amptramp

One of the things that is all the rage in the Miata community is the "pool noodle upgrade". People mount a pool noodle tucked up under the rear bumper and one owner claims it reduces drag by 7 pounds at 75 mph - that's 1.4 horsepower and in a car that can cruise at that speed at about 30 horsepower, that is noticeable. Other people have cut the rear bumper up to the cross beam that it mounts to so there is no "parachute". A full underbody panel would have to tolerate exhaust heat in certain places and would be dangerous in the event of an exhaust leak. No more hogzaust for you!

There is a similar issue with 2001+ Miata's where the variable valve timing tends to fail and cause a P0012 fault (timing over retarded). This often happens with startup / shutdown driving like going to garage sales (which is far more of a strain on the engine than ordinary stop / go driving). Usually an oil change solves the problem due to a fresh influx of detergent. In your case, I would change the oil and see if that relieves the problem. I did have a failure of one of the pressure switches for the Subaru variable valve lift - it prevented me from using cruise control but there were no other symptoms. I replaced the switch with one from Subaru and all has been well since then. I don't know why there are separate switches for the left and right bank - maybe the electrical outputs could be paralleled.

Don't be so sure that racing oil is a good idea for the street. Many racing oils have little or no detergent because they expect engines to be torn down after a few races (sometimes every race) to check all the clearances and while it is torn down, clean out all the oil passages. I have heard of drag racers using aircraft oil that contains no detergent but has a huge load of anti-foaming additive. Additives detract from film strength and film strength is the most important spec for a racing oil. For a street engine, this would be a disaster.

^^^ An air conditioner for an intercooler. Why didn't I think of that?

I am patiently waiting for someone to try dimpling the bodywork like a golf ball to achieve that last bit of drag reduction. Might be messy on a roof after a rain but someone has to do it. There have been experiments with dimpling the inside of intake manifolds and intake runners on heads that show about a 1% increase in flow.

Some of the people on clubroadster.net (a Miata forum) have done similar work and one thing they found was the rear bumper acts like a parachute generating 7 pounds of drag at 75 mph. A number of them have cut the rear bumper away to avoid this. This could be an interesting item to study on a Subaru because the car is wider and a Magnehelic gauge would be ideal for this as there would be no need to drill bodywork to get a measuring point.

I vacuumed out a pile of maple seeds from the engine compartment. I do this every year on both cars and it still amazes me that these seeds (that look like a single-blade helicopter rotors) manage to get into all the places they do and on both cars (the Miata as well). The offending tree is in the neighbour's yard to the west of me. Trying to vacuum anything out from under the intake manifold is a royal pain and I used a screwdriver and a long clip-style parts retriever to shake stuff loose as the vacuum hose was too big to go everywhere it had to go. It's not like I leave the hood up for extended periods. There must be some extreme winds I can't account for as the radiator and undertray should keep everything out, but they don't.

You can get impact wrenches in almost any torque in both electric and air. I have a Coleman 15 gallon compressor and several impact wrenches. One is quite good for just about everything, another is the same size but nowhere near as much torque and I have a small butterfly torque wrench that is useful for getting into tight areas but is also relatively weak. Princess Auto, which is the Canadian equivalent of Harbor Freight in the US, has a sale starting next week of an 1180 ft-lb impact wrench for CDN$179.99 which is probably enough to break your wrist anyway. One advantage of air tools is that there is no electricity so you can use it where there are fuel leaks with the confidence that it will not start a fire. Air tools also have the advantage that the power source is elsewhere so you only carry the weight of the tool. The experience I have had with most battery tools is they work for two to five years then things go wrong with the battery and replacement is not a trivial expense. Air tools of all kinds can be used with a compressor whereas not many manufacturers have battery-operated multi-tools. I have several paint sprayers, 3/8" and 1/2" ratchets, die grinders, a drill, a cutoff wheel, a panel crimper, a punch and flange tool and a few others that I have forgotten. I doubt any battery-operated combinations like that exist.

You might want to get an underbody view as well. Think about the prospect of being able to bend and weld piping for an exhaust system. Want to go up to a 3 inch exhaust? This view would tell you if you can and the exact placement and bend angles. No test fitting required - just make it on a bench and have it fit exactly without having to hold up pieces against the chassis and cut and tack weld as you go along.

