Miata Mods

The new Miata comes with some small black accent pieces all the way around the lower edges of the car. Those accents look good, but they also have what they call the Appearance Package that comes on the Club trim as standard. These are slightly bigger and a little more aggressive looking and are available as a port installed option for around fifteen hundred bucks on some cars.

Mine did not come so equipped. I’ve seen a car with the package and I like the looks, so I ordered most of the appearance package from my dealer. I say most because the $1500 option includes a trunk lip spoiler that I’m not interested in. Mainly because it comes in gloss black like the lower trim pieces and it would look tacked on. Maybe if it was body color…

My total for just the parts was a little over $1,100 and I figured I’d put it on myself. After all I added the 1st gen R Package (front lip, rear diffuser & trunk lip spoiler) on my second Miata and I installed a front lip and side skirts on Miata #3, a 2nd gen car, so how hard could it be. For the heck of it I asked the service department how much would they charge me to put this new package on this new car, $1,410.35 was the answer. I said thanks, but no thanks, I’ll do it myself.

To get ready for the job I watched the 2 YouTube videos I could find to get some idea how difficult it was going to be. It doesn’t seem too complicated, but it will take me several days to do the whole job because I’ll probably do the front lip on one day, then the rear diffuser on a second and the side sills on the third. It is similar to some of the other pieces that I’ve done before, there is automotive grade double stick tape, plastic spacer pieces, longer screws, etc. But there are some new twists, there is some riveting and installing something called jack nuts. The good thing is that all the holes that need drilling are into plastic instead of metal like on the side skirts for that 2nd gen car.

So, I needed to buy a rivet tool and a jack nut tool, Amazon Prime to the rescue. While I was at it I went ahead ordered a set of Metric drill bits. In the videos I watched they just used SAE drill bits that were close, but what’s another twenty bucks in the grand scheme of things?

I did learn in one of the videos you need a small a piece of plastic angle iron that goes on under the front behind the new front lip. (aerodynamic reasons?) So, I had to call the parts department to have them get that too. Fortunately, even though I had them order it a couple days after the three big pieces, it came in at the same time as the rest of it on yesterday.

I knew, based on seeing those videos, that the boxes the parts come in are pretty big, so I took the Mini to pick them up. When I saw all three boxes there in the parts department I wondered if they would all make it into the Mini. I had the back seats already folded down, but I had to slide the front passenger seat as far forward as it would go, remove the headrest and recline the back of the seat. Even with that, they just barely fit inside the car enough to close the rear hatch. For the ride home the only rearview I had was through the driver’s side outside mirror.

Last night I opened all the big boxes so I could pull out all the instructions and see just what I’ve gotten myself into. Well, wouldn’t you know it, there in the instructions for the rear diffuser is a section that said “Additional Parts Required”, so now I need to order some $15 sticky strips. Not that this particular thing is going to hold me back, all the instructions say, “For proper adhesion of the double stick tape this should be done when the temperature is over 60 degrees.” That ain’t happening here until spring…

That thing I was waiting for showed up not long after I finished the last post. So naturally I decided to put the new muffler on right then and there. I was ready. I’d watched a couple install videos and I even ordered a set of muffler hanger removal pliers from Amazon.

The muffler is attached to the car with 4 rubber muffler hangers and two studs on the muffler that attach it to the mid-pipe. I squirted soapy water on the rubber hangers for lubrication and to give it time to work, I got out a pair of jack stands and jacked up the back of the car, so it would be easier to get at everything. I laid down the flattened muffler box as a pad so I wasn’t laying right on the driveway. Next, I unscrewed the nuts on the studs, one nut and spring came off while the other stud came right out of the muffler flange. So, I was left with this:

Because the studs reside in the muffler itself, they both need to come out so that they can go into my new muffler. The same thing happened on the installation video I watched as the manufacturer included it on the muffler’s order page. The fellow got out his vice grips and twisted it right off. I went and got my vice grips and try as I might that sucker was not coming off. I jumped in the Mini and drove over to Autozone to get some liquid wrench, thinking that’ll do the trick. Nope, several soakings and hammering away had zero effect.

Another option would be to try the ol’ jam nut trick, but I needed another of the right sized nut. There was one right in front of me on the stud that did come out, but unfortunately it was stuck on the stud with the same intensity as the stud that didn’t come out of the muffler. I took the stud that came out, put it in my pocket and headed to Lowes to get a nut. I screwed the stud into the handy panel they have by the drawers with all the loose hardware and found that I needed a M10x1.25 size. I open up the metric drawer and the only M10 nuts they had were M10x1.50. Shit.

