Sharka

[★ revlimiter ★]

What could be going on here?


about 30 minutes later.


BOOM!

The silver powdercoat was an experiment. When I ordered the bar from Moti, I was pretty sure I wanted to try a color other than satin black. Moti offers all the colors of the rainbow for powdercoat and silver sounded like a fun experiment.

And it was, you know? Silver was fun. Gloss white would have been better. It would have matched the stripe. I would have still done what I’m gonna do in this post… but silver just wasn’t right.

The bar is (was) the only silver thing in Sharka’s interior. There’s polished highlights, but everything is pretty much black inside the office. The rollbar just didn’t match.


back at the paint shop.


8 minutes later - seats out, top off, seatbelts unbolted.


PAINTED!

I brought the rollbar back to Carmer’s Auto Body shop here in Albuquerque. They painted Sharka last year, and I had no doubt they would make the rollbar beautiful. I dropped the rollbar off…

The next day they called and said the rollbar was done. It took me another week to pick it up.

One day to prep, prime, and paint the bar.

The bar has 3 coats of montego and 5 coats of clear. That… should be enough. I hope. Rollbars get scratched up all the time. A million coats of clear might help.

Carmer’s also didn’t mind me coming by to re-install the rollbar in their shop. I love that shop. It feels like home to me. Getting to play there for a morning and put Sharka back together was wonderful.


Bar in place.


Perfect match!




This one is smudgy from hand prints carrying the bar and body shop dust.

THAT. That is what it should have been the whole time. Very OEM+. Perfect matching. Not too bright or at all out of place.

A million thanks to everyone who suggested this over the years. Geoff, Steve, Sarah, and all the names I’m forgetting.

And now for more pix of the same thing from slightly different angles. Sorry if it gets monotonous.


Interior buttoned up.


I love the light in the paint shop.


The money shot.


From the inside.


In the sun.

From the inside, it’s just what I wanted – dark. The montego paint does its trick and looks black when in the shadows. It looks REALLY glossy and deep, but… black.

From the outside? Dark. It doesn’t look like a very showy bar screaming “LOOK AT MEEE!!!!!!!!” in silver powdercoat. I mean, the whole car screams that constantly with the stripe and wheels. It didn’t need the rollbar to do it too.

And when the sunlight hits it? Angels sing. It’s immediately transformed into something very special.

Perfect. Just what I wanted. Thank you for the great paint job Ken!

But I’m not done. That bar needs padding. It also needs to look NICE. No more electrical tape rollbar covers. I need to make something pretty.

[★ revlimiter ★]

I miss the side stripes.

I think of them once in a while. The car is just so much less obnoxious without them. It was a lot of vinyl. Sharka is not fast enough to pull off that much vinyl, even with the turbo.

Plus, vinyl stripes wouldn't match the pearl flake paint on the main stripes...

Amazing write up and photos as always. Makes me want a headliner now.

Idk about the side stripes. There is nothing wrong with Sharka. 100% perfect car...but....Adam how come no side skirt? I sure you have perfectly good reason for never doing a side skirt such the Project G kit. I think something down there to cover the rockers helps all NA Miatas down there in a couple of ways, especially if they are lowered and have front and rear lips.

Just curious!

Side skirts just never seemed very... period correct? They seem too modern for the car. Typing that out, it sounds ridiculous... but that's how I've always felt about the side skirts. Maybe I'll catch the bug and install a set someday, but they don't seem right for Sharka at this point.

Plus, the car is kinda low, at least for where I live. I scrape everywhere anyway. Side skirts would make certain driveways I go over weekly be even less pleasant.

[oldgrayleather]

Great to finally see some pics on here (screen shotting IG and magnifying the shots just wasn't completely satisfying )

Your rollbar now looks even more delicious Adam, nicely done. I'm planning on going up to see Moti soon since I've neglected the lack of safety for too long (and SoCal drivers only seem to be getting worse ) Did you ever consider the six point GT3?

I've also been thinking about color options and for my smurf, matching is likely too much Mariner. Black is the most likely direction but curious if you have any other thoughts?

[★ revlimiter ★]

My 2nd choice was gloss black. Like a lot of gloss. Very gloss. But for my car, Montego does the same job but keeps it just a little more custom.

I considered door bars, but don't know how it would be to live with daily. And I wasn't sure if my little girl would enjoy climbing over them all the time or not.

[HarryB]

As said, montego is dark enough for it to work. BRG would work too (in a BRG car of course). Have considered it for mine, Strato blue would pop too much :/. Oh, and Sharka manages to look better than ever, every single time!

[Greasemonkey2000]

Definitely looks better color matched in this case! Wise choice Adam!

