found those tires to ride too harshly for me on my 328i.

In reply to Mr_Clutch42:

I got them directly from Konig.