1992 Mazda MX-5
Discussion
Not enough MX5 content on PH is there?! This is my sixth NA MX5 and third V-Spec.
My history with MK1 MX5’s goes back to 2009 when my then girlfriend (now mk1 wife) needed to replace her Clio and I managed to persuade her that a rusty, near 20 year old roadster was the obvious choice. Luckily, she loved it and kept it a while. Our other car at the time was my Elise. Good job we didn’t have kids back then. A few other MX5’s came and went over the years mixed in with more sensible family transport but we had a lean spell from 2016 until late 2023 where we were without one.
Got that MX5 itch again and ended up buying a £300 restoration project sight unseen in Sept 23. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that ultimately proved to beyond even the most tenuous definition of an economic repair and ultimately I broke the car and scrapped the shell. Really didn’t feel good about that but on the bright side, I now have boxes and boxes of spare parts including an engine, box and diff.
Out with the old...
And in with the new.
About the time that the red car went off to car heaven, I found this car advertised. Quite strong money at the time but had been subject to fairly substantial restoration work by a retired enthusiast for the last few years and eventually a deal was struck. Picked it up in Jan 24.
It’s a 1992 1.6 V-Spec Eunos Roadster JDM import. In the UK since 2004. When I picked it up it was very good but certainly not perfect but there were no surprises.
Good stuff, it’s very good in terms of corrosion. Both sills were replaced by the previous owner and done well and it’s had lots of underbody protection and cavity treatment. It’s still not an area, I feel I can relax about but as NA MX5’s go, big box ticked. Chassis rails are straight. Paintwork was really quite good all over. It has 14” BBS OEM wheels which I love and are quite rare. 4x matching Yokohama tyres too which is always a good sign. It had recently had new pads and discs all round, cam belt, plugs, leads, , hoses consumables etc. Has a Mk2 mohair hood with heated glass screen. Being the Mk2 hood, you don’t have to unzip this to fold it down, big advancement! The car was bog standard other than rear exhaust section.
The bad stuff, well nothing too drastic fortunately. The driver’s electric window was barely working. Speedo was over reading by 10mph everywhere. Seats have been refurbished but quite poorly in my opinion so while it’s nice that there are no holes etc, it’s something I want to sort. There was a little deformation on the front bumper. A few interior bulbs weren’t working and like many imports, it had a nasty aftermarket foglight switch. AC didn’t work which was not a big surprise. And there was a good old squeak from the PAS belt on full lock. And the driver side lock key did not match the others which was a pain.
And a bit of a positive or negative depending on your outlook, it came with a quite rare JDM double din stereo. I ended up selling this for quite good money and a very kind PH member, Squishey gave me a single DIN pioneer unit to replace it which most importantly to me was illuminated in green to match the rest of the car.
Interior when I bought the car.
A few things I dealt with straight away, I bought an OEM foglight switch and wired that in and just because I’m a tart and hate blanking plates, I bought an OEM dimmer switch for the third switch position so now it has HRW switch, fog and dimmer for a fully populated panel. Many MX5’s have none!
I replaced the double DIN with squishey’s pioneer. I appreciate I’ve probably lost some ‘scene points’ doing this and I did find the mechanism very cool on the original but I want Bluetooth and I like something that blends in. I might ultimately get something that looks a little older but the Pioneer is working nicely for now. Nice to have that extra cubby space too.
JDM-tastic stereo
Replaced with something more conventional.
I have completely removed the AC system. I didn’t look too deeply into why it wasn’t working but since it uses the old, now banned gas type, it would have needed quite a lot of remedial work to get it functioning again. Removing it creates a lot more room to work under the bonnet as the condenser and second fan come out as well as the compressor and lines. Under the dash, I replaced the evaporator with the by pass pipe from my box of spares.
I have done loads of cleaning and a bit of touch of paint here and there but actually the car wasn’t bad to start with.
Swapped the lock set from my old car so I have macthing keys all round. Even did the glove box and centre storage locks as I’m that sad!
The faulty driver side window prompted me to put manual windows in. The driver side regulator had been replaced with a nasty generic one that was no longer functional. The passenger side one was original and still worked but not that well so instead of spending a lot of money on two new regulators which never last that long anyway, I decided to use the manual regulators from my scrap car. I like this because it simplifies things but it did mean I needed to get a blanking plate for the window switches (just after I’d eliminated blanking plates from the dash!) and the teardrop speaker door cards that my car came with had to be replaced as they clash with the window crank handles.
Full compliment of OEM switched.
Keep-fit windows and suitable door cards installed.
Speedo error was easily corrected by removing speedo needle and clocking it backward by 10mph. I love how simple these cars are to work on! While, in there, I replaced a couple of bulbs so the instrument panel was properly illuminated.
PAS squeak was just belt tension which I sorted when I removed the AC as it then needed a shorter belt anyway.
