Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Don't need my business

Before I chose to get a different set of wheels for my 2026 Mazda MX-5, the plan was to powder-coat the stock black 17-inch wheels in silver. The frugal person in me who grew up in poverty can’t in good conscience swap out a brand new set of wheels and tires just because I wanted a different look. The compromise in the middle is to change the color. Black colored wheels on cars is so not the business.

To the Yelp pages!

I’m the type of person who prefer to communicate using email. There’s a freedom of time, and it allows me to tailor my words to be as precise as possible. Specifically to cars, it’s easier to spell everything out in writing. For example, the power-coat color I want is a particular Porsche silver. In an email I can include a link to the manufacturer of the exact color, no ambiguities.

But it seems automotive shops prefer communicating over phone. At least when it comes to wheel repair. I emailed a few local wheel refinishing shops for quotes. One blew me off completely. Another took two days to respond. The one that did timely respond did not follow up, even when I wrote back inquiring how should we proceed to the next step.

I’ve done some sales back in the day, so it’s wild to me that these shops can ignore an entire channel of lead generation. In the year of our lord 2026, email communication is table stakes! The only logical explanation is that business is so good for these wheel repair companies that they absolutely don’t need email leads.

In my stubborn refusal to pick up the phone (changing the wheel color is more of a want, not a need), I pivoted to swapping out the wheels instead. No ragrets.

Where has the air gone?

A week ago I put on new wheels and tires on my 2026 Mazda MX-5. Fast forward to two days ago I noticed two of the wheels were already low on air. Baffling, because I’ve only done about 10 miles on the set since installation. Unless I’m incredibly unlucky in catching a two nails on two seperate tires in the least amount of miles, the leakage has got to be from the equipment.

Well, the tires are new, and so are the wheels. It’s very unlikely those are malfunctioning from the factory. The only culprit that I immediately zeroed in on is the tire valves. Those were also purchased brand new, but their efficacy in sealing to the wheels is dependent on the installer. If you don’t pull the rubber bit far out enough, the base won’t adhere to the wheel surface completely.

So out came the soapy water spray and the hypothesis was confirmed. Many bubbles coming out of the valve stem base. I used a four-way valve stem tool to gain leverage on the valve and pulled on it outwardly. To my surprise, it actually worked! Both leaky wheels have successful held air for two consecutive days of checking. Knock on wood.

Sidebar: car enthusiasts should not look down upon brick and mortar auto parts stores like AutoZone and O’Reilly. Those stores might not sell the appropriately OE quality stuff for your finest German and Japanese machines, but if you need something in a pinch - like the aforementioned four-way valve stem tool - auto parts stores are a figurative god send. Especially on weekends where without that part, you are otherwise stuck on that project.

The blame for the tire valve seating issue has got to be on the technician that mounted the tires to the wheels, right? They do so many sets per day that it’s got to be muscle memory. This particular time, muscle memory failed to apply enough force. Part of the mounting process should really involve checking to see that the rubber valve has seated correctly.

Shame! America’s Tire has always been reliable and cheap for me. I guess you really do get what you paid for. I’ll choose a different tire place next time where you can pay more for attention to detail.

Do we care about this?

Car enthusiasts like to lament on paper about the demise of steering feel when manufacturers switched from hydraulic power steering to electric in the late aughts. But I ask the question: do we actually want steering feel?

The golden standard of steering feel is probably the Lotus Elise. It’s got a completely unassisted rack that transmits absolutely every road and tire information to the hands. This braille-like texture is absolutely fantastic on a winding road. It’s freaking amazing to be able to feel through the hands the front tires gaining grip as I trail-brake into a corner. The Elise is an expert dance partner that allows you to perform your best, because you know precisely what the car is doing.

This however translates horribly onto normal, everyday roads. Because the rack is unfiltered, the steering wheel reacts to all the minute differences on the road surface. The car darts and move around as the front tires follow ruts and cambers. The driver has to fight the steering wheel steady at all times. A relaxing cruise on the highways with just a finger on the wheel is not a possibility in the Lotus Elise. Any extended drive to get somewhere gets tiring quickly.