You are looking for something like this: https://www.summitracing.com/parts/DER-25707/ but with a better than 1 star rating. There used to be dual and quad filter adapters available through places like J. C. Whitney. Another possibility would be to use an adapter that would take a single large filter (heavy diesel size) - there is nothing saying you have to retain the same type of filter that was originally specified as long as the micron filtering level and the relief pressure are adequate. Once you go remote, size doesn't matter.

Why some people hate going on vacation to see historic tourist sites:

I use NAPA Gold for the 2001 Miata, but the taller one for the Millenia rather than the short one specified for the Miata. It seems to be the perfect choice for that application because the Miata is very gentle on its oil and the metal end caps and thread-end bypass were exactly what I prefer. I specifically went away from NAPA filters for the Subaru because several years ago I used one that kept loosening. The vibration in a flat four engine is rotational about a vertical axis and the filter mounts vertically, so there are forces that promote loosening. My concern was that the threads on the filter were on the large side of tolerance and not holding properly. I had no such problem with any other filter. Many years ago, drag racer Smokey Yunick used to use oil filter adaptors that had four filters in parallel. That way, the bypasses would never open and the filtration area was sufficient for drag race engines running up into unholy rev ranges. It is worth a thought.

There are a number of YouTube videos where filters are cut open and the differences in construction are obvious. On the Miata, I use NAPA / Wix Gold which has an unusual bypass valve structure - it is located under the filter element right next to the gasket surface end. The advantage? When the bypass opens, it does not wash dirt off the outside of the filter element as it would with the bypass at the other end of the filter. Some filter differences are subtle, some are blatant. We have an oil thread but not a filter thread, so if there is continued interest, maybe someone should start one.

The OE filter is a rebranded Fram filter with a change to the gasket so it doesn't unscrew itself in operation (like NAPA / Wix filters do). The price for the Amzoil filter was from a local retailer, KAR Auto Parts. There are a number of videos of filters that are cut open and analyzed and the difference in quality was remarkable from the lowly Fram with its cardboard filter element end caps to the Amzoil that looks like the best available quality. Looked at as the cost of protecting an engine, it is cheap insurance. Also, my price was in Canadian dollars and would be the equivalent of US$ 25.29.

This was oil change day, but it was a close call. Trying to get the oil filter off by hand was a lost cause so I had to race to the store to get a filter wrench adapter. The filter is surrounded by heat shields for the exhaust pipes and the filter wrench (the type with a cap the fits a 3/8 inch drive) did the job perfectly. The race was to get the job done before the rains came. The job was done at 4:22 and the rain started at 4:30. I used Pennzoil Platinum 5W-30, a new crush washer for the drain plug and an Amzoil EA15K13 filter. These things are getting pricey - the filter was $28.95 with a core charge of $0.50 and $3.83 tax bringing the total to $33.28, all in Canadian dollars. I have a lazy man's way of jacking up the car - I use the stock jack with a 3/4 inch impact socket and an impact wrench. Up and down happens fast. The plug for the sump was tight so I used the impact wrench to loosen it and it immediately almost came out. I couldn't drop it to move the draintainer back into position, so I tightened it again, moved the draintainer back and used a socket to remove the drain plug which was now loose. That could have been a flood of epic proportions. I can feel the difference - the throttle opening that I was used to for maintaining a steady speed now gave me a bit of acceleration and you could back off and it would just glide seemingly forever. All in all, well worth it and I have a 350 km round trip to make on Saturday (210 miles), so fresh oil will be a great idea, as well as the fact that we have two days of rain coming followed by a drop to sub-freezing temperatures.

What does it do to oxygen sensors? I see no evidence that proves it will not clog or poison them. Back in the days of carburetion, people used to clean the engine internals by pouring a limited stream of water down the carb with the engine fully warmed up and hoping that it would turn to steam and blast particles out of the combustion chamber. Before catalysts, sensors and turbochargers, it was a useful process.

