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The Prong Song posted:Anyone know of a list/collection of racing seats that will fit in a NB without hammering the transmission tunnel into oblivion? Flyin Miata has something like this for an NA. Can't imagine it's much different for an NB.
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Mar 30, 2018 19:56
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| # ? May 31, 2024 06:10 |
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I have a newfound lust for NAs. New people in our complex have a mint white NA with a hardtop and it's just gorgeous.
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Mar 30, 2018 22:15
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The Prong Song posted:Anyone know of a list/collection of racing seats that will fit in a NB without hammering the transmission tunnel into oblivion? You can make a sparco sprint 5 and I think a momo start fit without hammering the tunnel, but if you want the seat centered to the wheel you'll need to pound the tunnel. It's not difficult, just go to town with an 8lb sledge. I put cardboard overtop of the carpet and wailed away until it fit. No carpet damage, you wouldn't know it's been pounded out without actually inspecting it closely.
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Mar 31, 2018 01:02
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I have Sparco Sprint 5's on Jass Performance adapter rails on the stock NB rails in my RHD 10AE. Works great.
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Mar 31, 2018 02:29
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Yeah I use the PCI fixed mount to get as low as possible. Quite pleased with fitment etc. http://www.pci-racing.com/product/89-05-mazda-mx-5-2/ I'm probably going to put something more comfortable / supportive / etc. next year. No funds this year.
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Mar 31, 2018 02:37
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I've said it multiple times over the years in this thread, don't get Sprint V's if you want to daily the car. Find something more comfortable. They fit decently and are cheap, but that's all I can say for them.
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Mar 31, 2018 16:24
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Also it takes about 5-10 minutes to switch out a comfortable street-worthy seat for a racing seat on the occasional trackday. Due to an administrative error I drove a car with a Sparco Sprint seat for several months (not quite daily as I don't drive to work, but it was my regular car). Literal pain in the rear end. The fact that it had no interior or rear seats made it rather noisy and very cold in winter, but the seat was the worst.
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Mar 31, 2018 18:42
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So the oil pressure gauge I ordered on eBay isn't coming cause the seller noticed that he doesn't actually has it anymore... So I said gently caress it and rewound the coils on the original gauge. Took me the better part of my Friday evening (I'm just that kind of wild guy who spends his Friday evenings rewinding coils!) Had a scary moment halfway through when the wire tore and I had to splice it together again but all in all it worked fine. And surprisingly it actually worked! I know have a fully working, undampened OPG. Holy poo poo though...that was a lot of wire!
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Mar 31, 2018 18:50
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Larrymer posted:I've said it multiple times over the years in this thread, don't get Sprint V's if you want to daily the car. Find something more comfortable. They fit decently and are cheap, but that's all I can say for them. I need to find an NB stock seat frame with the seat belt anchor on it, then I can switch between seats in <5 minutes. Or... mount a seat belt anchor on the Sprint seat and use NA rails (that I conveniently have sitting) on that seat.  That being said, moving the sliders between seats takes another 5 minutes on top of pulling the seat from the car, so... I should just suck it up, right?
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Mar 31, 2018 18:52
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Jesus christ it is impossible to change the clutch with how little my lovely harbor freight jack lifts the car up, i cant even flip around under it and I've spent all goddamn day working on it didnt even drop the tranny yet. Im only like 3 clicks on my stands  . I'm still gonna quit until I get a new jack I think.Just sucks since the PO had a shop do the clutch before i bought it but they hosed it up since the RMS is leaking all over the clutch and casuing horrible chuddering. I drained trans the fluid and it looked brand new
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Apr 1, 2018 00:13
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Voltage posted:Jesus christ it is impossible to change the clutch with how little my lovely harbor freight jack lifts the car up, i cant even flip around under it and I've spent all goddamn day working on it didnt even drop the tranny yet. Im only like 3 clicks on my stands Go buy this http://www.hfqpdb.com/best_coupon/RAPID+PUMP+3+TON+LOW+PROFILE+HEAVY+DUTY+STEEL+FLOOR+JACK
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Apr 1, 2018 00:32
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I've always pulled the engine and transmission as an assembly. The only tip I can think of is remove the CAS before putting it back unless you're ready to dent up the firewall. The CAS hangs out just enough that it's not easy to slide back in, at least for me. Do the clutch, RMS and oil pan seals all at once. I've never seen oil pan seals that weren't ready to go at the same time as the RMS, they get hard and useless at about the same rate as the RMS, I find.
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Apr 1, 2018 01:10
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Probably unrelated but my 03s clutch shuddered like hell from when I bought it at 25K. I eventually found that revving up to 3k or so and really slipping the clutch would smooth it out for a few hundred miles. I believe there was a TSB for the problem on NBs. I don't drive the car much anymore but it's at like 170k or so on the original clutch so I guess it didn't mind being abused too badly.