Do I chance it and drive 5 miles east to Home Depot to see if they have a M10x1.25 nut? Which is probably unlikely, or do I throw a Hail Mary and drive 5 miles west to the Mazda dealer? I headed west. Even though the odds of the Mazda dealer having one of those nuts or even another stud were just as long as the Home Depot, at least when I get there if they don’t have it, they can order the genuine Mazda parts for me. They didn’t have the parts in stock, so I asked them to order me a stud and a nut. Being a belt and suspenders guy, I said, “Better yet, order two of each.” They’ll be here Tuesday.

When I got home, I looked at the back end of the Miata provocatively hoisted up in the air on jack stands and contemplated leaving it that way for the next 5 days. I thought it would be better sitting on the ground so I started to gather up all the tools and such underneath the back of the car. Look back up at the photo above, do you see the stud in the muffler with its nut off and the stud that came out with the nut still attached? Do you also see the 2 springs that give the muffler mid-pipe connection a little play? Well, I could only find one of those springs. Where could it be? I looked all over the driveway. I checked to see if it rolled down towards the street. I check in the grass next to the driveway. I checked in the shed where I’d been in and out of looking for the right nut in my 20-year drawer. I looked in the car. I looked in the house. I looked in the Mini. Nowhere.

Instead of another drive, this time I called Mazda and luckily the parts guy I was dealing with was still there. I told him that I now have a missing spring and that I’m blaming it on squirrels. The local rodent family and I are in a battle to get to see whether they can live in the little gap between the shed and the house (this is a future blog post hopefully.) Could he order me 2 of those springs as well. He did and they also will be here Tuesday.

When I hung up, I remembered that I couldn’t leave the Miata sit there. I would need to move it to have the driveway clear, because on Friday folks are coming over to pick up the hospital bed we had for Donna. The bed, along with nearly everything else she needed, I have been donating so it can get to another ALS patient who needs it. Crap. I needed to put the stock muffler back on the car. I put the nut and spring on the stud that stayed in the muffler and the screwed the springless stud in and that will have to be good enough for the quick move out and back in the next day.

I am patiently waiting for the UPS driver to arrive. What I bought requires a signature, so I can’t leave the house until that Big Brown Truck pulls up outside. What am I waiting for? Well, first let’s start with, I don’t even take me own advice.

It is that RoadsterSport muffler I waxed poetically about in that same post linked above. I bought the twin-tip version to match what the stock exhaust looks like.

I haven’t joined the local Miata Club, but I did start reading the Miata.net Forum, specifically the ND section that applies to my current generation. Ostensibly so I could learn more about the car and all the new fangled stuff on it that didn’t even exist when my last Miata, the CTBNL, was made.

But, sadly, it is not just the muffler. I was looking to get a stubby antenna to replace the stock one and I found a recommendation about one called, appropriately, The Stubby available from Cravenspeed. While checking out the antenna I noticed that the company is located in Portland, Oregon. Wait a minute, I live there now. So I scrolled through their stuff and found a couple other items that I just had to have, a side mount for the front license plate and the soundtube delete kit. A road trip was planned and executed. Money was spent.

I’m probably going to take a drive over there again next week, I have decided I’d like to get their clear wind deflector to replace the stock plastic basketweave looking one.

Friend of the blog, previous owner of the CTBNL and my Fairy Godbrother, David, had an idea on how he wanted to customize the car when he first bought it in 2015 and preceded to buy up parts to do just that. Before he carried out that original direction, he changed his mind and went another way. Some of those parts were stuffed in a storage space and forgotten about. Fast forward to this year, David is pulling up stakes in our old home town and moving, so guess what he unearthed?

Those forgotten boxes full of Miata goodies. He and I think alike in that the selling unused or unwanted items is a colossal pain. The lookie-loos & lowballers of Craig’s List or Ebay are frightening. Giving out your phone number & meeting with random strangers from the internet, scarier still. Yard sales? Forget about that hassle. Giving the items away to someone who’ll use and appreciate is the way to go. So David texted me and asked if I was interested in a full Nakamae interior for the CTBNL.

I was very interested in the door panels because they are basically flat and I have to be careful when bending my left leg for comfort on trips as it barely fits between the stock molded door pull and the steering wheel. I was unsure of all the rest of the items, because I felt it would be too much diamond quilting. But I said send them anyway, I could the stuff in and if it was too much, I could always take it back out.

UPS dropped off two big boxes on Monday afternoon, so you know for sure, Tuesday right after breakfast I was down in the garage.

