New Miata owner
Hi folks, well, I finally got my Miata. Been looking though the years and debating on what car to get and looking for the right deal. Though it's used with 95k miles it was a one owner car. It's a 1995.
The previous owner was on the old side and didn't beat it so it's in great condition and wonder upon wonder it has the orig. clutch. Good sign.
I love the car's handling, it's close to equal to my old 240Z (had that one built up pretty good and cleaned up on a lot of porche's on mountain roads) and the Miata has a bit of power. Enough for my use. Though I was supprised when I changed to a K&N Air filter and Bosch Irid. plugs I could swear it gave it another 5hp (just a rough guess but I could feel the difference).
Overall I'm real happy with it. the one bitch is the spark plug wires. The parts that fit down into the spark plug recess. The #4 wire has a hard time locking in and when I was driving it all of a sudden it started to miss but for just a few seconds. Being a new car it had me worried but I found that insert was loose and came out very easy and had water condenced in it.I think it was barely making contact with the spark plug top. I moved the wires around so the other wires weren't pushing up on it, it seems to fit tight and hopefully won't work loose. Is there any advice you can give me on this issue? Is there better plug wire's that fit very tight?
I also would like to change the 14" rims/tires to 15" or 16" and maybe put poly bushings on the swaybars. It has a little bit of sway to it, just enough that I would like to tighted this up a bit but not enough that I feel it needs larger sway bars.
Changed the oil over to Amsoil and that sure made the engine purr and got rid of any startup noise it had in the valve train area. It only made a few sec. noise with the dino oil the prev. owner had in it but most wear is in startup and as with my other audi that had lifter noise for 10sec. at startup changing to synthetic got rid of this too, love that, I've been running it in my Audi for a long long long time and it has 265K+ miles with no leakage and no oil burning so I got it in right away to the miata. Used it in my 240-280Z's when I owned them as well.
I've tried a lot of synthetics over the years and settled on this brand out of experience and research but I'm not putting down other brands, this is strictly a personal perference and I don't debate oil brands, that is a no win topic as far as I'm concerned like politics if you know what I mean? There are other very good brands out there.
Any other info anyone cares to give about these cars, like is there any good top treatments besides what the owner manual says to do with it would be good to hear. What is the lowest RPM to run the car at in general crusing. Would it cabon up the engine to run it at 2500RPM or is this ok for flat roads where I won't be putting my foot into the gas? I gen. shift around 4000 to 5000rpm with it. Any problem area's to watch for with these cars? I thought I read long ago that the coils gave some problems, is this true? Would it be a good idea to have a spare coil on hand? I know every car has it's area where they went cheap like the headlight switch and door handles with my audi, for such a nice car those parts are very cheaply built.
I think the headlights need to be replaced as a whole, not just the lamps? Is this true? Is there a good replacement that has replaceable bulbs that give good light? My night vision is very poor so this is a important area for me.
Would like to find a stock CD player for it, it came with a Casette deck, wow, never thought I'd see one of those again haha.... And for a 95 I thought they did away with casettes by then. I borrowed a friends home casette deck to make some tapes if I can find some blanks(they MUST still sell those I hope.. hahaha)... I may buy a new brand but if I can find a stock one that works good and installs easy (is this possible?) I may just go that route. I also need to find a service manual for the car. I hate to dig into the car without one.
I plan on keeping it stock for the most part. I like the way it sounds and don't care for loud performance mufflers, with Jap cars they just sound horrible for some reason but there may be a brand out there that has a deep tone that sounds better. Will keep a eye out on that topic. If only they could tune them to sound more like a ferrari instead of a broken chainsaw.
The performance for the type of car it is is just fine, it handles very good, could be better but for general country roads out where I live it's almost perfect. And once I get to know the car's quirks I'll really get into it.
Wellllll, that was quite a mouthfull there, I'm happy to join the Miata ranks and hope to get to know others with these cars as time goes on...
Have a good one folks..
Brandon Wallach
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