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Apr 1, 2018 02:22
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Yeah definitely gonna snag that jack, thanks! Also I may as well do the oil pan gasket and the motor mounts while I have it all apart. At least this is my fun/project car and not my DD so I'm trying not to stress too hard. Its going to be so nice when it's done since i dealt with terrible 1st gear shudder in NYC traffic all of last summer. Any other tools i should snag or parts to replace while i have it apart?
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Apr 1, 2018 17:46
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Voltage posted:Yeah definitely gonna snag that jack, thanks! If you're just pulling the trans, make sure you have some swivel sockets to get to some of those bolts. The header ones I remember being kind of a pain in the dick. If you feel like wasting money, you can replace the looptie loop clutch line with a braided SS one. I wouldn't touch the oil pan unless it's leaking (though I can't remember if you're technically supposed to take it off to replace the RMS). It's just one of those things that always seems to leak after removing it because I either A. didn't clean it well enough B. the silicone didn't set or C. I bent the gasket surface pulling it off, etc.
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Apr 1, 2018 21:24
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Nope, you can change the clutch and RMS without touching the oil pan seals. If you really don't want to pull the engine you can get away without it, but I've never had one (well, I only worked on 3, not a professional shop but my 100% data pushes me really hard) that wasn't ready to go at the same time as I pulled a transmission.
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Apr 1, 2018 21:42
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I just replaced the suspension on my NB sport, from the H&R springs (on the stock Bilsteins) to stock ones (on a different set of identical Bilsteins). I found the H&R ones to be way too low and stiff for my taste, last year I was scraping on bumps and stuff and the ride was really harsh. Good on track, but I average like 2 trackdays a year. So back to stock I go. After a test drive, it just handles bumps as gracefully as any regular car without making me cringe, which is nice. Issue the first: When I changed struts on my NA, I just removed the long bolts to the upper control arms, as taking balljoints out is often a pain in the rear end. Here though, while I could get the nut to it off, I still couldn't get the bolt off as it was seemingly stuck in the forward bushing. When prying on the bolt, it would not move inside the bushing at all and just spring back. When turning it as much as I could with a wrench it would just twist the bushing most of the way and only move a tiny bit. So I had to pull the balljoints which was just more hassle in many ways but worked out eventually. Anyway, is there a trick to getting these long bolts to move? I sprayed some random lubricants on the bolt, but they didn't seem to get in far enough to do anything. I can't apply lots of fire as that would ruin the bushings. Issue the next one: The stock springs ride so much better. Small bumps don't send a jolt through the car, and large bumps won't make me fear for my life or chassis. Ride height went from 30-31cm to 36-ish. However, these might be just a tad too soft, and cosmetically I think it would look better somewhere in between in ride height. It has the ever present Miata body roll, and "kneels down" a lot under braking. I'm fine with this for now but might not be in the long run. Still I want to optimize primarily for feeling good on street (some mix of comfort and snappiness). What would be a decent option for a spring that takes me maybe 1/3 of the way from stock to these H&R ones in stiffness, and lowers it about 2cm? I could of course get adjustable coilovers, but just springs probably would be better value for money given that I have an extra set of Bilstein shocks. Given how stiff the H&R springs are I guess the shocks I have are really too soft, but I would think they would be fine for just a relatively small change. Comedy picture of 5cm forward rake when I had changed the rears but not the fronts:  Tragedy picture of a $10 balljoint separator that was made of the finest cast chinesium:  Issue C: I have a very delightful 2DIN flip-front head unit. I think it was some kind of Mazda dealer option or something, as there was a Mazda logo on the German manual it came with (car was imported from Germany to Sweden in 2008) and it has no other brands/logos on it. However, the CD player in it is broken, the navigation is useless since the maps are on a CD (and cover Germany sometime before 2002), it has an aux input somewhere on the back but no plug/cable for it, and obviously does not have bluetooth. It is basically a very big radio, with a UI that looks like a web page from around the turn of the century. Maybe the cassette tape player works, but who the gently caress knows as I have no such tapes or means of recording any. So I'm replacing it with some Chinese android thing (basically a very very thick Android tablet with an amplifier in it). But how the heck do I get this out? There is one tiny Philips (or maybe JIS) screw behind the flip-front, but it really does not look like it is what holds the thing in.  
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Apr 2, 2018 19:15
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ionn posted:... But how the heck do I get this out? ... Remove the bezel around the entire set of center console units, push in retaining clips on the sides of the unit you want to remove, pull towards front to get some space, remove plugs from behind, remove entirely.
