#miata mod master wishlist

[things-about-cars-in-posts]

Miata Mod Master Mᴉsɥlᴉsʇ

[I had to spell Wishlist upside down to keep the alliteration going]

So, here's my first original post in quite a while. Apparently, the last one was a whole hundred followers ago - immense thanks to all 400 of you!!! And also, Tumblr informed me I got 1000 likes and kindly generated a picture for me to thank y'all for them with!

Given that's 2.5 likes per follower, I assume they mean 1000 likes just on my original posts, which would track considering most of my posts are additions, and liking all of those either counts towards that tally as just one like to my original post, or if you liked it through a reblog potentially nothing at all, because maybe likes to reblogs aren't counted even if they're reblogs of my own posts. But don't think I'm a numbers-chaser, this is just me wondering. Really, the only reason I even look at the activity chart of my blog is because I started trying to make that line as straight as possible for giggles (and then some of my posts blew up and ruined it, ecksdee). The thought of someone having enjoyed what I wrote has me smitten every time I see it, and I can barely even comprehend the idea that it happened a literal thousand times. I still can barely wrap my head around four hundred people all having decided they actively want to hear more from me. (Usually it's the opposite, har har.) I love all of you for it. The freaks, the puritans, the children (wait I just said that OOH GOTTEM), the adults, the uncomfortably weird, the hyper-organized users that use different blogs for each one of their passions, the hyper-random users that reblog my posts right after diaper fetish art. (And if you thought that was some whiplash, imagine the guy who followed a diaper fetish art blog getting shown me.)

But this is just me buying time, isn't it. Alright alright, let's talk about the wishlist, beginning with its premise.

This is not advice. This is not a list that makes sense at all, really - most of these items are way far down the list of things I'd do with the money they cost and/or the effort they'd take. This is a dream, where those aren't a factor. Just like some people's dream car is a ten million dollar hypercar that was built directly into the bodies of five Middle Eastern oil moguls, my dream car is a Miata with exactly these bits. (And a Seven, but I really need to stop confusing y'all with them being tied for the favorite car top spot.)

This list is based on a note I started in middle school for the fun of it (which is hopefully understood as the driving motive behind this all) and gradually updated through high school and sort of left behind after that, having kind of run out of bits to add to it. It's split into six sections:

Exterior

Interior (i.e. cabin, trunk and engine bay)

Drivetrain (i.e. anything that plays a role in making the wheels spin)

Chassis and suspension (i.e. chassis and everything that connects the wheels to it)

Electronics (i.e. electronics/microcontroller-related features)

Miscellaneous

This will be a chance for me to check the prices of all the things I listed and, at the end of it, tally up their total cost and feel feelings about its enormity. But of course, we'll need to start with a thing that was not in the note, as it was a given to me: the base car. So that will be the subject of my next addition to this post.

Because I can't make this a single post. Absolutely no chance. Even just any workaround to the image limit being about a fifth of the length of this list would be a nightmare for me to execute and for y'all to navigate. And frankly, the length of the task would make me, if not outright give up, at the very least skimp on the kind of explanations and discussions that I must assume are why you're all here. So I will need to make additions to this post (in the form of a reblog, of course) each going over one section at most. But truth be, even doing one reblog per section presents those problems, so some sections would need splitting in a number of parts. Or I could go to the other extreme and made one post per item (or when appropriate group of items), which would allow me to expand upon every which one as little or as much as appropriate while still keeping a tidy presentation. But to do this I would need to hide all the information bar the name under a Read More, because if I put as little as one picture before it by the time I'm at the end of the list every time this post appears in your dash you'll have to scroll past some hundred pictures to get to the bottom of it; also, of course, this would mean this post showing up in your dash upwards of a hundred times - though of course you could just ignore it a bunch of times and when you feel like it go through all the parts you've not read yet at once.

Right now I'm leaning towards the one post per item approach, which would allow me to work towards the completion of this abomination in small daily steps rather than in age-long parts which would also help addressing your other submissions. But it's very hard for me to figure out what y'all would prefer, as it's kind of hard for me to figure out who would actually want to read through the entirety of this. So, y'all are welcome to leave your feedback in the replies or through this non-binding format poll.

Links in blue are posts of mine about the topic in question - if you liked this post, you might like those!

[things-about-cars-in-posts]

Hello! question for you? do you have a favorite car lock/unlock chime?

Hello! Answer for you:

That's a very hard opinion for me to form because here cars don't have them, we just trust car owners to be able to tell that the car that made the clunking sound and indicators flash it does when it locks its doors locked its doors. Which is partly why this answer comes to you well over two weeks after your asked me, as I just didn't know what to do with it.

So I could answer that my favorite chime is around 6:38 in this video, which I recommend you don't skip to because the rest of the video is great too...

...but if that feels like cheating to you, well, I'm out of answers.

So I will just talk horns and chimes some more until you're satisfied.

My mother's Citroën had this seatbelt chime, which I found pretty endearing, but without the peculiarity herein described. (It should start at 11:41, just in case it doesn't for you.)

My father's Audi had this calm, soothing chime which perfectly suited its soothing comfort, yet always reminded me of something...

2000s Renaults had a talking vehicle computer!

And if that sounds like a very 80s thing, well, you're absolutely right!

Chrysler's Electronic Voice Alert, or EVA, was an option made available in the mid-80s that used the Texas Instruments' LPC Speech Chip you know and love from the Speak & Spell.

Unfortunately, while that was just a warnings list, many of those were spoken quite frequently, in part due to the vehicles in question being mid-80s Chrysler products, leading to the system swiftly getting on people's nerves, and in the models before a switch to turn it off was included owners resorted to pulling the fuse, which in some cases disabled the fuel gauge. Welp.

But that was not the only system nor first system of its kind: there was, in 1983, the MG Maestro's system.

If that voice sounds familiar, its voice actress Nicolette McKenzie had starred in John Sichel's Merchant Of Venice. If you're not from that side of Tumblr, she also starred in Horizon: Zero Dawn. A monotonous career path sure doesn't seem to be among her problems.

But this system was not the first either: some '81 to '84 Nissans (or Datsuns, as those were the very years that brand name, created for American shores, was getting phased out) used a Voice Warning system that used an even earlier technology than TI's chip (that's Texas Instrument's LPC speech synthesizing integrated circuits, not the money of trap music pioneer T.I.): a phonograph.

This wasn't a novel approach either, phonograph-based warning systems being used in late '70s-early '80s appliances and toys, and in-car record players having been a thing even prior!

In fact, to paraphrase Dr. Doofenshmirtz, If I had a nickel for every time I wrote about in-car phonographs, I'd have two nickels - which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice, right?

Although in 1985 Nissan too went electronic for their voice warning system - here's the warnings from those systems over a bad MIDI cover of Thrift Shop.

And that's without even getting into custom door chimes!

And boy will I ever get into custom chimes once I get to that section of my Miata Mod Master Mᴉsɥlᴉsʇ (that's "Wishlist" upside down), which by my estimations should be about April 2024. So keep your eyes peeled!

Links in blue are posts of mine about the topic in question - if you liked this post, you might like those!