Still no word from the seller of the seats. I'll give it a couple more days before I email him again and then it's time for an eBay dispute. What happened to just trying to be reasonable and work with a buyer?
On much more positive news, the first batch of FM suspension is supposed to arrive tomorrow 
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Big parcel arrived . Should give me something to do for the weekend!
Parts run didn’t quite go as planned. The pair of cloth NB2 seats a breaker in CA said they had in stock turned into a pair of NB1 seats and multiple NB2 passenger seats.
Ah well, at least I now have a complete NB2 passenger seat in better shape and a passenger side front turn signal.
Little bit of a catch up post. More parts have been arriving recently, including a new radio mount/radio surround. Test fitting it showed that the top mount plates of it cover part of the holes that the tombstone's side clips snap into so I have to get the Dremel out. I vaguely recall that I ran into the same problem with the previous Miata build also. But at least this time the gauges fit!
I also had a little spare time last night to work on the dash. As shown on the previous page, the black paint on the top had turned into a gooey mess and needed stripping off. Acetone on its own didn't do the job, but then I remembered someone in a Youtube video mentioning the use of brake fluid (because it strips the paint and leaves the plastic alone). Fortunately I had some brake fluid that I've been meaning to recycle, so it got partially recycled as paint stripper:
After a bunch of scrubbing and a final wipe down with acetone, the dash looked pretty presentable. It still needs some additional detail work before I can think about recovering it, but at least it doesn't stick to everything styrofoam peanut in sight.
I also have a yard of 58" wide Ultrasuede on the way to recover the dash. I'm also tempted to recover the A-pillar covers - some people suggest that removing them makes the dash removal easier, so that might be a simple case of "while I'm in there".
Spent some time putting the FM suspension together today. I had all new components (shocks, springs, bump stops and top mounts) so I could assemble the suspension without pulling the old shocks off the car first. Plus, the suspension being less complex - well, fewer parts - than the NB one I had on my last NA made things so easy that I forgot to take pictures.
Rears went together even without a spring compressor. Well, they did once I realised that I had managed to box up the front springs with the rear shocks and vice versa when I had been checking over the contents of the boxes. Oops. Note to self, there might be a reason that the springs have words like "front" and "rear" printed on them.
For the front ones I pulled out my proper professional spring compressors. They're clearly _not_ designed for Miatas, though:
Yeah, that's not going to work. Fortunately the front springs didn't need a lot of compressing either, so I channeled the spirit of Dorifto Salaryman and, well, used zip ties. Don't do this at home, kids. But it worked.
This of course left me with the problem of trying to do up the shaft nut to somewhere near 10 ft/lbs, but there's a separate thread for that. Put the suspension aside at this point as I have to maneuver the car into the other garage we have so I can jack it up and swap out the struts, but it's way too hot for that today.
Instead I figured I'll have a poke around the eBay seats (no, I still haven't heard from the seller) to see if I had enough parts to at least put together one seats. Turns out I did - well, most of the parts at least, the cover for the adjuster handle didn't make it but at least I have the bolts to put both halves of the seat together. So I did, again not with pictures but I now have two seats that at least match in shape in the car, and the driver's seat is even bolted down after I swapped rails.
I also finally bit the bullet and drilled a big enough hole in the door so I could mount the Raydot mirror on the driver's side. It's certainly grown on me and I've decided I do like it (which may or may not have anything to do with the originally planned Craftsquare mirrors being about five times what I paid for the pair of Raydots). I'm not super happy with the way the rubber gasket fits so I will end up redoing it, but overall, I think it looks good:
Plan for tomorrow is to start recovering the dashboard. The black Ultrasuede (aka Alcantara with a Japanese accent) arrived on Friday and I think it'll look good on the dash. Plus I do have enough material to wrap the three panels that make up the windshield surround. Not sure if I also have enough to cover the gauge hood. I'll probably do the dash first, and see how I like before I start wrapping everything in sight.
Recovering the dashboard ended up being delayed, we'll get to that shortly as I actually started doing that today.
First, time to catch up. I fitted the suspension last weekend. Not much to write about that, it's all pretty well documented.
I clearly still haven't eaten enough donuts yet as I wasn't able to push down the rear suspension enough to insert the newly assembled Konis. The fact that they did need more clearance at the top didn't help - the top suspension bushing was pretty badly collapsed as one would expect for stock suspension from 1989.
I ended up doing what I did on my last Miata - unbolt the upper arm at the knuckle, slot in the strut, lift the lower arm with a jack and slide the bolt back in. Fronts went in without a hitch as I had to remove the sway bar anyway so I could put the FM on in. We have FM suspension:
Unfortunately, while I had the undertray off I also noticed that the front main seal appears to be leaking quite a bit. That's annoying as the timing belt had been replaced about 6k miles ago so it would have been a lot easier to replace the seal at that time. There's also fair amount of oil over the back of the engine, but I haven't figured out where that came from. I'm hoping it's not both seals because if I have to either pull the motor or the transmission to address the leaks, I can pretty much guarantee that it won't be a 1.6 that's going back in.
