Cus' NA6

[Cus]

I promised I'd share more of the jpeggy delights when I had internet, and now, I have internet... sooo...

STAND BACK! I'M GOING TO DO PHTOGOPHYS

[Cus]

More Foe's Toes!

[Cus]

Lil Red officially reached 4000kms under my ownership, and got fresh oil to celebrate! (and aligns future services with 5's and 10's) You've all done oil changes on an MX5, so you know how it went.... ....or do you?

The oil pan didn't fit under the car without jacking it up a few mm, the jack didn't fit under the car without lifting it a few mm, and I nearly forgot to do up the sump plug with a spanner instead of fingers. Double-Checks Save Lives! (and engines)

Mental note to myself: price a shorter oil-drain pan and a shorter jack when it's time to put new suspension under it.

I adjusted the rear latches on the hard top, turns out it's really easy when you actually decide to do it. My method was leave top on, undo cap-screws on the rear latches, undo the pair of bolts, use a blade screwdriver to push the plate towards the front of the car while re-tightening the pair of bolts. No more chalkboard squeaks while motivating down rough roads! Sainty == Restored!

I've noticed oil seems to be coming up from either the middle bolt on the cam cover, or one of the spark plugs either side of it, haven't decided yet - it's not a huge amount of oil, so I'm not stressed yet. Dad seems to think it's cause I'm too keen on 6000RPM, to which I tell him "Nah, it loves it!" - I'm leaning more towards the fact that the gasket was probably conscripted for WWI - not saying dad's wrong (he's probably actually right, in that oil will pressurise in the head, and want to get out wherever it can, which happens to be around that bolt), but he's a Cleavland V8 man, so getting over 6000RPM is a cause for concern to him, so it's my duty as a son to do everything I can to cause grey hairs (The job's nearly done FWIW)

[Cus]

Today was a good day, the Postie left me a note saying "Meet me at work, I've got a present for you!"

I'm not usually one to follow men on motorbikes, but it's friday, and there was no winky-face on the note, so it didn't seem like a life-threatening choice.
I went for it.
I'm glad I did! It turns out he wasn't trying to roofie me at all, he just coudn't fit my parcel on his postie-bike.

Today's Treasures: New weather strips for the tops of the doors, a gasket and a couple of o-rings!

The Gasket and O-Rings are going into the pile for "when we're ready" with a thermostat and the thermostat gasket from in town - I'm cleaning the TB and going to do a full coolant flush / refill at the same time. Pretty sure I don't need a new thermostat, but it was not-many-dollars, and that's how many I have, so I got it.

The weather strips went on while I was at dad's waiting on the hayfever medication to save me from my patented sneeze-and-swear routine that starts alongside hayfever season. It's fun, everyone should suffer hayfever once or twice. No more than that though, it's not *that* much fun.

I swapped out the passenger side, the end-tabs were so brittle they broke, and now the passenger door has a couple of little plastic bits living inside it. They can stay rent-free until they start to rattle, then they'll be getting evicted.

I remembered the intertubes likes pictures so I went into paparazzi-mode doing the driver's side, and made another Imgur gallery: http://imgur.com/a/fwUu2
If anyone knows a lazy^H^H^H^Heasy way of uploading photos and automagically resizing them, that'd be great to know! I originally embedded the relevant photos, but they're full phone-cam size, and looked silly.

I discovered after doing the passenger's side that there's little tabs you can push under the outside lip of the weather strip to remove it without damaging it. I gave it a go on the driver's side and confirmed that the process does indeed work. Then I went back into BFS mode (Brute Force and Stupidity), and yanked the strip off, it leaves the clips in place, and bends the metal in the weather strip. If you want to re-use them, do the Tabs method. The intertubes probably has this documented somewhere, but you know; discovery is fun. I did clean the 24ish years of guff build-up under the old strips, but I didn't document it, so you'll have to take my word for it.

A quick glance at the car makes it look better. I think this is because now when I look at it there's a mental list of things I look at that I want to do, and it's one item shorter.

[gslender]

Where do ya buy the strips from?

[Cus]

I got the strips from Mania.

Not the cheapest price, but they had them in stock (gaskets too) and knew what I was talking about.

[Rolley]

G'day Cus

Do you still have the part numbers handy for those 3 gaskets?
I pulled mine apart the other week and I think it's time for some fresh rubber in there.

Door strips look the goods really tidy it up.

Luke.

[speed]

Welcome! Epic first post and just being a little different made me want to read on! Good work


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[Cus]

Hi Luke!

Yes, I do, almost!

