What have you done to your Miata today?

Fingers crossed for you Chief! Prime top down season is fast upon us.

Dimpled the oil dipstick the other day to get a better reading when checking oil levels. All the while, that damn plastic yellow handle was mocking me so I painted it to shut its trap. I'm liking it much better now.

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That thing's so clean!

I picked up a tip at the Dixie National tour from a couple CP and SM competitors with splitters very similar in construction to mine. They make aluminum channel to "trim" 1/4" ply (which happens to be the same size as the dibond the splitter is made of)

This should make the leading edge much less of a wear surface lol

 
Yay clecos! Looks really nice.

Thanks! It's obviously a function over form part, but it has a bit of an industrial / aircraft look that's kinda awesome :D
Unfortunately, because it's shiny silver rivets on shiny silver channel it barely shows up on camera, but with the rivets in it looks seriously purposeful (which, I mean, it is, but that look doesn't always come through)

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Thanks! It's obviously a function over form part, but it has a bit of an industrial / aircraft look that's kinda awesome :D
Unfortunately, because it's shiny silver rivets on shiny silver channel it barely shows up on camera, but with the rivets in it looks seriously purposeful (which, I mean, it is, but that look doesn't always come through)

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Boing....

Function over form every day. I really like the 'clean industrial' look over the 'impossibly smooth and perfect' look.
 
So what are you going to do? Repaint and reinstall the spoiler or is it staying off.

well i have a lexan adjustable spoiler to go on the car, I'm not sure how much that will hide. options are likely leave it alone or vinyl wrap the trunk. im not trying to mess with getting VRM resprayed.
 
I had to go back to work for two weeks so the other Chief could attend some meetings. Got home last night, but thanks to various issues the supercharger wasn't here. Supposed to show up tomorrow. In order to keep from bashing my head against the wall in frustration, I decided to get some other work done.

I went over to my storage and removed the sliders from my stock seats. Came back home and started in on the NB2 seats. First thing was to pull them out of the box. The seller packaged them very well, and even included instructions to assemble the seats (they broke them down into backs and bottoms for ease of shipping). The seat pans were discolored with the usual "rust" that you find on stock seats. In this case it was more of a patina on the metal.

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I decided to hit it a lick with WD-40 and a red cooktop Scotchbright pad to remove any nastiness.

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That cleaned it up somewhat. I decided for s**** and grins to see what I could do with some metal polish I have, the not as rusty looking area in the middle is the result:

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This is the polish:

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Some day when I am bored (maybe after I retire), I'll pull them out, tear the seats down and polish away. It's nice to know I can get them that clean.
 
After assembling the seats, I proceeded to clean the leather. Here's the initial views before starting:

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Kind of scuzzy. Here is the result after some scrubbing with Lexol Cleaner, a microfiber cloth and a scrub brush:

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Not too shabby given they are used seats. Finally, here is how they looked after some Lexol Conditioner:

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Finally, the money shot with them installed:

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While I had my Recaros and these stock seats sitting side by side, I decided to measure just what the difference was that keeps the stock seats from hitting the B pillar area. Taking a width measurement 18" up from the bottom shows the stock seats are 16" wide. The Recaros are only 17" in the same spot, which isn't that much. The true difference lies in the cross-section of the seat backs. The Recaros are squared off and blocky, while the stock seats have a taper that gives the clearance needed. Here's pictures of the stock seat showing this clearance:

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After I got the seats done (but before installing them), I changed out the interior trim in the B pillar area. This was to remove the wear shown from the Recaros, and also to get rid of the opening for the hard top side strikers. I also changed out the fog light/cruise master switch for the stocker. I had replaced it with a used one that showed less wear on the lettering, but the cruise stopped working (at this point I don't know for sure just when that transpired). I have read some information that says the switches are different between years and will cause a problem. I have already tried changing out the vacuum motor with no change in cruise operation so this is another test.
 
Lovin' the work on those seats, Chief. They look fantastic in the Merlot!!

Finally found a little time to knock the rest of this out and get the car ready for this weekend.

Font & back reinforced. The front is all about protecting the leading edge. The spar across the rear is more to add a little more rigidity along the 'long' side of the splitter.



 
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Lovin' the work on those seats, Chief. They look fantastic in the Merlot!!

Thanks. Because I am who and what I am, I am compelled to correct you in that the color is Mahogany (there actually is a slight difference between the two).

I see I need to make a trip to the Atlanta area for my scales. Thanks for finding them for me. (breakn)

This morning I was greeted by the three best words in the English language for a car guy- "Out For Delivery."
 
Who loves ya' baby?!

She's alive! UPS showed up around noon, I had everything back together (including putting my tools away) in about an hour. Pictures will come once my wife is done with the camera memory card. The 'charger is pretty though, nice coating on the rotors now and the bypass is working. I don't know how long the old one was faulty but I was losing some boost compared to what I have now. The sound under boost seems to be a bit less, but it's still there.
 
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