Well the German Miata replacement is here

Some of you may remember my z3 was totaled a few months back. I referred to it as a German Miata. Now I have the pleasure of announcing it's replacement. An actual Miata.

Hard top, 5 spd, 79k miles. Two sets of wheels (15" with Dunlop street sport tires and 14" with Nitto slicks), aftermarket header, anti roll bars, strut brace, lowering springs, hard dog roll bar with harness bar, some lightness added in the interior, removable mono replica wheel, New 3" 5 point harness, two piece sparco seat. 

Bag of extras with hawk pads, stainless steel brake lines, and motul brake fluid.

One of the headlights doesn't pop up and the windshield wipers don't work either. 

The PO had a puller fan wired in line with the windshield wipers. Could this overload the fuse? I know squat about wiring so I'll need help there.

What's the mechanism for the pop up headlights? Is there a cable or something that might need to be replaced?

I'll need some of y'all to help learn me on Miatas. All I know is over priced and over engineered BMW stuff.

The PO unbolted the PS pump and replaced the belt, but zip tied it in place?

the car came with a pit crew.

Durty said:

the car came with a pit crew.

Small hands are very useful when working on these cars!

The headlights are raised by the motors directly behind/beside them. It's probably a wiring problem, because the motors are really tough. You can raise it manually by turning the knob on top of the motor.

There's no need for a stock Miata to need extra/modified fans. I'd fix the wiring and check the rest of the cooling system. Also, get rid of that strut bar as it's nothing more than extra weight. There are shock tower braces that work, but that's not one of them.

What up with the transmission tunnel diaper? Between this and the extra fan I wonder if this was the PO?

Grats! pick yourself up a copy of Keiths book and a Chilton/Haynes manual. The cars are really simple, really reliable, and easy to maintain. Looks like it is ready for a track day to if that rollbar is a typical reputable one.

Where are you located?

In reply to Jaynen :

I'm in Greenville NC. The roll bar is Hard Dog, which is the same brand bar I had in the z3.

I'm not sure what the deal is with the insulation. There is less interior insulation than came from the factory so I'm not sure if the tunnel got hot?

The tunnel will get hot... the catalytic converter sits right next to your thigh on the driver's side.

Looks like a decent find... clean NAs are getting harder to find for reasonable money.

Durty said:

In reply to Jaynen :

I'm in Greenville NC. The roll bar is Hard Dog, which is the same brand bar I had in the z3.

 

I'm not sure what the deal is with the insulation. There is less interior insulation than came from the factory so I'm not sure if the tunnel got hot?

Cool I am over in Raleigh area and plan to hit some track days next year when my NB is ready would love to meet up with some GRMers

So I'm poking around to find why the passenger headlight won't go up. I saw a few YouTube videos about troubleshooting this.

First I look to the motor failsafe and turn it. The motor fights me. So this means it's working.

I can lift up the headlight without any fight and it flops back down. Let's check out the arm that attaches the motor to the headlight.

That should probably be attached to something.

Yeah something like that.

So now I need to reattach it. Something preferably stronger than the one zip tie that failed.

Yes two zip ties is an option but what is the factory solution?

Not to de-rail the topic, but Welcome!  I grew up in Greenville and still go down from time to time. There are several GRM'ers in the Raleigh-area as well.

Ok. Back on topic..............

You can pick up replacement headlight arms complete with the new plastic "cups" for fresh ball joints for <$20.

Cheers! Thanks for the help y'all.

I'm feeling this might start to sway toward becoming a build thread so I'll create a new post over there unless someone wants to move this.

I found the arm with cups online and the local Mazda dealer can have it in a day for $22