[— Phatmiata —]

I like this much better than the silver paint

[benpopham]

Sharka gets better and better, I have always thought your cage would look best colour matched.

I feel that roll cages always look best body colour. Something about them being bolted to the shell, being metal and part of the structure, it just makes sense to be the same colour.

Keep it up Adam, gives us all something to aim for

[— Madaboutmx5s —]

Adam, nice to see some updates on Sharka. Have to admit the roll bar looks better now so good job. Envious of your garage. Would love something like that.

[Airbrush1]

Bar looks great! I need to do something similar with the bar in my msm, but can't decide on a color!

[—Bryan—]

Personally, I'm not a fan of body color for a bar. This is very, very well executed, but I don't think I'd do it on my car. Having a pretty bright body color in my case is one reason why.

[★ revlimiter ★]

I posted these on CR a few months back. MR was down the day I was trying to post and I managed to not remember.


I wanted to move the steering wheel a little closer to me. I used a spacer for a bit, but it made the thin WB QR kinda difficult to mess with. I realize the spacer should have gone between the hub and QR... now... ha!

So I got this.





Works Bell Rapfix2 QR in black. It's a lot different than the thin QRS, but I like it a lot. Been using it for about 2 months now.







Why the captions and measurements? I did a huge QR shootout on my blog. 3 posts. Around 60 images and videos of each QR. Check it out if you're curious.

[★ revlimiter ★]

I kept mailing these out to customers (revlimiter.net sells Garage5 parts, you know) and was drooling. I decided to add a set to Sharka and see how I liked them.



Somehow, in 16 years of Miata life, I’ve never had a set of needle caps on Sharka.

George’s needle caps are a pressure fit. And let me tell you, they’re a VERY tight fit. I test fitted one of these caps onto a spare gauge needle a couple weeks ago. It basically fused itself to the cap. It took quite a bit of work to separate that needle and the G5 cap attached to it (I wanted to just pop these over Sharka’s existing needles instead of recalibrating any).

The G5 needle caps are also quite slim. They don’t add much girth at all to the needle center. Because of this, the needle length / needle cap diameter relationship is pretty similar to stock. That’s a good thing. I’ve seen some needle caps that add a TON of visual weight to the needle center making the actual pointer become stubby looking.



Yes, that’s really all there is to it.

I removed the gauge hood cover (2 screws) and popped off the top steering column cover to allow it room to come off. Once the gauge cluster was uncovered, I just popped off my KG Works panel. No other parts stood between me and the gauge needles.

As for the needle caps themselves, I wanted to see if it was possible to just pop them on without calibrating the needles or destroying anything in the process. With one hand, I held the white needle pointer steady to keep it from moving around while trying to get the cap in place. With the other hand, I installed the cap.

The first gauge was a bit tricky. The next four went very easily. The whole install took a grand total of 10 minutes even with photo time. Writing this blog post has already taken more time than the actual install.



I should mention that I hit my needle caps with some Mother’s aluminum polish. I didn’t want them too shiny, but I wanted to have the cap finish match the KG Works trim rings around the 5 gauges.

And, as you can see, the needle proportions are retained with these. None of the needles look stubby with the Garage5 caps installed. That, to me, was always my beef with needle caps and why I never installed a set in 16 years. Having a set that looks this nice and “OEM+” makes me very happy.





So… what do I think? I’ve only driven behind the needle caps for roughly 50 miles at this point, but I really like them. These caps add a bit of shine to the cluster that wasn’t there before and give the gauges a bit more depth. But, at the same time, 16 years is a long time. I am very used to seeing a black needle center in a Miata gauge cluster. It’s a fairly large change for me.

[★ revlimiter ★]

When Sharka got painted, I had the original mesh removed from my Garage Vary hood. It was pretty low quality stuff held in by blobs of… something. Losing it was not really a bad thing. Let me see if I can dig up a photo.



Gutter mesh. Not very efficient. Not very pretty. Like I said, losing it wasn’t much of a loss. But the bare hole that was left seemed a little unfinished.



I got this honeycomb mesh from Mcmaster-Carr. 79% open area is the most efficient they had. It basically feels like holding nothing. No weight. Super easy to cut. Like 79% of the material is somehow missing. ha!





The creature passage doesn't look bad at all. It just looks a bit unfinished. Like I forgot something.

We can fix that.



I wanted to make up a quick template to transfer over to the mesh. With the odd shape of the hole it seemed easier to do a template and modify it bit by bit instead of measuring things many times. I looked around the garage. The paper towel roll nearby looked back at me.

Perfect!

Make fun, but paper towel worked GREAT as a template. Easy to cut, easy to fold, and easy on the paint surrounding the extractor vent.





