It had a nice fine pebble-finish to it; still looks good.

 

I started looking around for valve stems for the enkei's.
Are valve stem sizes universal?
Silver anodized aluminum valve
I want to pick these up, pretty cheep and they're a plain silver.

 

no the universe uses a different valve....

afik, at the dealership we only used to stock two different ones, long and short. so you should make sure you get the right length

 

Your sarcasm cuts deep man.

 

Read close on the website. They are only +3 hp stems. Pretty but not the best performance gain.

 

I did see some red ones that looked pretty cool and they gave me +7hp, the only problem was they wanted 60$ for the set. In my opinion that's not cool.
I also need to find a way to buy the new retro enkei center caps, they look sooo cool.

 

60$ is a tad bit to steep. 59.99 is more like it.

 

Plugged in a bluetooth gateway from belkin last night; now I get tunes from my cell phone into my stereo without having to mess with cables. & handsfree phone ops, too.

 

I drove her 5 miles to work, added some tranny fluid and managed to get back home.

 

The whole reason I may upgrade the sound system, again, to get the phone features. I have a USB hook up for charging my phone (music plays as well), AUX port used for music, but I'm missing the Bluetooth capabilities. Not to mention the Kenwood deck I have is darn near 8 years old

I'm communicating with a seller to get some BBS Vert rims for my TII front subframe swap, and rear TII brake swap in the next month. Hopefully Sam at Re-Speed still has a set laying around for me and can ship them out..

 

Picked up my u-joints now to put um in. . .

 

Just rebuilt and installed both front calipers.
Also found out my fan clutch was totally dry inside; filled it with some light silicon lube to rinse it out... Will be hitting up a hobby shop for some proper silicon oil sometime this week.

I miss summer.

 

[QUOTE=Redliner223;11352068I also need to find a way to buy the new retro enkei center caps, they look sooo cool.[/QUOTE]

sad news.... for me at least, the new retro center caps have a different diameter hole than the wheels I currently have. So I can buy them but it's a waste of money. So, I'm going to restore the original center caps.

Now, I have a super crazy idea. When I bought the wheels they had a blank chrome center cap that originally according to the previous owner of the wheels had a cheap decal that had the Mazda logo on it. The stickers peeled off years ago and he had couldn't recall if it was The Mazda logo or "Mazda" written out.
Since this is a restomod I would like this part to be a throwback to the original style.

I found this guy making center cap decals on the Miata forum. This is his catalog.
http://www.r2-limited.com/blog/wp-co...ge_catalog.pdf
What do you guys think of Type 2 in black???



I would really like your opinion on this one guys.

 

I like the "modern mazda" logo option cos its the same as the mazda logo on an fb.

 

heck why not a rotor in the center cap

 

Drove the Beastie out to Buena Park to meet up with our own "7Aull", Stu Aull, who has been in town visiting from the great up beyond. Had a great time getting to know a truly fine gent.

On the way to the place, I heard this really horrid rattling start up from the rear of the car whenever I hit a rough patch of road. I thought at first that I'd maybe left the hatch unlatched, so I stopped to check it, but it was fine. Drove on, with the noise just eating at my mind. Just as 'my cars don't leak!', my car simply doesn't rattle. It's not allowed.

First assumption was that maybe the spare or the jack was loose, but a quick check of these items also turned up nothing.

Met with Stu, had a great time talking for a couple hours about all manner of things.

Same deal on the drive home. This noise was loud in the cabin, clearly coming from the rear, and sounded to be from above the midline of the car. All manner of possible scenarios ran through my head as I zoomzoomed the 30ish miles home.

I hit on the idea that the gas cap maybe had come undone & was banging around inside the well as I drove.

I was close to right; turned out to be the gas cap cover door. The little rubber snubbers had finally given up the ghost after all these years, and the door was bouncing against the key latch whenever the rear end got a shock from bad pavement.

Mystery solved; now I just have to find a suitable replacement.

 

^Thank goodness it wasn't something more serious!

I will be trying to go out and take much of the blue part out car apart to make way for the 87 TII that will be replacing it on Sunday if all goes according to plan. It's just so dastardly cold out here..it's -6*F right now

 

Isn't that a bit cliche though?
I mean everyone with a rotary car has a rotor symbol somewhere on the car.
That and if it's a custom decal I have to pay a custom price according to the guy. Whatever that means.

I'm going to pull the trigger of Type 2.
I'll have the Modern Mazda instead of the vintage Mazda written on it.

 

Yeah, I hate scary noises while driving at night.

Apparently, the parts I need are 2 each, 8871-70-491 "Stopper, Filler Lid."

There's actually a chance these might still be available; according to a Russian website I saw (you gotta love the internet, man!) they were also used on the '93 MX-3's. If so, they probably pop up on a ton of other models thru the years.

We shall see!

 

I know how you are so specific - but would you consider getting them from a parts car or somewhere similar to that? Or would RockAuto have them? I'm sure you've checked though

 

I figure any on a parts car would likely be as old & dried out as mine, and the way they mount (cone-shaped tail pressed through a tiny hole in the body work) makes it look unlikely they'd come out intact, but good parts are good parts - - doesn't matter where they come from.

No joy at Rock Auto or Black Dragon - - this kind of little ticky-tack trim stuff usually is either dealer-only or you sometimes can find a 'generic' mechanical part that does the same job.

 

This is the kind of thing that is so easy to make you forget that you can do it.

For a one off (ok 2 off) I would just make a lump of black silicone about the size of the original and carve it to shape with an exacto knife. If you want it to actually look original you could make a mold and just fill it with black silicone rubber and let it cure. For mounting to the car you could embed a bolt in the blob of rubber and use a nut on the car or some variation of this or just glue it with a dab of silicone on the other side of the hole. The silicone rubber will probably still be there when the rest of the car is a pile of red dust with just the paint outline of what was a car rippling in the breeze.

But it is certainly easier to just buy them if you can.

 

Go to your favorite auto parts super store and look at the red HELP! parts wall. I bet you can
find something that will work and look ok.

 

if you can't get ahold of the 8871-70-491's, shoot me a PM, they basically still use these on the new cars, but the part numbers change, without superceding, so they are available, but the part number could be for an FD, 626, 6, Rx8, etc

its just a matter of looking it up for different cars until you find a number that works

lol, i just looked it up, 0187-70-491, tons of stock, $2.25 retail each, there are 4 under the cowl too

 

I found some items at McFadden Dale that may work; Not sure if they are long enough. If they don't work, I'll hit you up for a couple of those!

These are small, like 6mm in diameter and perhaps 10mm long before they smooshed.