These are links to the parts (UK Site) and a description of what I got from Mania:

http://www.mx5parts.co.uk/throttle-body-idle-control-valve-gasket-p-2002.html
This is in a "Ford / Mazda Genuine Parts" Bag, number on it is: B551-13-W89

http://www.mx5parts.co.uk/throttle-body-inlet-manifold-gasket-p-1037.html
This one is in a Mazda Bag, number B6S7-13-655

http://www.mx5parts.co.uk/valve-inlet-manifold-ring-p-1038.html
This one has no numbers on the bag, but it's printed with the Mazda logo, and "Geniune Parts"

As of last week Mania had them all in stock, and Automotive had 2/3 in stock, should have the last in stock by now (I emailed them both with all of the links saying "have you got these?") Mania got back to me first by about 20 minutes, so they won this round

[Cus]

Greetings Humans! It was an exciting day today! Things happened! I did stuff! I think I got sunburned....

Little Red stayed over at dad's for the night so it'd be all nice and cool while I worked on it today, this meant having to drive the Magna for a whole 24 hours!!!!. I do like the stereo in the Magna though, and the interior light, and .... driving little red. The best thing I've ever done for the Magna's appreciation was to buy another car that wasn't a Magna. Suuurrree you get body roll before you even start turning into a corner, but she's not a nimble beast, she needs to prepare herself, start bracing for the corner early...... but when it comes to driving around town looking for carby cleaner with the radio turned up to "Fully Sick" -- she's a faithful steed, and she provides a consistent experience. You just can't expect ... much. They do dirt rally fairly well. But they're definitely not built for it

The Story, Part I: Part One of The Story

I pulled the overflow bottle off and flushed it out with the hose. The "water" that was in there actually looked like milk and orange juice. I spent a large portion of the afternoon thinking of non-offensive ways to describe it. Cleaning things leaves one's mind plenty of time to ponder important things .... like how to describe dirty water.....

Anyway! I drained the water out. I'd picked up 5L of de-ionised water (de-constituted? de-mineralised? de-sunt matter! it said "for radiators" on it), and 2.5L of psychedelic green magic radiator juice earlier in the week, and knew I needed 6L to fill the system back to full, both of the bottles had markers on them so I could keep track of my input.

In all of ten minutes dad had convinced me to setup the gazebo for some shade. I'd set up shop on the lawn because I was going to be playing with water, but the sun was very interested in the day's proceedings, glaring down with the intensity of ... well, of one sun.

I removed the vacuum and water pipes to the iac/icsv and then pulled the intake crossover off so I had more space to work and proceeded to disconnect the bottom radiator hose halfway along. I took the thermostat off and pumped water through the block with the hose until it came out clear again. I did the same thing with the radiator. Now I'm thinking about it, I forgot to do a backwards flush. Dag-nabbit! Next time, Gadget!

While I waited for the puddle to dry, I removed the Throttle Body and proceeded onto...

The Story, Part II: Rubbing a Wire Brush on your Hand still Hurts the Fiftieth Time.

I took the Throttle Body into the shed and went about turning it into as many individual parts as I dared. (TB, IAV & ICSV) The Plastic solenoid bit didn't seem to want to come off the ICSV, so I left him there for today's task. I did put him on the multimeter, he registered roughly in the range (it was hotter than 20 degrees, but reading 12.8 Ohms, which fits inside 12Ohms +/- 1)

The water paths had a build-up of calcified-looking guff, most of it the same colour as the water in the overflow tank. I could scrape it off where I could reach it, but that wasn't as much as I'd have liked. How can I clean this out better? All of the parts of the water system that were visible (except the radiator) had this stuff in varying amounts. I gather there's probably some water additive that works like a stiff bottle brush by now?

The Air parts on the manifold side of the TB were all coated in about 0.2mm of oily slime-filth. I took a small excursion around town looking for someone with carby cleaner in stock, and returned triumphantly. While I was cleaning the blackness out I discovered that if I hit the outside of the parts with a wire brush, they come up nice and clean. Clean is good right? Yeah clean is good! Sadly for me, dad doesn't have a vice, after managing to wire-brush myself more times than you'd believe trying to hold parts and clean them, I invented the "Heel Vice" - sit on the floor in the shed, and clamp parts between your heels. It's awkward as all get-up, but better than wire-brushing your hand - and in some parts, it almost looks like it could be polished!