I can’t emphasize how easy the mesh is to cut. I think scissors could do it. I used tin snips just the same, but… yeah. Easy.

Once I got the shape cut, I carefully massaged it into place over the extractor vent. Roughly 15 minutes of careful bending got a shape that I liked. I used aluminum tape to hold the mesh in place strongly while the JB Weld setup and hardened.





Ta-da!

I really like how this looks. Simple, but more stylish and functional than the original GV coarse mesh. It picks up stripe reflections, so the center mesh always looks more shiny than the outer edges.

A simple mod, but worth doing.

[★ revlimiter ★]

Sharka’s had cooling problems for… ohh… the past year? I’ve been hunting cooling demons for far too long now. I put in an awesome FM crossflow radiator about a year ago. It’s worked well, but the overheating returned this summer. I resumed my search for the problem.

I found it.

I’m a little hesitant to post the next pic, but here it goes.



That’s the BEGi reroute neck on the back of my engine. It has JB weld on it.

yeah…

See, I added some dye to the cooling system to try to find the leak that was depressurizing the system. It held pressure just fine when things were cool (I’ve got a pressurizing tool) but not when the system was hot. A little UV dye made quick work of finding the weep. It was right at the top of the re-route neck. There was a huge weep trail coming out the top port.

There used to be an unused VDO sensor in the top of the neck. It self-destructed when I applied 3 in/lbs of force to unscrew it and try “fixing” it. The JB Weld you see above is my stop gap solution to see that was indeed the problem.

It was! I had a pressurized cooling system for about 2 weeks!!! It was great. And then the problem returned.



I gotta be honest – I’m tired of the reroute. It’s a great idea. The engine definitely needs it and benefits. But holy crap… so many leaks in the back of the head by the firewall. Getting that hose to seal up was a pain. Worrying about changing the thermostat has been annoying. The whole thing… just… ugh. I’m tired of it.

I will very likely re-re-route it again one day. But for right now I just wanna drive Sharka again. I want no more coolant leaks. It’s a small thing to want, but it’s what I want.

Out comes the re-route shit. In goes a factory rear engine plug.



And holy F*** was it insane removing that goddamn reroute spacer. I could type a page of rant about it, but will attempt to resist. I had to hammer out the little tab used by the factory to hold the speedometer cable in place. Why? The metal of the flattened tab was too thick to allow the reroute spacer and the insanely long bolt BEGi supplied come out. But with the tab removed, I could yank the spacer.

I spent over an hour with my hands back in that tiny area trying to get the reroute spacer out. Less time than it would have taken to pull the engine, but not by a whole lot. ugh.



Since I’m fiddling with this stuff, it’s time to change out the thermostat that’s been in Sharka since installing the NB engine and re-route. I bought a trio of NAPA thermostats. They’re like $5 each and I’ve had one fail in the past. To me, it’s logical to buy a few and test them.





Yum yum, radiator soup!

All of the thermostats opened. Two started moving right at 80*C according to the laser probe. One started moving at 84*C and was “fully” opened at 94*C. It opened about half the distance as the two good ones. The bad one was thrown out and the good ones were saved. One was installed in Sharka’s new front coolant neck.



The de-route hose came from FM. It has a nice bend in it at just the right spot. Some trimming required. Dayco E71273



Everything buttoned up and burping. Everyone needs a spill-free funnel. Love that thing.

And now a little more on the problem.



I’ve uncovered my shame and told you about this one. My little JB Weld fix. But that was not the only leaky spot.



This port weeped also. It wasn’t a lot, but those little colored areas (thanks to the UV dye I used) don’t appear by themselves. That’s evidence of poor sealing and coolant escaping.



And another. This is the port used to send coolant to the heater core. Weep traces around it too.

The only port not weeping was the one for the factory coolant temp sensor. It’s the welded bung visible above.

This reroute spacer leaked like a sieve. And I used PTFE thread sealant (Loctite brand) as recommended. 5 years of hot/cold cycling was enough to make things leak, I guess. Dissimilar metals and all that? I donno.

Needless to say, I’m not too happy with the final result of my “Easy” Coolant Reroute.

I’ve looked into other reroute solutions and like what I see on the M-Tuned one. They have a nice looking single piece rear engine reroute spacer and a remote thermostat. I might spring for that one in the near future.

I’m also considering the NB2 head gasket. It has some stuff done to block off this port and that port and effectively do a coolant reroute with the head gasket. #4 gets more flow and #1 gets less. But… I don’t know when I’ll have the head off again.

Really, I just want to drive the stupid car. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to do that for the rest of the summer.

And now to go update my old Coolant Reroute blog posts with the bad news from this one.