Miatatude

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME!

Last night on the test drive of my new mod, fog lights as DRLs, I got as far as the back wheels out of the garage before I smelled burning. (I used to be an Aviation Electronics Technician in Uncle Sam’s Yacht Club, so I’m intimately familiar with the smell of burnt electrical bits.) Instantly turned off the car and snipped my new +12v wire to the fog light relay. I don’t think I ruined anything, all the background lights on the cluster still work, all the normal lights came on when starting…

Funny, I didn’t smell anything on my initial test, the only difference this time was the car was running.

So it’s back to the drawing board. I guess my next step will be to make my own ground to the relay, so current won’t be going willy-nilly through out the car.

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.

Happy Birthday Diane

My little sister is 47 today. Hope you got our silly little card. Hope you didn’t eat too much cake and ice cream. Hope you celebrated more than I do for my birthday. Usually the day itself it is no big deal for me because it is near the end of a month long holiday that Donna and I call birthanniversarydaymonth. It runs from Donna’s birthday at the end of August, through my birthday towards the end of September to our anniversary at the end of September. It is 30 days of hijinks, dining out and rampant spending on ourselves and each other. I can hardly wait until it happens again….

Palace Coup

In the little over a week since Tech Day and my bemoaning the lack of sound improvement the new muffler made, it is starting to come around. Getting just a little throatier. Still dead quiet at idle and cruise (which is good,) but it sounds a bit better under acceleration now. If it improves just a bit more I can forget all about that intake business.

On that very same day I named the car, The Emperor, but have not been able to refer to it as such since. My guess is that it may now be what the car calls itself, but to me it has no name. I’m just not the type of person to name inanimate objects. I feel that this is my biggest failure in Miata geekdom, on par with my inadequacy to obtain sci-fi geekhood because I haven’t been able to read (nor watch the movie of) Frank Herbert’s Dune.

I Forgot To Mention

One other “Mod” I did on Saturday was to stop the buzz when you leave the key in the ignition and open the door, etc. It was a simple enough procedure and everything you need to know can be found right here – 1999 Miata Key “Buzzer” Disconnect.

While I was swapping interior bits with Dave I asked if he would like me to disconnect his too. He said sure and I went ahead and did it, but I was thrown for a small loop when I located the wiring harness to disconnect it. The instructions on the page said locate the connector with two wires coming out, he didn’t have one with just two. I went back and looked at what I disconnected on my car and then matched up connectors to one on his car. If you look carefully at the bottom photo at the above link you can see the connector will hold 4 wires, but it only has two in it, that is the way mine is. Dave’s had 4 wires coming out of it. The only differences in our cars is that his is an automatic transmission, so we figured the other two wires must have something to do with that. When disconnected, his buzzer stopped and all other functions seemed to work as before. I wonder what those extra wires might be for?

It’s Where?

Yesterday afternoon Donna’s mom had a doctors appointment. She still can’t drive because of the recent surgery on her left arm, so she had Oliver from across the street take her. Mom being kind, offered to let Oliver drive her car so he could save his gas (which is slowly creeping up on $2 a gallon around here.) Mom was scheduled to get a shot because she was anemic at discharge from the hospital after the arm thing. They tested her blood and told her she didn’t need the shot after all, woohoo, good news.

When they got back in the car, it wouldn’t start, uh-oh. Mom didn’t have her purse with her Triple A card in it, so she called me. I couldn’t break away, so Donna headed over in the Miata to rescue them! I guess if worse came to worse she could make two trips. 🙂

By the time Donna made it to the doctor’s office Oliver had trouble shot it to a dead battery (I initially thought starter as it had been acting up lately.) Donna’s mom had some jumper cables, so Oliver directed Donna to pull up close to mom’s Civic. A little closer than Donna was comfortable with, but nobody hit anybody. Oliver then told Donna to open the hood, but Donna had never done this, so she was at a loss as to how to do it. With a little direction she finds the release and pops it open. Oliver lifts the hood and starts looking around, but he can’t find the battery. He asks Donna where the battery is, but she is so flustered, all she can think of is, “Maybe because our car is so small it doesn’t need a battery.” As soon as she is finished saying this, she remembers, “Its in the trunk.”

“Its in the trunk?” Oliver replies incredulously. So they close the hood and Donna turns the car around and backs up, under Oliver’s direction, once again closer than she felt comfortable with. When you open the trunk of the Miata the first thing you see is the CD changer on the left hand side. Oliver points to it and asks, “Is that the battery?” Now seriously doubting Oliver’s ability to accomplish this battery jumping task, Donna waves over a passerby. Before the man even makes it up to where everyone is, Oliver has found the battery under the carpet on the right side and has the cables hooked up. The man asks Donna what is up and when she replies, “We are jump starting the car,” looking at the way the cars are aligned, he must really wonder about the mechanical aptitude of this older couple and one woman. About the time he peeks in the Miata’s trunk, Oliver gets the now rejuvenated Civic to start, so our kindly stranger turns and walks away shaking his head. As he retreats, he is heard to mumble, “Its in the trunk?”

Folks, it is in the trunk to help the Miata attain a near perfect 50/50 weight distribution between front and rear.

Mats Make It

They are here. Arrived on the doorstep around 2:00 PM according to my mother-in-law. I slipped them in the car as soon as I got home. Niiice. As a bonus, Donna likes them too. I am now officially done personalizing The Emperor.

The only thing that gets done now will be to add some of theses cool looking black body trim pieces found on the Miata Coupe that go around the bottom of the body – here, here and here – probably never happen though, the coupe is for the Japanese market only, so I doubt my local Mazda dealer will be carrying these items.