I see I forgot to go over what I did with the throttle cable. As mentioned I moved it around a little, but it was still having a high idle after driven a bit and things were hot. I popped the hood after a drive and checked, the cable was tight and holding the throttle off the stop. I loosened the cable a bit and fixed that. I will say that apparently Mazda’s idea of 3mm slack and mine differ greatly.
Today after helping my oldest change his oil (I supervised and gave him grief after he missed the drain pan for the umpteenth time) I ran to Ace and got some more appropriately sized ring terminals so I could redo the one end of the coolant sensor ground wire. Measured the bolt threads and ended up with 3/8” being the size:
I got the bigger terminal off with no problem, went to put on the smaller one and the fun began. Went through four trying to get them to grab the wire good enough but they kept coming off. Cheap StaKons was the reason, and trying to work in a confined space. Finally got one on, then managed to drop the bolt as I was putting that in. Searched and searched with no luck, finally found it lying on top of the starter. Got that fished out and went to put it in only to have that ring terminal come off. Grrr. After some more gnashing of teeth I got that all done, so now I feel better about it.
Hoisted her up in the air and went underneath to figure out how I was going to install the heat shield on the exhaust. Found out I should have bought a two foot piece instead of the three foot one. I marked it and then cut it down:
Not quite cricket but should do for me. I’ll keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t start unraveling. Put the hose clamps in and then placed it where I wanted it. I couldn’t place it directly on top of the exhaust due to the location of the O2 sensor but I have it over the section that is closest to the transmission tunnel side. That ended up like so:
Time will tell how well that works.
I gave the youngest grandkid his first ride in her, put him in the passenger seat while I was jockeying her around to her place in the garage. He thought that was pretty neat. Of course I had to give him a shot in the hot seat: