It was a good thing I made the detour to MT323’s in Louisiana. We decided that the valve cover was sufficiently bolted down that we didn’t change it, but did change the oil filler cap. That took care of most, but not all, of the remaining oil leak. There was a suspicious amount of oil in the intercooler; we decided to pretend it was normal for the moment.
More immediately concerning was the banging I’d been hearing from under the car. It turned out that the bolt connecting the emergency brake to the driver’s side rear caliper had backed out completely and the whole e-brake assembly was just bouncing around back there. That could have been quite nasty. I must never, ever tell my mother all the ways I’ve almost killed myself in this car…
In perhaps my finest moment as a GTX mechanic, I selected from my stash two bolts of varying sizes in the right thread and pitch to replace the e-brake bolt. I suspected the first to be too short and the second to be too long, but had MT323 test them while I looked for one that would work. In less than sixty seconds, I’d located an acceptable replacement.
MT323 has many of the Mazdas I’d always wanted, including an early 80s GLC, the car I was looking for originally when I came across my first GTX. I could have happily spent a month playing with all those Mazdas under that shadetree!
The car squared away, MT and I talked Mazda until the wee hours. I finally got a few hours asleep; I was a mere 10 hours from Gainesville. My 2900+ mile test drive was soon to come to a close…