Electric power steering flips that compromise around: you don’t get the tiny road and tire information through to your fingers, but filtering those things out means a calm tiller when steadily cruising. I’d say that’s the compromise that most drivers want.

Because the good sports cars are able to transmit road feel through the chassis. In my Mazda MX-5, I may not get much information from the steering wheel itself, but the car is so taut and nimble that the tiny vibrations transmitted through the body is enough to let me know what it is doing at a given moment. I am okay trading subtle steering feel for relaxed road manners on highways.

I recently drove a Toyota RAV-4: an SUV with an electric rack and no sporting intentions. Enthusiasts don’t realize what truly dead steering is until they get into one of these NPC cars. The RAV-4’s steering wheel provided zero information, plus I got nothing through the chassis because the body and suspension - as it should - soaked up everything. You wouldn’t say a VW Golf GTI has numb steering after driving one of these.

Electric power steering in modern enthusiast cars is just fine! Besides, enthusiasts tend to fit wider wheels and tires as first order of modding business anyways. Doing so immediately kills what modicum of steering feel there is. Add in lower suspension to the mix, and whatever the manufacturer engineered into the car is completely obliterated.

Which is why I say: car enthusiasts don’t care about steering feel. We just care about going fast and looking awesome. Nothing wrong with that.

Seems impossible

I did not realize it was possible to balance a wheel and tire package and not have to add additional weights.

The non car enthusiast of you may not know this, but when you go get a new set of tires, the technicians have to put the wheel and tire setup on a balancing machine. Because tires are not perfectly round rotationally out of the factory. (And your wheels, after many miles of battering, aren’t likely to be perfectly round either.) Guided by the machine, the mechanic attaches tiny grams of weights onto the inner wheel rim to make the whole thing roll smoothy.

I recently got a new set of wheels for my MX-5. Two of them were brand new, two of them were used from eBay. I bought tires from Tire Rack, then shipped directly to the local America’s Tire for mounting. (Both have been and remain excellent companies to deal with when it comes to tire needs.) Upon receiving the wheels with tires mounted, I noticed one of them did not have any wheel weights glued to it.

I flagged an America’s Tire staff person to inquire about the perceived discrepancy. Perhaps - this was a busy store on a Saturday - they forgot to balance one of the wheels. After checking with the technician who performed the job, the staff responded that particular wheel balanced with the tire without weights. Alright, I will take your word for it. Sorry for besmirching the quality of technicians. I wasn’t really familiar with your game.

If this were one of the brand new wheels, it wouldn’t have been that alarming. You’d expect a new wheel plus new tire have a higher chance of making perfect balance. But this was one of the eBay wheels off a 30,000+ miles wrecked car! It was initially kind of difficult to believe that wheel balanced out without any addendum.

Indeed that is the case. After mounting the wheels onto the MX-5 and taking it out for a spin, there were no abnormal vibrations. I mean, you’d know if a wheel is off balance, especially at highway speeds.

Death to black wheels

What do you do after you’ve just spent $38,000 out-the-door for a new sports car? Immediately drop more money on it, of course.

My 2026 Mazda MX-5 Miata Club is cursed with something I greatly detest in modern cars: black wheels. Why have a design at all when you can’t even see it? Much like black body paint, black wheels look great for the one second after it’s been cleaned. A quick layer of brake dust later and it turns into a black hole of nothingness. It’s unappealing, and I have no idea why it is so en vogue in the car world.

My 2019 Volkswagen GTI also came fitted with black wheels, and I swap those out with the equivalent style painted in silver. The only trouble is I had to wait five months for the set to be produced and shipped from the fatherland Germany. Painful.

This fourth generation of the MX-5 actually were fitted with silver colored wheels from the factory. The 2016 to 2018 model year of the Sport trim had beautiful eight-spoke 16-inch wheels in silver. Starting with the 2019 model year, Mazda painted those same wheels in, you guess it, black. Yuck.

