Meet Moss and Roy

A few weeks ago (May 5) Roy was backed into by an SUV (not so shocking, is it?!?!) while in a parking lot.  Long story short – our insurance companies decided on 50/50 liability because determination of who backed up first or who initiated the accident was not determinable.  I was pretty bummed and felt that it even if I saw the SUV backing up what more could I have done to prevent it? The driver of the SUV admitted to me that she didn’t see me when she was backing up; therefore, if I stopped or moved forward/backward Roy would have still gotten dinged.

I was distraught at the time of the accident and this tarnished my clean driving/accident-free record! After a few days of having Roy just sit in the garage and not looking at the damages, I had the other insurance’s estimater come out and the damage didn’t seem as bad anymore.  Here are some snaps of what happened when an SUV backs into a Miata.  And FYI – the SUV sustained literally NO damage to its bumper.

Yep, nothing to see here…

Left rear quarter panel.

Such a clean car (was!).

The lip of the fender(?) was bent outward so it was making contact with the tire when driving home.  Luckily, I didn’t need a tow because I was able to “roll” it back up a little bit.  Today, I changed back to the stock BBS wheels and no rubbing driving around the block, so now I can drive him to local bodyshops to get an estimate.  The estimater said that the dents can probably be pulled out and then the panel would have to be repainted.  Let’s hope that’s all I really need done.

My lesson that I learned – don’t park close to the entrance because that’s where all the idiots park.

Yesterday, I went back to Pro Tech to pick up the hardtop after having it repainted a second time (yeesh!).  I spoke with Anthony on Friday to meet at 10am; well, on Saturday he thought we agreed on 11am and waiting at a shop that’s next to Recology (aka garbage disposal) is not very pleasant.

Got the car home and I decided to detail Roy’s exterior with help from Justin.  Clay bar, swirl remover, polish, wax…all done in about 5 hours (yikes!).

Here is Roy’s before – swirl marks all over and lackluster black paint:

Spot check with the swirl remover – what a difference!

This is a snap of the trunk after some of the swirl remover was wiped off – like a mirror, the garage is reflecting off Roy.

Reflection of Moss on Roy’s rear panel.

About 1/3 complete.

The day went dark and we finally finished; unfortunately, I couldn’t take a better finale picture since it was too dark and was raining practically all day today.  I really like how the hardtop looks! We’re almost ready for Laguna Seca.

Thanks Justin for helping~

I just ordered these lovelies -

I’ll be picking these up at the event next week! I’ve been dying to get these and I don’t know why I’ve taken so long to order them, but this is such a cheap mod while improving the stiffness of the car noticeably.  From Flyin’ Miata’s website – “These braces slide over the factory frame rails and stiffen the car dramatically.” Sounds good to me.

Look for the installation and results in a couple weeks =)!

In an attempt to spiffy up Roy for the upcoming event I decided to have some cosmetic changes done – repaint the hardtop and front bumper.  Originally, the hardtop was Montego Blue and while it was an okay match at night, during the daylight the blue-green was quite the contrast to the rest of the car.  I settled on having the hardtop repainted with Sparkling Black Mica (color code 35N), a black with gold metallic flakes; this color is found on some of Mazda’s cars, such as the RX-8, Mazda 6, and CX-9.  As Justin put it – I was staying within the family.  For the bumper, I stayed with Brilliant Black and waived to keep the holes for the emblem.

I took Roy to ProTech, managed by Anthony, to have the work done.

Here is the new Roy:

From a distance the hardtop looks pretty swell and acceptable, the subtlety of the gold metallic flakes and lighter black is a nice balance and I think stands out well.  With that being said, getting up close, I noticed some imperfections with the paint /sad face.  I think having rushed the job and not giving enough time for the paint to completely harden and dry led to a quarter-sized burn in the paint and swirl marks from having the hardtop polished.  As a courtesy, Anthony had asked me if I wanted it polished and I agreed not knowing that the painted needed more time to dry! So off to Pro Tech to have the paint re-done!! Argh.  At least I still have about 1 week before the big weekend and that should give enough time for the paint to dry.

On the other hand, the bumper looks so much better with a decent paint job.  I’m not sure what happened with the previous owners, but a shitty job was done and the paint never really matched the body and an unsightly “pig nose” where the emblem was.  I opted to not have the Garage Vary front lip painted – would it look cleaner if it was painted?

Unfortunately, this past weekend I took a drive down to Davenport and the bumper collected a bunch of bugs…there goes a brand new bumper! Hopefully this doesn’t affect the paint too much since I think the paint hadn’t completely hardened/dried – I might have embedded bugs…boooo!

Well, here’s hoping that 2nd time is a charm and the Sparkling Black Mica is perfect!

My inspiration:

(Silver hardtop with metallic flakes)

Today was a highly productive day – firstly, I want to thank Brian and Justin for helping and doing most of the dirty work; it’s always nice to have competent pals .  Roy and I are very appreciative of your help and glad that nothing broke or went wrong! Cheers!

The agenda was to install new front brake pads, coilovers, and wheels.  Sounds like a big day of sweat, blood, and tears – doesn’t it? I guess the perk of having people who know what they’re doing (ya know, doin’ it right) is that things will get done quickly.  I would say from start to finish it took less than three hours and this was done without air-tools! Again, the nice thing was that nothing broke!  I was stuck with doing the easy stuff like jacking up the car, removing and replacing the wheels, removing nuts and bolts…I think that was it (hah!) – even though my tasks were simple in comparison, I learned and gained a little bit more experience with working on my own car…plus the satisfaction that it was all done at home.

Before Brian arrived I put Roy on jack stands using a brand new rapid pump low-profile jack from Harbor Freight.  Just a quick review of the jack – at 45lbs this thing was heavy lifting out of the box, but maneuvering it around the garage was really easy.  Our older Craftsman jack could really only go forward and back then to have it go sideways we kind of had to drag it left and right.  With the HF jack, it glided really easily back and forth as well as side to side…it really didn’t feel like 45lbs once it was settled on the ground.  Overall, it has a very sturdy and reliable feel to it.  The pumping wasn’t exactly effortless, but each pump got the car higher quicker.

Here’s a snap of Roy teetering on the stands.  This made me really nervous.  What if one of the stands failed?!

Moving on – Justin and I decided to install new brake pads for the front.  The pads that I used were the Performance Ceramic by Hawk.  I didn’t lend a hand for this, but it must be an easy process if it was done quickly even before I could ask about the status of it.

These are the original brake pads – they look like they’ve got a lot of meat left! However, the Hawk pads are so much more responsive and braking feels a lot more solid now.  I’m a lot happier now with how the braking feels much more secure and reliable (this is coming from a person who has nightmares of not being able to stop >_<).

Once Brian arrived, the real dirty work began…

I was assigned to remove the nuts from the trunk and rear shocks. Here you can see the Bilstein shock.

I was told that the bushings were in pretty bad condition, along with the dust boot and the spider webs -__-;. A few months back I bought a set of bump stops and dust boot for these guys, I may just replace the old with the new since they’re off the car and incase I want to put them back on Roy.

Tein Flex coilovers on! Now time to put the goodies on…

RS Watanabe 15×6.5 front 15×7 rear +35 (I think…).

I think I want the ride height a little bit lower and he would look perfect.  What do you think? Like? Hate? Ricer? Awesome?