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Apr 2, 2018 19:22
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I'm gonna pull the trigger on some kyb agx shocks for my NA - theres a $100 mail in rebate on rockauto if you buy 4, and I can't find the Bilsteins anywhere so these will have to do.
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Apr 2, 2018 19:55
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The Prong Song posted:Remove the bezel around the entire set of center console units Ah, thanks. That bezel appears to be screwed in at the bottom, so it seems I have to take out the lower "between-the-seats" part first. Also every youtube video about Miata stereo installs seem to be done by dweebs.
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Apr 2, 2018 20:57
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ionn posted:Ah, thanks. That bezel appears to be screwed in at the bottom, so it seems I have to take out the lower "between-the-seats" part first.  Which android head unit are you getting? How is it? I pulled out the Nexus 7 clone I had there for a while as it was a constant pain in the rear end, but I don't particularly trust these cheapo HUs to work properly either.
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Apr 2, 2018 21:25
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Yeah, I saw you could use those tools for the "normal" OEM head unit, but there you were supposed to pop off some bezel on the unit itself, and I don't have anything like that. I expect the resell value of this thing is approximately zero so if it comes down to it there will be destructive removal. I'm getting this one ("Pumpkin" lol), which seemed to be the least lovely one of the various "brands". And of course, between the time I ordered it and now going to install it, they've come out with an updated version (more ram, newer android version). I've only played around with it a bit (hooking it up to power and a couple of speakers on my desk), but it seems functional enough. Not sure how usable it is in-car though, with regards to user interface and such.
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Apr 2, 2018 21:31
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ionn posted:Ah, thanks. That bezel appears to be screwed in at the bottom, so it seems I have to take out the lower "between-the-seats" part first.   (somewhat hacked up) Bezel, minus the two screw tabs you're talking about. Take note of the poppable tabs on the perimeter:   Bottom of the tombstone, where those two screw tabs (usually) attach: 
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Apr 2, 2018 21:48
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Brilliant, thanks. I've rarely found a youtube video doing as good a job of showing what's going on as a bunch of pictures.
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Apr 3, 2018 06:22
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So, I was a bit mistaken. Turns out there are a couple of small plastic cover things on the side of the head unit that just snap off, revealing a bunch of holes. Still took the center console bezel off just to avoid damage to anything I care about. Looks thusly:  The three round holes I do not believe have anything of value, just seems like a void on the inside of the head unit. I had a pair of those removal hook things, they don't grab on to anything (and the distance between the holes don't match the tool at all). The two covering pieces were attached to here. The smaller rectangular holes are just plain metal, nothing pokable there. The slightly larger rectangular holes closer to the four corners seem like they do something though. I was poking and prying with various utensils and it feels like there's something there, but I can't figure out how to make anything unlatch or move. I can just get table knives stuck at odd angles. Is this a Mazdaesque thing that anyone here knows about, or something more generic (in which case I'll gtfo and run over to the car audio thread)? Has anyone even seen this head unit before?
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Apr 3, 2018 16:59
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That black plastic piece below the stereo but above the climate control - can that be removed? There may be screws behind it.
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Apr 3, 2018 18:04
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I don't see any obvious way to remove it, and lightly prying on it as much as I dare without knowing for sure doesn't make it move. Looking at the picture, it seems like the edge of the head unit is covering the top of it, which would suggest that's not the way to get at it. I don't think I've ever fiddled with a car where anything other than maybe some bezel thing had to be removed to get the head unit out (apart from where it is completely integrated in the dashboard). Yanking on it, it sort of feels as if it is held in on the sides rather than top or bottom.
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Apr 3, 2018 18:15
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The weather gods just popped in with a couple of inches of snow, because it looked like spring was about to hit. Gee, thanks. This time last year: 
Wibla fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Apr 4, 2018 |
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Apr 4, 2018 01:21
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I'm itching to put my summer wheels on the car but everytime i convince myself its time loving winter comes back. I think this weekend might be it though! They are also ginormous 215/40R16 Wheels that i really need to sell and replace with something more sensible...
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Apr 4, 2018 09:28
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My NB is now the 3rd car in a 2-car family, so I'm not risking anything by using it for non-DD purposes. I'm about to run my first SCCA autocross; any tips?
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Apr 4, 2018 18:46
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Go fast, don't crash, have fun even if you come in last.
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Apr 4, 2018 19:05
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Look ahead, look ahead, look ahead, look ahead, look ahead, look ahead, look ahead
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Apr 4, 2018 19:08
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Walk the track several times, look ahead, rip on the car as hard as possible, don't be afraid of the redline and shifting back into first for extra power. I got P1 a few times in my old rusty 200k mile NA with just some direzza star spec tires. Don't be intimidated by all the prepped up cars. The local chapter president used to bring an old Nissan frontier and smoke almost everyone. Skill and practice are more important than car performance in autocross imo.