After that, it was all about driving it! It was pressed into early action almost immediately as I needed to go up to the Cairngorms for work at short notice and our BMW needed a tyre and our E-Up would have made for a long journey. I naturally went the Glenshee way and then onto the old military road to Braemar and beyond. This was February last year. Roof down at night on the way there. Bloody freezing it was but also fantastic. Headlights were terrible though so were quickly replaced with some Raybrig ones that I found locally. They look standard but are quite a lot more effective. It’s had a couple of other Scotland trips since but has mainly been used on some of the fantastic local roads in the North Pennines. I absolutely bloody love driving these things. You can thrash them so hard without doing silly speeds and they seem to just lap it up. Even sounds quite good with the roof down.
Ghetto bumper repair worked a treat.
Not had too much else to sort. Did have a coolant leak that’s fixed by doubling up on jubilee clips but really I need to replace a couple of the steel runs eventually. Front crank seal leaks a little but not major. Exhaust mid pipe had a rattling heat shield so my heavy handed fix was to replace the entire manifold and mid pipe with a stainless 4 to 1 which also required a new o2 sensor. I have replaced a few other bits and bobs along the way, some interior trim, engine mounts etc. Just this week, I had an issue where the car would sometimes stall coming to a halt. Turned out it had lost a little rubber buffer on the clutch pedal that engages with a switch to let the ECU know that the clutch is depressed. Found a replacement in my box of bits. Bloody handy having most of a spare car to hand!
Future plans...
I want to retrim the seats as they’re not that great close up. Might fit heating elements at the same time because I’m soft!
I’ll probably put a more retro looking blutooth stereo in at some point and upgrade the speakers at the same time.
I fancy doing a total refurb of the front and rear sub frames and associated bits but I’ll do that off the car with a second set of parts to minimize down time. A torsen LSD might be part of that little project.
And lastly, the biggy, I fancy doing an engine and gearbox rebuild on my spare lump and box. Partly as a learning exercise for me but partly as chance to do some minor upgrades. I’ve always been of the opinion that the power levels are about right for thrashing about on the road but I don’t like that the standard 1.6 runs out of steam at 6k rpm. The plan would be to build up the other engine with a minor head skim and mild cam upgrade but otherwise just deal with any worn parts and rebuild it. Same with the box but I might pop a slightly lighter fly wheel in at the same time. I’ll tread carefully with this as I want to retain all of the reliability and road manners. I’ll do the rebuild ‘offline’ then swap over when the going is good. Should be fun.
My history with MK1 MX5’s goes back to 2009 when my then girlfriend (now mk1 wife) needed to replace her Clio and I managed to persuade her that a rusty, near 20 year old roadster was the obvious choice. Luckily, she loved it and kept it a while. Our other car at the time was my Elise. Good job we didn’t have kids back then. A few other MX5’s came and went over the years mixed in with more sensible family transport but we had a lean spell from 2016 until late 2023 where we were without one.
Got that MX5 itch again and ended up buying a £300 restoration project sight unseen in Sept 23. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that ultimately proved to beyond even the most tenuous definition of an economic repair and ultimately I broke the car and scrapped the shell. Really didn’t feel good about that but on the bright side, I now have boxes and boxes of spare parts including an engine, box and diff.
Out with the old...
And in with the new.
About the time that the red car went off to car heaven, I found this car advertised. Quite strong money at the time but had been subject to fairly substantial restoration work by a retired enthusiast for the last few years and eventually a deal was struck. Picked it up in Jan 24.
It’s a 1992 1.6 V-Spec Eunos Roadster JDM import. In the UK since 2004. When I picked it up it was very good but certainly not perfect but there were no surprises.
Good stuff, it’s very good in terms of corrosion. Both sills were replaced by the previous owner and done well and it’s had lots of underbody protection and cavity treatment. It’s still not an area, I feel I can relax about but as NA MX5’s go, big box ticked. Chassis rails are straight. Paintwork was really quite good all over. It has 14” BBS OEM wheels which I love and are quite rare. 4x matching Yokohama tyres too which is always a good sign. It had recently had new pads and discs all round, cam belt, plugs, leads, , hoses consumables etc. Has a Mk2 mohair hood with heated glass screen. Being the Mk2 hood, you don’t have to unzip this to fold it down, big advancement! The car was bog standard other than rear exhaust section.
The bad stuff, well nothing too drastic fortunately. The driver’s electric window was barely working. Speedo was over reading by 10mph everywhere. Seats have been refurbished but quite poorly in my opinion so while it’s nice that there are no holes etc, it’s something I want to sort. There was a little deformation on the front bumper. A few interior bulbs weren’t working and like many imports, it had a nasty aftermarket foglight switch. AC didn’t work which was not a big surprise. And there was a good old squeak from the PAS belt on full lock. And the driver side lock key did not match the others which was a pain.
And a bit of a positive or negative depending on your outlook, it came with a quite rare JDM double din stereo. I ended up selling this for quite good money and a very kind PH member, Squishey gave me a single DIN pioneer unit to replace it which most importantly to me was illuminated in green to match the rest of the car.
Interior when I bought the car.
A few things I dealt with straight away, I bought an OEM foglight switch and wired that in and just because I’m a tart and hate blanking plates, I bought an OEM dimmer switch for the third switch position so now it has HRW switch, fog and dimmer for a fully populated panel. Many MX5’s have none!