Anyway, after tightening the suspension with the car on all four wheels again, I drove it to pick up some dinner. First impressions - other than "this needs a foamectomy, badly" - were pretty good. There are some rattles over rough-ish surfaces but I suspect they're coming from the dash and not the suspension. The suspension does feel good, let's see what it feels like have I put a few miles on it. And an alignment - it was out before I swapped out the suspension and oddly enough putting the new suspension on didn't fix the alignment 
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Oh, and when I came back from getting dinner, I noticed a somewhat odd noise I hadn't noticed before. Sounds like it's coming from the front of the engine and it awfully sounds like it's the waterpump. I'll try to record a short video when I have it running next.
Bunch of actual updates are coming, but I had to choose between wrenching time and some last minute fixes, or updating the thread.
The car and I are on the way to Laguna Seca for Miatas at Laguna Seca, with a stop at a customer site on the way. Some of my colleagues wonder why I like to drive to the Bay Area rather than fly:
Dashboard upholstery is still work in progress and i didn't get the interior spruced up like I wanted to, but at least it now has a roll bar (fitted with some added CAD in honor of Project Binky), a working head unit, new tires and new brakes. It's also slower than a three legged dog (are stock 1.6L really that slow?), although the Italian tuneup through the mountains appears to have helped. Alignment has a bit too much toe in at the back - my usual alignment guy isn't taking new work as it looks like the owner is shutting down the shop, so I had to take it to a local tire place and they couldn't get the camber and toe adjusted to FM fast road specs - and it occasionally flicks its tail a bit, but it feels good overall.
Heck, I even don't mind the Hawk Street/Race pads on this one (only pads I could get quickly enough), and I didn't like those much on the RX8 for street driving.
Let's hope it'll hold together OK on the weekend as I need to drive from Monterey straight to my next customer engagement and would prefer not to have to take a rental all of a sudden.
Looking at the picture of the sideview mirror, could the plate that sits between the bolt head and the rubber be on upside down? It seems off when I look at it
Enjoy! I'm hoping to get down there for Sunday, hopefully I'll run into you.
boyleged said:Looking at the picture of the sideview mirror, could the plate that sits between the bolt head and the rubber be on upside down? It seems off when I look at it
The plate isn't symmetrical, but it is fitted the correct way. The problem is that the rubber gasket underneath it is symmetrical and then the whole thing looks off.
cmcgregor said:Enjoy! I'm hoping to get down there for Sunday, hopefully I'll run into you.
Cool, always happy to hang out with fellow GRMers. I'll only be there for part of the day on Sunday though as I have to drive a few hours Sunday afternoon.
Well, it held together until the last session of Saturday, when one of the small coolant hoses around the throttle body blew. Thanks to a fellow driver waving frantically, I (hopefully) stopped in time as I ended up having to drop about 3qts of water into the radiator once it had cooled.
Cue frantic calling of tow trucks, rental car companies and all that jazz. It's now sitting at the Mazda dealer in Seaside and I hope they can fix it before pass through Monterey coming up from SoCal.
At least I got to meet cmcgregor on Sunday morning while waiting for the tow truck to arrive (waves).
Spoke to the dealer un Monday, they're hoping to fit it in for diagnosis and repair this week as they get to keep it until early October if they don't. I'll follow up with them tomorrow and see where they are in the process, so I can figure out if I need to make yet more alternative arrangements to hopefully make it home on Friday.
Guess I should have spent a bit more time testing the car 
. I'm mainly mad at myself because I was seriously considering skipping the event , but I haven't really been on the track for two years and really wanted to go. Combining it with a work trip only makes me feel extra stupid.
Sorry to hear about your car trouble, but I'm glad we got a chance to chat! Hopefully the dealer gets it sorted out quickly.
Thanks.
Unfortunately I'm a little underwhelmed so far with the dealer. I spoke to a service advisor first thing on Monday morning and my understanding of our conversation was that they would try and slot in the car Monday or Tuesday for diagnosis, let me know and get the parts for Wednesday or Thursday and get it done for Friday morning. And if they couldn't get it ready for Friday morning, let me know as early as possible in the week so I could make other arrangements.
After two days of complete radio silence I called them again yesterday, talked to a different service writer who wasn't really aware of much of this and/or couldn't find it in his notes. To his credit he got on it straight away and called me back three hours later with a quote and confirmed diagnosis, but now we're looking at possibly getting the car fixed for late Friday (assuming the parts get there by Friday), or not. And they won't be able to tell me until about mid-day on Friday so I can't make alternative arrangements until it's way too late. Needless to say, while I'm impressed with the "new" service writer trying to pull out all the stops, I'm a little miffed with the whole experience.
Now with some pictures above, too.
My experience with the Mazda dealer in Seaside really breaks into two parts - I obviously (see above) wasn't super happy with their communications, but on the other hand, they pulled out all the stops to get me on the road on Friday. As soon as the parts arrived on Friday, on of the mechanics got on the case and they got the car finished before I had even made it back to Monterey. Top marks for that!
Other things I learned driving the car back home:
Gratuitous shot of my NA in the mountains. For some reason I couldn't get my phone to do HDR, so the shot isn't that great. Oddly enough I have a similar shot in the same place of my Evo X from the day we picked it up probably about six years ago. Long time ago.
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