Ronald the Crappy Miata

Went out for a social distancing drive.. it was just what I needed...

With great lighting from the sunset. You can see how the fender actually blends in not terribly. 

Still can't get over how good this rear 3/4 view is.. yeah if you look hard enough you can see the paint issues on the door.. but the rear of the car still has REALLY good clear coat... Which I'm kinda amazed by. 

I finally fixed the vinyl strip at the top of the windshield frame today. 

the one Seth put on got ruined by small hail back in January. 

I've had this red fake carbon vinyl for years, a buddy gave it to me for free. 

I didn't have good scissors available so i cut it VERY BADLY with the scissors on my leatherman. 


ugly but effective.. 

when it's my turn to get ronald i'm painting the fender silver again

So I fired the car up today to tighten the belts because they started to squeal now that the temps are up a bit form the last time I adjusted them. 

I noticed that the crank pulley has a wobble. 

just the pulley, the center bolt shows no wobble. 

So based upon my research online, i need to look at replacing the harmonic damper, which is the pulley itself right? 

correct

So, continued research shows that it looks like the balancer comes off by just lossening the 4 bolts and then sliding it off. the crank nose bolt doesn't need to be touched. 

can anyone check my research here. 

Ronald is a 94 Miata with the 1.8 for anyone who's not aware. 

Yes, the balancer is held on with 4 small bolts. It's relatively common for them to go bad (balancers, not bolts). 

In reply to cmcgregor (Forum Supporter) :

perfect. 

i'll get a new one ordered. 

thanks for the help. 

I recently replaced mine. This is for a 1.6, but they're basically the same. The outer ring slips - notice the timing notch on the new one is at about 4 o'clock, while the old one is at 1:30. They're sitting on the bench in the same orientation  

In reply to cmcgregor (Forum Supporter) :

I was trying to figure out how the timing worked. I've not looked at the front of this motor much. Just my 99 and i knew this one was a bit different. 

So did you just clock the pulley 90 degrees to compensate for the different timing mark when you installed it then? 

I had put a new mark on the old one at TDC when I did my timing belt - at the time, I didn't know about the pulleys failing in this way. There's an alignment pin so it only goes on in one orientation. I bet if you put a timing light on yours now you won't even be able to see the notch - it's just a visual aid for setting timing, all of the control happens in the CAS. 

In reply to cmcgregor (Forum Supporter) :

gotcha, nobody mentioned it online, so I wondered if the computer might just compensate on its own. 

glad to know that is the case. 

i'm getting the parts ordered now. will dig into it this weekend. 

So Ronald is all I have right now for reliable transportation. 

last night was supposed to be BAD weather, and in parts of DFW it was, winds over 70mph and quarter size hail. 

and one of my buddies in Ft Worth got nailed in the morning with an earlier storm. so i was even more on edge.



So as I stared down this radar map... I decided to go take ronald to a nearby parking garage for a while to ride out the storm. 

No hail ended up in my area.. but it was just easier to be safe and paranoid. 
 

Today though, i caught a stroke of luck, my new crank pulley arrived today a day early. 

Decided to dive in and see how it would go by taking my time. 

Amazingly... i was beyond lucky.. 

the 4 pulley bolts came out without an issue. 

Bolts had no corossion down in the threads.... a stroke of luck i needed right now. 

 old vs new pulley

And here's the new pulley in.. 

took my time and the swap and belt tightening took less than 2 hours... 

Fired it up and I had left the AC and PS belt a bit loose. 

tightened that up and it's happy as can be. but I am hearing what appears to be a bad bearing from the alternator.. so i'll need to keep an eye on that. 

Nice! Looks like that was due. 

cmcgregor (Forum Supporter) said:

Nice! Looks like that was due. 

a vast vast understatment... 

The other box of rock auto shipment arrived today. 

New pedal covers and outer tie rod ends. 

Tie rod ends are an eventually thing. 

Just a little nice touch to make the car a bit nicer. 

Annnnnd had enough time and daylight and available roommate to help to do seafoam upper intake service and plugs. 

It was definitely time for plugs.. 

I went out today in Ronald and really got after the throttle... OH MAN... There's definitely a power increase since i did the carbon service and plug change. 

Be careful ... you might end up “over improving” Ronald !

In reply to spacecadet (Forum Supporter) :

Placebo effect is real! lol

bobzilla said:

In reply to spacecadet (Forum Supporter) :

Placebo effect is real! lol

I was just gonna say that if his butt dyno picked up that, he needs faster cars.

no, normally when i rev'd the miata out it never felt like it was making any more power once you hit the power bump between 3 and 4k rpm. but that's not the case now.. now it feels like it's pulling harder up to 7k rpm. 

 

So stuff happened the past few days. 

As I'm out running back from the Honda dealer with parts i pulled up behind and to the side of a van turning left.... This was 50yds from my house.. 

The van was pulled out to turn left so i was pulled up close behind and canted to the right to make the right after he pulled out.. 

Well once i come to a stop the drive throws the van in reverse and i can't hit the horn fast enough and he backs into Ronald... 

Into the goddamn good fender.. 

old man gets out in a dealership uniform...... It's a service customer shuttle van for a local dealer... 

Claims if we call his boss he's immediately fired.. which i was inclined to believe. 

So he offered to hand me some cash to just go on my way.  So i did... And then popped the dent back out most of the way today.. 

which brings us to why is the car up up in the air.. 

well i FINALLY found the popping.. it's the front eccentric bolt on the driver side. It wasn't tight. I only find this after I've unbolted the sway bar on both sides and gotten the shock loose and the ABS sensor loose..... instead of just putting a wrench on it before i took things apart... berkeley. 

​​​​​

​​​​​So i bolted everything back together so i could identify if the bolt was the issue or not. Sure enough noise is gone immediately. 

job done! 

oh and i changed the oil yesterday to get any residual carbon cleanup stuff in the oil out of the car.. 

I spy a front shock tower brace that used to began life on my car before I did the engine swap and supercharger kit.