First I went in for something easy, the trunk liner. I was amazed at how much “essential gear” I was carrying around in there… After removing the cargo net, the padded “carpet piece”, pulling all the stuff out of the pocket on the left and the things hiding around the spare tire I was ready to put the quilted goodness in.But, not yet, I had to remove the spare and jack to vacuum out the cavity. I have to say it took a lot of jockeying to get the jack to lock down because of the padding, but I got it.

While it looks really good there was no place to put the jack crank arm that used to be attached to the piece that covers the battery or to hide the lug wrench. Plus under there I hid a small tool kit and the tire pressure gage. The cargo net that held the spare ball cap, the Bluetooth OBD reader, the extra CAS, a nut driver for installing the CAS and the stock headlight bulbs (I recently upgraded to LED) looked awful there, so I decided to keep the trunk the way it was before. The Nakamae trunk stuff would look good if I was driving a show car and I think it might have been a nicer item if it just covered that flat stock piece… On the brightside I did clean off the spare tire and pump it back up to the required 60psi from its existing meager 35.

After a quick coffee break I started on the interior in earnest. The first thing to go was the driver side sill piece and then I started in on the driver’s door. I am an expert in taking off the door cards, having done it before a few times to lube the window tracks, all except for the tweeter connector. I always stumble on the, just a bit too short wire, to get the panel oriented to press the tab. You have to take out two small screws to remove the tweeter, so you can put in the flat Nakamae panel. You also have to remove two plastic angle pieces that hold the back of the stock panel. These items are easily installed on assembly because they have an expanding pin that snaps into a hole, but there is no way to get to the back (inside the door) to squeeze the pins to get them back out. I used a big screwdriver to pry them out by breaking them. This required peeling back the plastic sheet, held in place by black tarry goo, that keeps water out of the car’s interior and saves the fiberboard door cards to get the plastic pin piece out so it wouldn’t rattle around in the door. Suffice to say latex gloves and Goo-B-Gone are required here.

The driver’s door took me literally an hour and a half, but the passenger door took maybe 20 minutes because I knew what to do. Did mention that the minimal instruction sheets, with a total of three small photos, were in kanji? The passenger side sill piece was a two minute job. Just the quilted door card in combination with the sill piece was looking very sharp.

Next up was the console. To make this job easier I opted to remove the seats from the car (as a bonus I could vacuum out from under them.) I pulled out the stock console and dropped the retro looking Nakamae piece in its place. Hmmm. Not really feeling that look, plus it would mean losing the cup holders and a small storage bin which we do use (also need that to hold the stuff that was stored in the OEM door pockets.) So, I’m sure in a move that would have made the JDM/retro purists on the Miata.net Forum cry out in anguish, I pulled the quilted piece off the fiberglass base. I lined up the bottom edges of the upholstery on the bottom of the transmission tunnel and cut a slit right down the center. I then carefully trimmed out a section of the middle, leaving just enough, so that I could put our stock console back in its place.

Before putting the seats back in I put in the Nakamae back wall piece and the strip that goes around the back under the convertible top. The only thing left is the back shelf piece, but as I said that will wait until I can get it to an upholstery shop to get it cut to fit around the roll bar. I was worried about the ZeroMotive checked mats not looking good with the diamond quilting, but I think they do go together pretty well.

Couple of not so quick related installation stories:

Underneath the trunk carpet right next to the spare tire was my favorite small putty knife. When we got here I discovered it missing and I was bummed. I bought a new one here and it just wasn’t the same… I remember purposely not wanting to ship it because I wanted to use it to patch all the holes in 778 Boardman Road, but couldn’t ever figure what happened to it.

When the Miata arrived back in January everything was fine, but the stubby radio antenna was missing. I figured it got pilfered while on the cross country ride on an open bay truck. No big deal, so for $10-15 I bought an even stubbier one (I never listen to radio, so what does it matter if it actually works.) Well guess what I found in the driver’s door card pocket.? Got it one, the original stubby antenna… Three possibilities, with the first being the most likely; One, I put it there so it wouldn’t get stolen, two, David it so it wouldn’t get stolen, or three, the transport truck driver did for the same reason.

I was doing this in the garage in just my stocking feet and somewhere while traveling back and forth from the workbench to the car I accidently stepped on the passenger door card as it lay on the floor. I did absolutely zero damage to the card. It was laying flat with the side that goes to the door facing up. The bottom of my right foot was not so lucky. I stepped right on one of the plastic expansion pins that would lock it in place. Owww. I came away with about a quarter inch long gash. After two minutes of direct pressure to stop the bleeding and a makeshift bandage of paper towel and duct tape I kept working until lunch. The only casualties were one sock and my ability to walk around barefoot in the garage anymore.