...and I will try to fix you

If there's one thing that I can fix, it's car audio.

Since I've owned Tackawanna, I've needed to do a few repairs and replacements on her. The first one was the battery, which was old and no longer holding a charge. It took me a couple of jumps from a colleague, and $280 for the battery, which had to be shipped to the local auto parts store. Because I had recently purchased a membership card for the auto parts store, they installed the battery for me for free. I didn't know how to get to the battery at the time, because unlike most cars, the Miata/Roadster's battery is located in the trunk of the car, and the negative terminal was way up against the wall, where the bolt was secured tightly and could not be removed with my fingers, a small wrench, or my socket wrench with all the extensions on it.

Later on, I started having a strange problem with Tackawanna. Whenever I would cold start the car, the engine would slowly sputter to life. This problem only repeated itself when, say, I would start the car for the first time on a given day. After the engine had a chance to warm up, it would start without delay. I went onto the forums to check, and my intial guess, as well as fear, was the starter. The starter would be a handful to replace on my own. I'd have to put the car on jacks and take off the front driver's side (remember that the drive configurations are switched for Japan) wheel to get to the starter motor, where I would then need to use a socket and quite a few long extensions to get the starter out.

But I kept looking, wondering if it could be something else. And surely enough, I found someone on a website dedicated to Miatas claiming to have the exact same problem as I did. Their problem was solved by replacing the fuel pump. This made me even more nervous, because I had fuel pump problems back when I had the Blazer. But upon further research, I discovered that the fuel pump was actually located right behind the passenger seat. All I needed to do was fold back the carpeting behind the seats, remove the fuel pump cover, disconnect the fuel lines, take out the fuel pump assembly, and swap out the pump. Suddenly, it seemed less scary. I can do this myself after all, I thought.

When it came to buying the fuel pump, I had two choices. I could purchase a cheap, eBay-quality fuel pump in Japan for about $30, but I would have to splice wiring on the assembly in order to hook up the new fuel pump, which was an instant turnoff. I could also purchase a quality fuel pump from the states, with an OEM connector for the relay lines but it would cost extra, including for shipping. I decided to go with the latter, and picked up a Walbro fuel pump from a Florida distributor for $140, including shipping. I actually got a deal on the shipping; it cost twice the international shipping surcharge to get it here.

On a Wednesday night last month, the night before a series of rainstorms was about to hit the region, I decided to just go for it and swap the pump. I pulled Tackawanna onto a service road right next to the dormitory and right underneath a spotlight, and got to work. Pulling the carpeting off the back was harder than it should have been. Tackawanna is 25 years old, so I was pulling back carpet and sound-dampening foam that had virtually glued themselves to the metal. But that was the least of my problems.

After getting the pump out, I had to wait about half an hour for the fuel pump and assembly to drive off. Once I did, I started taking the pump off of the assembly, which took a lot of effort. I almost stripped the screw securing the base of the assembly, and had to jam the connector piece that attached the fuel filter to the fuel pump. Then, I had to use a bit of force to put the assembly back together, which felt kind of odd, but wasn't concerning me as much as it should have.

It got worse. I put the pump assembly back into the fuel tank and was about to reconnect the hoses, when all of the sudden, fuel started streaming out of one of the inlets. In a series of cussing and struggling, I managed to get the hoses back on. It wasn't until later that I had realized my mistake. When replacing a fuel pump, you have to do two things. The first was running the engine and then disconnecting the relay to the fuel pump so that fuel would be entirely sucked out of the lines. That part I actually did before I disconnected Tackawanna's battery and did the swap. The thing that I forgot to do was take off the gas cap in order to depressurize the tank. So when I put the fuel pump back in, the pressure in the tank caused fuel to be pumped out of the tank and into my interior. It took a lot of spare towels (thank Flying Spaghetti Monster I picked up five) and plenty of airing out to get rid of the fumes, which was especially hard because I couldn't put down the top without blocking access to the fuel pump.

But I'm not done. I reconnected the battery and turned the key. It cranked and cranked, and the fuel pump was making sounds, but it wasn't starting. I was crushed. Suddenly, an hour-long job had turned into four. It was now midnight, and I was getting tired. Thankfully, over the course of the evening, three of my dormmates passed by me working on Tackawanna, and stuck around to help with putting the fuel pump together and pushing Tackawanna to a parking space, where I would have to call a tow truck two days later to pick her up.

I had Tackawanna towed that Friday to the auto shop whose general manager, Saito-san (I must know at least ten people with that last name in Aizu; it's the Smith of the Tohoku region) tried to help me find a Roadster when I first came to Japan. The shop is called Straight Arrow Motors, and is located in the southwestern portion of Aizuwakamatsu. Through a combination of Japanese, spoken English, and Google Translate English, I was able to convey my issue to the general manager, who gave me a lift back to campus and told me that he would check my work and not to worry. This was before my trip to Nagoya, so it would probably not be ready until during my trip, when I'd be out of town.

As it turned out, he was right. Tackawanna was fixed on Tuesday, the day I was travelling to Nagoya, which made it two days early. I also managed to keep the bill under $200. As it turned out, I actually made a mistake when reassembling the fuel pump. (It was probably related to me forcing the assembly back together.) But, to my personal surprise, the fuel pump fixed my problem. I was now getting no issue with a cold start. Much relief was had that Thursday, when I came back to campus to find Tackawanna in the campus parking lot.

And as for Straight Arrow Motors, they even went the extra mile after the repair. I still had the fuel pump, an old spare tire, and some crummy interior trim pieces that were now lying around the common area. As it turned out, I couldn't just throw away the old fuel pump into the garbage; I'd have to have it disposed of through a certain company.  A local company that the foreign personnel advisor suggested wanted $33 to dispose of the pump, $10 to dispose of the tire, and a variable fee to dispose of the trim. They also wanted to come get it themselves. Feeling rather skeptical, I contacted Saito-san again over Facebook and asked him how much he would charge to dispose of these things for me. He only charged me for the tire, and told me that it was okay to drop it off at the garage. When I went back to the store to drop the old parts off, he met me there and even invited me to a car meet at a restaurant later this month. Needless to say, I now have an emergency mechanic in town, as well as a friend outside of the University.

Finally, there's one more piece of good news. Since I had the car, I noticed a rattle coming from the speakers in the driver's seat's headrest. (That was apparently Mazda's workaround for a car with no backseat at the time.) According to the forums, the factory speakers were cheap, five watt speakers that had the tendency to fail quite easily. I went to the local Hard-Off and picked up a new pair of 100 W speakers for around $30. This morning, I pulled Tackawanna up in front of the dormitory and did the swap. It took some foam hacking and some minor splicing to get the speakers to work. Not only did I do the installation right, the death rattle is also gone, and the sound quality is much better. As a matter of fact, I decided that later on, I should do the passenger side's headrest speakers as well.

(Here's the song that I used to test the speakers.)

Speakers aside, I hope that that's all the work that I'll have to do to Tackawanna for a while. This is especially because I plan on taking a road trip to Hokkaido either at the end of this month, or at the start of August. I don't want to go during my vacation time, as due to the various summer holidays, the roads and expressways will be jam-packed. After summer break, it will start getting cold up there very fast, so I don't want to wait much longer. Whatever the case, I plan on taking another local trip tomorrow.

-wp