Well, I've now bonded with our OTM - a blazer. Bought it as a favour from another Brit who was going back to the UK when we arrived, regret that a bit as it wasn't a good price (I've already lost $2,500 or 33% on the deal in a year) and we could have done better for the money, but hey. This weekend I discovered how well engineered our Miatas are.

The Blazer (a 98 model) has a distributor. The last car I saw with one of those was my '92 100NX I had in the UK (that was also a rather good and well-engineered car, btw). Replacing it was a PITA because it is mounted on the back of the engine, about 8 inches down, with VERY small screws.

Well, after changing the diff fluid, bleeding the brakes, bleeding them again because an airlock came out of the ABS unit (!), putting a new intake on (I thought the old one was good, it sucked air through a hole behine the headlight. Only that hole is all blocked up with brakets and stuff, so it has to suck through a 1/8" wide gap. Figured a cone filter would be worth it). After all that, took it out for a spin, and now if I floor it, instead of before when the engine made lots of noise and not a lot else happened, now it sits back on it's haunches and flies!! Good stuff.

Only the last place that replaced one of the front tires cross-threaded a wheel lug, and must have used air tools to ram it on. The lug broke getting it off, so it'll be off to Budget tires tomorrow to see if they can put a new one on - and repack the bearing while they're at it.

The only bit of engineering that it better than the miata is the electrical connectors. They're cool. Lots of sealing bits, and they come off really easily, instead of each one being a wrestling match!

Hope you lucky swines had fun autocrossing when I was sweating over this, giving myself heat exhaustion....