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Apr 4, 2018 21:44
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Oh I cant wait to get to the autox stage of my Miata. I autox my WRX pretty regularly though. My tip is to not fumble with gears the first time out, more often than not it leads to slower turns even if you are bogging down low. Empty as much stuff out of your car the night before. I've made the mistake of getting there and taking out a huge pile of poo poo. Take out your floor mats, spare tire, any stuff you keep in the car, extra removable trim, etc. Bring food and lots of water/drinks. It's a whole day thing, treat it like you would an active day of working. Especially when it starts to warm up outside. Talk to people. They know how to make times faster. There will be plenty of people with Miatas there that will know the right lines to take through corners. You might actually make some friends which is a nice bonus. You'll want to check your air pressure before you run so bring a pump and gauge or be prepared to ask to borrow one. Tires are like 95% of the tech you need to focus on. They're everything. Bring some white shoe polish to mark the outside edge of the tread pattern. You want to use the whole tread pattern, but not any sidewall. The polish will rub away during your run and show you exactly where that termination point is. Lower pressure to increase tread usage, increase pressure to decrease it. Oh god I've written too much. I really enjoy autox, guys.
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Apr 4, 2018 22:43
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Voltage posted:Skill and practice are more important than car performance in autocross imo. This is true, until your region has a bunch of guys that go to nationals every year and have trophies to their name. Then car performance comes into play. I wouldn't worry about shifting if you're just starting out. Just launch, shift into 2nd, and forget about the clutch until the stop box. Keep your eyes up, don't worry about hitting cones, have fun, and drink lots of water.
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Apr 4, 2018 23:00
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So, I managed to get that old head unit out at least without damaging the car. I was fiddling around with screwdrivers and pieces of hacksaw blades (with teeth ground down) and while I felt them getting caught on something, I was utterly unable to get anything to unlatch. So I went with the destructive approach; ripped the flip-front off and shredded the rest of the front panel, and managed to get to what was holding it in. With the front off I could unlatch them with the blades and get the sucker out, but even that was pretty tricky. The latches look like this when they're out: You need some kind of tool that gets into the rectangular hole, and then up to that latch thing, and then push on that to bend it (which is pretty stiff), and avoid having it catch on the frame it's locked into (where there is less than a mm clearance). Never in a million years would have I been able to figure that out by just feeling around. I guess this is an attempt at making something harder to steal by requiring strange tools to do it. Four bits of piano wire or something would have done it though. Since I do not expect a Mazda OEM head unit ever to be installed in this car again, I was going to just chop off the connector and splice a ISO pigtail on there (also a Mazda -> ISO adapter is too expensive either in money or time). But since I had destroyed the old head unit anyway, I figured I could extract the other part of the connector from that and do the wiring at my desk instead of out in the car. So I exploded the thing a bit more, and eventually won. Kept the brackets with the latches too, as I might just use them to mount the new head unit. Random pictures of destruction and model numbers and crap:    
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Apr 5, 2018 09:48
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You know you can buy that connector with a pigtail for like $17 shipped to whatever euro place you live, right? amazon
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Apr 5, 2018 12:32
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BloodBag posted:You know you can buy that connector with a pigtail for like $17 shipped to whatever euro place you live, right? I do. But that would take a week or so, hence expensive in time. Can get it shipped quickly from within Sweden, but that's like €40. I could have ordered this thing long ago, but I wasn't quite sure what plug I would actually find back there (as I hadn't really researched the matter, it was pretty obvious though). I wouldn't miss the OEM plug in the car had I chopped it off, I'd just rather do as much of the wiring job as possible indoors, so from that point of view it was worth the half an hour of effort to dismantle the old broken junk and unsolder the connector. Looking at what pins have cables going to them in the plug, there might be signals for reverse gear (for backup camera) and parking brake (for annoying don't-do-this-while-driving warnings) and vehicle speed (for speed-dependent volume control). Need to check to see what's actually there, but that's at least somewhat useful. And as expected, no wires for rear speakers or steering wheel switches, because car doesn't have that.
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Apr 5, 2018 13:17
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Can someone with an unmolested NA8 post a picture of their radio harness plugs? One is entirely missing from my car. Mines a '96, if you want that info.
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Apr 6, 2018 21:06
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| # ? May 31, 2024 06:10 |
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 I finally got my front end donor car in to take care of my NA that had a slight incident last year... it's always something. Donor car has 66k and is absolutely pristine besides the trunk being bashed in. If anyone in the MN area is looking for a 1.6 rollerskate.. let me know.
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Apr 7, 2018 02:31
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