Miata Mods

Front Lip Spoiler II

I received an email from Scotland today. When he told me he would honor ATH distributor’s regions and not sell to the US, I wrote back thanking him for the response. I then went into my rant about ATH”s US distributor (who has still not responded to my 2nd round of questions I sent last Thursday) and told him I wouldn’t deal with them. So today Scotland emails and asks for front end dimensions of the car so he can add shipping to his quote. I guess he changed his mind and is trying to save ATH a sale. I’ll forward the dims to him, but unless he is insanely cheaper, I think I’m still going Canada.

Front Lip Spoiler

Been thinking about getting a front spoiler to make the front a little more aggressive looking and a touch lower to the ground. I don’t care for either Mazda offering as they look way too tacked on for my tastes. Really looking for one that looks like the one Mazda used on the 99-00 models. I always keep an eye on the interior/exterior section of the miataforum for leads. about a week ago some posted about a spoiler he saw on a Swiss web site and wondered if any one could get it for him. When I went to the link, there it was, what I have been looking for, the ATH Hinsberger Comet.

I wrote to the contact email and asked if they shipped to the US. The answer came back no, but I should try the spoiler company’s US distributor. I emailed them and heard nothing back for 3 days. An inauspicious start to our business relationship. I did a little searching on the company and found a forum that they sponsor, it is for Tiburons, but from what I read not too many people are pleased with them. More research was required. Went to the spoiler manufacturer’s web site and found they have a distributor in Canada and Scotland that I thought I’d give a try. The Canadian’s replied to my email in a matter of minutes (more like it.) They do ship to the US, but the price was about $50 higher than the relaxed and dodgey Californian. They also mentioned that this was a new product that they don’t stock so the lead-time could be as much as 2 months. None of this was mentioned by the CA company. I wrote back to both with some more questions and I’m waiting…
The Scottish fellow replied to my original request and he said, “ATH Hinsberger has a distributor in USA and asks that we respect the distributor territories.” Which may be correct, but seeing as Mr. Canada said OK, I figure this was a polite brush off and that he didn’t want the hassle of overseas shipping (and something that can be a pain in the a$$.)

The Canadian has already replied to my further questions, so you can guess where I will be spending my money. If I pull the trigger. With painting this little mod will be in the middle 400 dollar range. This is not chump change for me and sounds like a major investment for something that will occasionally be scraped on parking lot dividers. The Mazda unit I put on the old blue car was like a hundred and a quarter. Stay tuned.

Fog Lights As DRLs Revisited

Finally accomplished what I set out to do all those weeks ago. To prevent to possible immolation of the dashboard I hooked the same +12v that goes to the fog light relay to where the voltage would be applied to the switch normally (how Mazda does it, just with a different source.) I then hooked the ground from the switch directly to the metal frame where the relays are mounted, bypassing the headlight switch, allowing the fog lights to operate without the need for the low beams to be on. Now if the ignition is on and the switch is pressed, the fog lights are on. I will now train myself to turn them on in the day and off at night, unless of course there is fog.

While I had the combination cruise control and fog light switch out of the dash I swapped the two colored light bulbs. For some odd reason the fog lights had a green lamp and the cruise had an orange one, while when the cruise is active there is a green light in the speedo cluster that says, oddly enough, CRUISE to let you know it is, well, active. My swapperoo matched greens for the cruise. The orange for the fog lights will make sense too when I do the future mod of getting some of that protective film in yellow to put over lights…

Fog Light DRLs

I managed to get my hands on a copy of the wiring diagram for the fog lights and as a bonus the headlight circuits.* I’ve had it for a while, but today I decided to attempt the mod again (my first ended in failure.)

With careful study of the circuit wiring diagrams it looked like for the fog light relay to trip, turning on the fogs, it needed +12v coming from the headlight relay and a ground available when the headlight switch is in low. My ideal situation would be to have an ignition on twelve volts applied to one end of the relay and a ground applied to the other whenever the lights are off. This would disable the fog lights as fog lights, but make them daytime running lights – always on when the car is running and off at night.

First thing I decided to do was cut the red/yellow wire. I really didn’t want to, but I could never get the relay loose from the connector, so snip I did. Hooked up the barrel splice to the +12v wire I found in my original attempt and the red/yellow wire running into the relay connector. Figuring that this would not change any operation as the ground from the headlight switch was still missing, I tested the setup. Much to my surprise when the key was turned to IGN the fogs came on. Not only were they on, but the light in the switch was on, even though the switch was not depressed. I tried turning the lights on, another surprise awaited, as when they came on, the fogs went off (along with the light in the switch.) So I pushed in the fog light switch and the fogs came on, they also went out when I turned on the high beams, just like they are supposed to.

Following the diagram out, I must be getting a ground from somewhere I’m not supposed to be, through either the left front low beam or somewhere in the instrument cluster. Seeing as my +12v is only applied when the ignition is on I won’t be running down the battery or anything. The current draw to trip that relay is probably small enough that I won’t do any damage to anything, but I would still like to know where it is coming from. When we go for a drive tonight I’ll see if I can figure out which one by looking at the headlight and the instrument cluster in the dark.

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, It’s Off To HHI We Go

Time to go pack the trunk with our custom fitted luggage for the weekend get away to Hilton Head Island. It is a semi-working trip as Saturday morning I will taking condo interior photos so the web site can get updated some. Hope to snap a couple new Post Office pictures for that gallery on the trip too.

Picked up the framed new caricature tonight. I’m going to hang it on the same wall as the old one. They are going in a vertical arrangement and I can’t figure out which one I should put on top. Should it be the new one as the top would be considered a position of dominance, or should the new one go in the lower position as that is more eye-level? Stay tuned….

I really should be out with the California Duster and/or Quik Detailer erasing the pine pollen dust off the car in prep for the trip, but instead I sit here typing away.

Snake’s Nest Of Wiring

Got the DVD player this morning and spent most of the evening hooking it up. Wouldn’t have taken that long, but I took this opportunity to clean up the snake’s nest of wiring and patch cable behind the entertainment center. Cool thing about the player is that if you put a DVD in it, the TV automatically turns on and switches to the correct video input. Think I’ll put off the next couple of Miata mods and buy a JVC receiver and VCR to complete the package, this compulink thing is coool.

Started down, still down.
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