I proceeded back to the car and cleaned out the start of the inlet manifold as far as I could reach. Initially it was all smooth and black and looked like it had dust on it, but when I wiped it, it got shinier and the dust disappeared but didn't transfer to my finger, all I got was a thin film of oil. Queue lots of cleaner. I'd re-purposed the straw from the lid of the CRC for the Carby cleaner to get right into those good spots. I followed this up with a wipe-down with a rag, and after a couple of rinses and repeats, I discovered the intake is actually silver, shiny and textured. Dad thinks the filter is sucking dirt through, and I concur, so I'll need to look at that rather soon. I think the oil is from the recently-ish replaced pcv valve - I'll check it again in a few months when I decide to dismantle and clean the intake manifold now I know what it looks like.

Getting the old TB gasket off proved to be the most annoying part of the entire day. Hidden inside spiderwebs in the shed was a can of gasket remover. It's not the best stuff on the planet, but it's better than nothing, and for this, I thank it. *salute*

The Story, Part III: You don't know what you've lost until it's lost.

Re-assembly was easy, put things back where they were, substitute in new gaskets and o-rings, and adjust the location of the clips on the hose clamps. Nearly all of those were facing away from any logical direction. I re-checked everything, and set about putting water and coolant in. First was about 1.5L of coolant. Next was about 3L of water. Then it was full.

Then I realised the radiator cap was missing.

I looked under the car, on top of the multitude of flat surfaces in the engine bay (it's like having a hundred little coffee tables!) in the shed, in my pockets, in the Magna, on the kitchen table, on the coffee table, in dad's pockets, back under the car, in the boot, in the shed again, on the ground between the car, shed and house.... eventually, I found it: Inside red's mouth, off to the side. Well played, Sir...

I did the usual hose-squeeze moves I've seen people do with coolant changes, and topped it up when it burped. All up I only ended up getting another 500ml in there. I've since found out what I've done wrong (burping while not running, due to thermostat not being open), and will rectify it in the morning. Conveniently the 2.5L of fluid I have left over fit exactly in the coolant bottle so it's pre-mixed and has "Coolant" all over the bottle already.

There was a leak I spied on the lower water hose, but sorted it out before starting the car. Stupid Hose Clamps. A couple of the hoses are different, and so are some of the hose clamps, so I might try and get some Unity in there next coolant change. And some Synergy for good measure.

But the primary purpose for the day was to clean the TB assembly, I just knew it'd involve the water system, so figured it was time to do it. The idle dip that lead me down this path looks like it's fixed, so once I get the last litre of coolant in there, she'll be apples.

My next mission is to sort out the oil coming up from (I think) the middle bolt on the cam cover, I noticed this morning I'm getting little black dots where I park. they're all about a 5c coin size, so it's always the same amount of loss regardless of parked time which is reassuring. Or I might do something about the interior lighting situation. Or the central locking the car appears to have. Or some other thing entirely!

Tune in next week for more ... moreness. And maybe a picture. There's a lot of words here, it's not intentional. Well, it kind of is.

[Rolley]

Cheers Cus,
Informative and entertaining as always.

Thanks for the links, my wallet has been closed for nearly a whole week for car purchases this clearly needed to be rectified.

[Cus]

No Coolant! That's not where you go!

[Cus]

I got the coolant sorted (gasket goo) and Lil Red and I went for a drive over to Ballarat-ish for our first Club day run on Sunday.

Got to meet some interesting people, and some interesting cars, then got in "trouble" for not being topless. All in all, it was a good day! Looking forward to the next run I can get across to - the downside of living in the centre of the state seems to be that all of the "interesting" club things happen a couple of hours away ...but it's a car, and I like driving it....

We did set a PB for fuel economy: 478.9 Km traveled, 34.34L of go-juice used! (7.17L / 100Km) - I wasn't actively trying, just using 5th while cruising, and trying not to speed too much. If I put effort in and drove only on flat roads, I feel I could smash that. (There were a few point of being WOT going up hills 2 or 3 gears down from where I started) And then I'll win a "world's most boring driver" award... haha

Picture of the day goes to "Molly" she's probably geting to be a bit like dad's favorite Axe - several handles, and just as many heads. - I can't remember the owner's name, but he was cool too.

[Cus]

I found a relative with a stash of cassettes!

Haven't been this excited about a collection of tapes since back in the day where I'd spend all weekend trying to make a mix-tape off the radio without the stupid DJ talking over the starts and ends of songs. Mix Tapes were Serious Business.

DJ: "Here's Baby got Back, by Sir Mix-A-Lot"
Me: "I know! Shut up! I'm recording!"
DJ: ".... and coming up this hour, we have hits from Boyz-2-Men, Bryan Adams and The Baby Animals, and don't forget the Secret Sound after the news!"
Me: *presses stop* "That's not shutting up mate... Now I have to wait an hour for you to play it again...."

[speed]

Reminds me of 1992!


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