Some oil filters like NAPA WIX filters are noted for unscrewing themselves because they hang down. I had this at my last oil change and I switched to an Amzoil filter. Pricey, but no leaks. The synthetic oil issue was solved some time ago. The polyalphaolefin content in synthetic oils tends to shrink the seals. To counteract that, esters were added to swell the seals so that no change occurred in seal dimensions. When the API-SN versions of oil came out, additional esters were added to keep leaks at bay by swelling the seals more than necessary.

A farmer in Yorkshire sees a bloke drinking from his stream and shouts, "Ey up cock! Tha dun wana be drinkin watter from theer! It's full o' horse pee an cow pat!" The bloke says, "Sorry mate, I'm from London. Can you speak a bit slower please?" The farmer replies slowly, "If you use both hands you won't spill any!"

I would consider connecting the oil pressure switch to a relay that closes the circuit when the switch is off so the sensor runs only when switched power is on and the engine has started and it distinguishes that state from turning on the ignition to put the windows up or run the radio or set the clock. If you have an oil pressure gauge, you don't need any other function from the idiot light but if you only have the idiot light, this will still work.

As well as the long bolt method of removing bushings, a lot of people simply use a vise or a C-clamp along with different size sockets to drive bushings out or in. A press is nice in a production environment but not necessary.

You can find plenty of videos about this on youtube. The level of difficulty depends on how rusted the bolts are. From what you are saying, it would be fairly easy on the front with a few more things to install on the rear but if you have a press, it goes like this: You don't actually need a press - there is a long bolt method where you use a socket on one end that is big enough to grab the outer rim of the bushing and on the other end that is big enough to let the entire bushing pass through and with a long bolt and strategically placed washers, you just put a nut on the bolt and screw it together until it drives the bushing out of one end. Reassembly works the same way but urethane bushings go together easier because only light pressure (sometimes thumb pressure) is needed to install them. It can be a long job but if you do one corner at a time, you can keep the down time to a few hours (on four separate occasions). Do yourself a favour and blast the bolts with penetrating oil a day before you start then just as you start. You may need heat to get the bolts off.

Carrying on with the grounding discussion, I used to have a 1993 Impreza (first year of production and mine was the third Impreza to come into Canada). I checked grounding and it seemed it could be better, so I added ground wiring. The result was a wonderful improvement once - then the learning feature of the ECU took over, it was back to how it originally ran. I would still consider doing it even though I haven't done it on my car because ground problems may show up over time due to corrosion and poor grounding can make some tuning problems and CEL's show up that cannot be fixed without adding better grounding.

After 10 years, the Irish wife started to think their kid looked kinda strange, so she decided to do a DNA test. She found out that the child was actually from completely different parents. Wife: Honey, I have something very serious to tell you. Husband: What's up ? Wife: According to DNA test results, this is not our kid... Husband: Well you don't remember, do you ?? When we were leaving the hospital, you noticed that our baby had pooped its diaper; then you said: Please go change the baby, I'll wait for you here. So I went inside, got a clean one and left the dirty one there. Moral: Never give a man a job for which he is not qualified.

New tires today - General Altimax RT43 and definitely they feel better than the old Michelins. I am looking forward to seeing how well they do in wet weather and around here, April showers bring May showers bring June showers so I shouldn't have to wait long. I am also looking forward to not having to fire up my 15 gallon compressor every few days to bring the right front tire back up to pressure. My car is not a turbo so it has the stock 205/55-16 wheels and tires. Every time I have gotten new tires before, they felt quite "floaty" until some of the tread wore off. These have none of that sensation - they feel ready for anything right now.

A lot of what some people feel is "warped rotors" is actually variations in the deposition of brake material from the pads to the rotor. The brakes work by friction between the pad and deposited pad material on the rotor, that is why you have a bedding-in process where you start from low speeds and brake gently but only down to about 20 mph the first ten times or so. If it feels like that is the problem, take a light bit of material off with fine sandpaper and repeat the bedding-in process. If there isn't a procedure on the instruction sheet for the pads, start with light application of brakes from 40 mph down to twenty, the light application so the material deposits evenly. Progress to higher speeds and braking down to 10 mph after that then your brakes are ready and should not be uneven. If there is still a problem, make sure you have applied the high-temperature brake pad lube without it getting one the pad faces and make sure you have cleaned the sliding surfaces properly if you are reusing the old stainless sliders on the caliper.