Because it’s been so long since it was officially fitted on a car, buying those silver 16-inch wheels in the year of 2026 was a challenge. Mazda’s own parts warehouse had only two brand-new-in-box wheels remaining, with no ETA of getting more from Japan. Naturally, I bought those two wheels. To complete a whole set of four, I went to our favorite used car parts source: eBay. I bought two used wheels off of wrecked MX-5s that were in reasonable quality. Not perfect up close, but suffices a few feet away. Beggars absolutely cannot be choosers here.

The 2026 MX-5 Club came stock with 17-inch wheels, so I had to buy new tires as well for the 16-inch set. Only car enthusiasts would swap out a brand new set of wheels and tires. From a utilitarian perspective it is a huge waste. Then again, no one said this hobby of ours is anything but much money down the drain. I’ll do it again.

All in, it was an additional $1,800 spend just because I didn’t like the black color of the stock wheels. Completely worth it.

The epitome of luxury

Maybe it’s just me, but as a car enthusiast, actually driving my cars can be stressful. Because I’ve spent so much money them, the wont is to keep them nice for as long as possible. And out there on the road there’s far too many variables beyond my control to contend with. Mathematically speaking, the best way to protect a car from Mayhem like Allstate is to lock it inside a garage.

I completely understand the car collectors that keep their cars in constant climate control, hardly driven. The outside world is a scary place.

It’s not that the stress is so overwhelming that it destroys the fun I get from driving. But it’s definitely a heighten sense of awareness whenever I am in my cars. I constantly scan the periphery for any potential dangerous actions by other drivers. Do this often enough and it becomes a sixth sense.

Until I get into a car that I completely do not car about. Like my parents Toyota RAV4 SUV. Driving that thing is the epitome of luxury because I can drastically decrease the diameter of the circle of awareness. It’s so much more relaxing to drive a normal, not-precious-about-it, car. The music playing the background is that much more soulful and enjoyable. And the at the destination, I don’t have to worry about finding the perfect, most out of the way parking spot.

I completely understand how car enthusiasts, as they get older, graduate to having a plain daily driver and relegate the enthusiastic stuff to the weekends. Driving a car you don’t really care about is a good antidote to the wild world of post-COVID crazy driving.

Shake shake shake

Follower of this website would have figured out I recently bought a 2026 Mazda MX-5 Club. I am back in the quintessential affordable sports car.

Part of the initial ownership process is fitting in a dashcam. With the post-COVID craziness on the roads still very much a thing, video footage is crucial should you have the misfortune of being in an accident. Furthermore, the MX-5 is absolutely tiny relative to the hulking SUVs out there, so if someone were to bump into me unsighted, I want them to get caught in 4K.

It really cannot get easier to wire in a dash cam on the little Mazda. There’s an existing gap between the windshield glass and trim for wires to tuck into. The A pillars are held on by a single clip. And beneath the passenger side dash is a hidden 12V cigarette port for power. It took me all of 10 minutes following this video to install a Vanture Element 1 Pro. Five of which was unboxing the thing.

By the way, you know AI RAM pricing has gone completely bonkers when the 256GB memory card I bought alongside the Element 1 Pro costs more than the dashcam.

A slight quirk with the MX-5 being a convertible is that the windshield shakes quite a bit. Obviously this is because there isn’t a structural roof attached to it. But this presents a problem for dashcams mounted to the windshield. Modern dashcams have G meters that automatically locks a video file should it detect a high kinetic event - say, in a crash. However, the MX-5 windscreen shakes so much and often, the Venture thinks it's in a one constantly.

I found this out because the dashcam kept making a locking sounds every so often. At first I thought it was the cabling rattling against something metallic, until I triangulated the noise back to the Vantrue’s tiny speaker. The solution? Turn off the G meter completely. Even at its least sensitive setting, the Element 1 Pro kept locking the video file. A nifty feature for sure, but completely useless in an MX-5.