Carb Clean-up

Before

The carburetors on the bike were in serious need of some attention.  As you can see, they were rather badly weathered and gummed up.

Before

I started by soaking the carbs in a bucket of Simple Green and water, which did wonders.  I then followed the instructions in my handy manual and rebuilt the first one several months ago.  It wasn't as bad as I expected it to be, but there were definitely a lot of small pieces to keep track of.  Since it was my first carb, I didn't want to get distracted by taking pictures, so I planned to get these blog photos when I did the second one.

Unfortunately, the idea of going through the second carb wasn't very appealing, so it sat untouched until today.

Unlike when I did the first carb, I set up a nice work area.

I then applied penetrating oil to all the bits that were to be unscrewed.  This is a very important step.

This is the view when the float bowl is removed.

And without the float.  You can see (from bottom to top) the needle valve, main jet, idle jet and mixture adjustment.  All of these were removed and painstakingly cleaned.  The mixture adjustment has to be returned to the same position it was in.

Here's the cap and diaphragm removed.  The needle must be cleaned and returned to the correct position.  I have new diaphragms, but the old ones were intact, so I held off on replacing them.

This is the choke (center) and throttle assembly (left).  Notice the rust.

Here's the choke housing removed.

This is what it looked like fully disassembled.  I took every one of these parts and cleaned them as well as possible.

I was prepared for this project with a carburetor rebuild kit.  It includes gaskets, o-rings and new diaphragms.

 Here's the difference between the old and new o-ring.

After cleaning and or sanding all the bits, I put it all back together again, and it looked like this.

After

After

You will notice the choke cable holder on this cap it a little crushed.  That happened when the carb fell off the storage shelf.  It was very unfortunate.  I'm going to try to salvage it, but I might have to buy a new cap.

Shattered Speakers

The Miata's stock seats have speakers in the headrest, however, the pair in our passenger seat were not sounding too healthy.  They just kind of rattled.  When I peeled back the upholstery (made easy with a zipper) it was clear why the sound wasn't very good.  The speakers were completely shot.

I snipped the wires and pulled them out.

Here's what they look like outside the car.  Weight savings:  10.5 oz

Holey Hose

The hose on our wedding vacuum cleaner developed a large slit.  I secured the two ribs adjoining the slit with a piece of wire and sealed everything up with some duct tape.  We'll see how well it holds.

Futile Fan

During my headlight removal (more on that later), I discovered one of the two electric fans mounted to the radiator (passenger side) was mostly for the air conditioning, so I didn't think I needed it any more.  This discovery came about due to two large relays that were mounted to the headlight.  It took a pretty deep dive into the wiring diagram to figure everything out.

Mystery Relays

Here's the fan from below.  I also removed two of the elbows you can see.

I hope you appreciate this photo, because getting below the car is not a trivial task.

Here's what I pulled out.  Weight savings:  3 lb, 1.7 oz.

I had to disconnect the coolant hose and remove the intake tube to get the fan out.

 And here is the final product.

Trespassing for Tree Trimming

These are some of the worst things in the world.  They are dropped by our neighbors tree onto our patio, and they hurt even more than Legos when you step on them barefoot.  Something had to be done.

It turns out that something was reaching over the fence and cutting off the branch that most protruded into our yard.  Here's the before and after.

Before

After

Drawer Drama

Before

The drawer on Chrissy's desk decided it didn't want to be one piece anymore, so I had to take action.  It was held together by a couple plastic brackets, which had snapped.  I bought some small metal "L" brackets to replace them.  Amazingly, I was able to use the same holes and half the original hardware.  The other half I replaced with stainless steel pieces.

After

After

Crappy Case

I bought this case on Amazon for my new (used) cell phone.  When it arrived it was not what I expected.  It was much thicker than necessary, and also thicker than the product photo indicated it would be.  There was no thickness listed, so I was forced to rely on the photo for an estimate.

Here's an image that illustrates the problem.  I spliced together a picture of my case and the product photo from Amazon, scaling everything correctly.

 As you can see, there is a significant difference between the picture and reality.

I contacted the 3rd party seller and they offered a refund or exchange for a slimmer model, but I would have to pay for return shipping, and deal with going to the post office.  For a $8 case, it's not worth it.
I felt they should cover everything since they misrepresented their product, but they disagreed, and I didn't feel like fighting.  I took matters into my own hands instead.
The case was too thick, so I made it thinner.

Before

After