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build diary August 14, 2006: I was wrong about the name of the series. I took the Seven out this weekend to show it to my friend Werner from Germany. He's very familiar with my long-term obsession with these little cars and he's a fan of small, light cars. I wanted him to get a good idea of what the car was like so we headed out to the track near the end of the day. It usually gets pretty quiet at that point in the day, and with a little sweet talking we had the track to ourselves. It was good fun, running both forwards and backwards around the track. It's the first time I've ridden shotgun in the car with a quick driver and it's a pretty interesting experience. Also in the "interesting" category was the throttle sticking open twice when Werner was driving. No harm done, but it was odd. I've only had that happen once before when part of the mechanism was binding. That piece has been removed, however, and it's not shown any signs of similar problems before. I found a small cotterpin that seemed to be hanging up if you moved the throttles just right so hopefully the problem is gone. After a few "sessions", the car started showing a high idle and blowing some oil smoke when starting from a stop. Hang on, I've seen this before. I pulled the PCV valve out and it was broken and hollowed out - the exact same problem that I'd seen in Texas! This is truly bizarre, as we've never seen one of these break in a Miata and now I've done it twice in two months. Is it the heat? Unlikely, as turbo Miatas do a pretty good job at generating heat. Vibration? Possibly. Physical contact with something? I don't think so, as the valve goes into a baffled part of the valve cover and that's all stock. Annoying? Oh yes. I've replaced it with a brand new Mazda part intended for the 323 GTX so there shouldn't be any question of reliability now. We'll see what happens at the Open House. The Flyin' Miata Westfield now has a website. It might look familiar if you know this one! I'll be helping to build this one. We'll see what there is to learn from a "professional" kit. entry 1277 of 1439 |