Month: December 2017

Underneath Mazda’s R&D center in southern California lies a treasure trove of automobiles. Hidden away from the prying eyes of the public, the Japanese automaker has everything from race cars that ran at Le Mans to the original trio of Miatas that graced the show floor in Chicago when the world’s best selling roadster made its debut oh so many years ago hidden away behind a nondescript garage door. Thanks to our favorite man from Mazdaspeed, we and a few friends got the chance to get up close and personal with everything from an argyle patterned rotary powered race car to one of the very few fixed roof Miatas in existence.

Welcome to the Mazda Basement.

Continue reading “Hidden Gems in the Mazda Basement”

What do you do when your pop-ups just want to stay up? Call The Parts Group and start ordering relays and switches before taking your tombstone apart to cut yourself on rusty metal tabs and find vintage cigarette butts. Start by prying behind the top left spot of the eyeball vent to expose the first of a few screws. The rest are at the bottom, but be careful not to tug too hard on the wires behind the dash. This is also a great time to clean up any half-assed radio installations that might be annoying you.

UPDATE: Did Not Work ended up needing the LA12 Relay

Continue reading “Removing the Tombstone to Fix the Headlights”

One of the best parts about buying an early Miata is that Mazda continued to develop what is essentially that same car, adding improvements, for over a decade. Many of the items that came standard on the second generation, and later NA, can be retrofitted with minimal modification to those first-year vehicles.

Case in point being brakes, the very first Miatas came with teeny tiny tea saucers for brake discs; and if you have ever pushed one of these cars on the downhill then you certainly understand why that is not a good thing. Luckily all NBs came with what was considered Sport brakes for the NA, and by bolting a set of later model caliper brackets along with the right sized brake discs and pads can give you what feels like 200% better braking.

Not only is the new pad larger which means more swept area for the friction inducing contact to occur, but because the length of the lever arm has increased the torque force applied by the enlarged stoppers means more leverage to bring the car to a halt. Science.

Continue reading “Big Brake Kit on a Budget”