Hard to believe that it’s already been almost 3 months since the last update on Roadster. As much as I’d like to say that a lot of progress has been made in autocross preparations since then, it really hasn’t. Life has just gotten in the way lately, as it does at times. That’s not to say that all of the news with this project is necessarily bad though, not at all. It’s a project that progresses in short bursts rather than constant progress.
Between graduate school, 12 hours of Sebring, Firestone Grand Prix, a week in Texas, and a few photo jobs, it has been a very busy few months. There hasn’t been much time to devote to my little red friend. But it’s nothing to be sad or bitter about. The busyness has been fulfilling.
In the times when I have been home and not chained to the laptop, I have been seeing more of the view above, the view from the driver’s seat. And really, that’s the view I prefer over the one where it was sitting in the garage all day with the hood up, as was the case for last year’s SOTU article about this car. It’s been nothing but fun short trips with the top down. It’s also been some fun but short high-rpm runs just to blow off steam late at night on an empty road, just me and Roadster. The top literally does not go up right now. It was covered in dust the last time it was extended. With it parked in the garage, it’s just easier to leave it down, ready to go for a spin whenever the weather isn’t boiling.
Speaking of boiling, everything within the area that I drive is fortunately within a 20 minute drive away. It’s enough to get up to temperature and make a few high rpm runs, but usually not long enough to get uncomfortable with the lack of working air conditioning. On the rare occasions that I have been stuck in rush hour traffic, however, a little bit of a cooling issue has shown up. It usually only occurs if I’m driving it over 5000 rpm and then get stuck at an unusually long red light. This normally would indicate a faulty cooling fan, but months ago I confirmed that at least the temperature-triggered fan does work. The AC fan is not working, presumably because the rest of it isn’t working at this time. The AC needs a couple of parts replaced and a full refill of refrigerant. Once that is repaired, the fan will hopefully resume working again, since it can be jumped on with a paper clip.
Despite the air conditioning being incapable of working in it’s current condition, a few weeks ago I found a guy on miata.net with the same year Miata, selling his entire AC system for roughly half the price of what the parts would normally cost, even on a discount parts site, since he was turning his car into a track car. Considering both the evaporator and condenser were bad when the system was last checked over a year ago, I jumped on it and also went ahead and had them send their working compressor and all of the lines. The evaporator and condenser have to be changed before the compressor can be checked anyway, and now I have a back up in case the one that’s in there ends up being dead.
The rough idle, which I mentioned last time, remains even after I cleaned the idle air control valve, so I’ll need to find the time to clean out the intake manifold. That along with that disassembled passenger side mirror, are at least not affecting the car’s ability to stay running so they’re not being given as much priority for now.

The only thing needed now is the time to work on it. That should get easier as I won’t be taking classes this summer. In the next week, I plan to obtain the long reach needle nose pliers, bleed a little and swear a lot as I finally tackle changing all of the coolant hoses. I’ll flush the heater core while I’m at it. That could be a potential bottleneck for coolant flow if it’s plugged up with crud. There is a slight scent of coolant that can be smelled through the AC at high rpm which could either be a small hose leak that only opens with increased pressure, or a small leak in the heater core. We’ll start with the hoses, since we already have them and they’re already a known weak point in the system after the oil cooler died last year.
To sum it up, things continue to improve with this project. It’s getting driven now more than ever. I just can’t wait to route out this cooling issue and fix the AC so that it can go on some longer drives in comfort and finally dodge some cones.
Photo Copyright 2015 Hooniverse/Bryce Womeldurf