I replaced the double DIN with squishey’s pioneer. I appreciate I’ve probably lost some ‘scene points’ doing this and I did find the mechanism very cool on the original but I want Bluetooth and I like something that blends in. I might ultimately get something that looks a little older but the Pioneer is working nicely for now. Nice to have that extra cubby space too.
JDM-tastic stereo
Replaced with something more conventional.
I have completely removed the AC system. I didn’t look too deeply into why it wasn’t working but since it uses the old, now banned gas type, it would have needed quite a lot of remedial work to get it functioning again. Removing it creates a lot more room to work under the bonnet as the condenser and second fan come out as well as the compressor and lines. Under the dash, I replaced the evaporator with the by pass pipe from my box of spares.
I have done loads of cleaning and a bit of touch of paint here and there but actually the car wasn’t bad to start with.
Swapped the lock set from my old car so I have macthing keys all round. Even did the glove box and centre storage locks as I’m that sad!
The faulty driver side window prompted me to put manual windows in. The driver side regulator had been replaced with a nasty generic one that was no longer functional. The passenger side one was original and still worked but not that well so instead of spending a lot of money on two new regulators which never last that long anyway, I decided to use the manual regulators from my scrap car. I like this because it simplifies things but it did mean I needed to get a blanking plate for the window switches (just after I’d eliminated blanking plates from the dash!) and the teardrop speaker door cards that my car came with had to be replaced as they clash with the window crank handles.
Full compliment of OEM switched.
Keep-fit windows and suitable door cards installed.
Speedo error was easily corrected by removing speedo needle and clocking it backward by 10mph. I love how simple these cars are to work on! While, in there, I replaced a couple of bulbs so the instrument panel was properly illuminated.
PAS squeak was just belt tension which I sorted when I removed the AC as it then needed a shorter belt anyway.
After that, it was all about driving it! It was pressed into early action almost immediately as I needed to go up to the Cairngorms for work at short notice and our BMW needed a tyre and our E-Up would have made for a long journey. I naturally went the Glenshee way and then onto the old military road to Braemar and beyond. This was February last year. Roof down at night on the way there. Bloody freezing it was but also fantastic. Headlights were terrible though so were quickly replaced with some Raybrig ones that I found locally. They look standard but are quite a lot more effective. It’s had a couple of other Scotland trips since but has mainly been used on some of the fantastic local roads in the North Pennines. I absolutely bloody love driving these things. You can thrash them so hard without doing silly speeds and they seem to just lap it up. Even sounds quite good with the roof down.
Ghetto bumper repair worked a treat.
Not had too much else to sort. Did have a coolant leak that’s fixed by doubling up on jubilee clips but really I need to replace a couple of the steel runs eventually. Front crank seal leaks a little but not major. Exhaust mid pipe had a rattling heat shield so my heavy handed fix was to replace the entire manifold and mid pipe with a stainless 4 to 1 which also required a new o2 sensor. I have replaced a few other bits and bobs along the way, some interior trim, engine mounts etc. Just this week, I had an issue where the car would sometimes stall coming to a halt. Turned out it had lost a little rubber buffer on the clutch pedal that engages with a switch to let the ECU know that the clutch is depressed. Found a replacement in my box of bits. Bloody handy having most of a spare car to hand!
Future plans...
I want to retrim the seats as they’re not that great close up. Might fit heating elements at the same time because I’m soft!
I’ll probably put a more retro looking blutooth stereo in at some point and upgrade the speakers at the same time.
I fancy doing a total refurb of the front and rear sub frames and associated bits but I’ll do that off the car with a second set of parts to minimize down time. A torsen LSD might be part of that little project.
And lastly, the biggy, I fancy doing an engine and gearbox rebuild on my spare lump and box. Partly as a learning exercise for me but partly as chance to do some minor upgrades. I’ve always been of the opinion that the power levels are about right for thrashing about on the road but I don’t like that the standard 1.6 runs out of steam at 6k rpm. The plan would be to build up the other engine with a minor head skim and mild cam upgrade but otherwise just deal with any worn parts and rebuild it. Same with the box but I might pop a slightly lighter fly wheel in at the same time. I’ll tread carefully with this as I want to retain all of the reliability and road manners. I’ll do the rebuild ‘offline’ then swap over when the going is good. Should be fun.
threespires said:
I'm about to put my wonderful 1991 BBR up for sale. I'm also a serial MX-5 owner but having just had my 80th birthday it's time for me to thin down my collection.
Would appreciate some details if you're serious about selling - I'm looking for a good NA as a summer toy.Muzzer79 said:
threespires said:
I'm about to put my wonderful 1991 BBR up for sale. I'm also a serial MX-5 owner but having just had my 80th birthday it's time for me to thin down my collection.
Would appreciate some details if you're serious about selling - I'm looking for a good NA as a summer toy.Would you like me to PM you with details?
E-numbers said:
Great garage (including the contents). And thank goodness there’s finally some MX5 content in here.
What are your thoughts on the retrim- anything different or a refurb/redo of the factory look?
Thanks. What are your thoughts on the retrim- anything different or a refurb/redo of the factory look?
Regarding the retrim, if Mazda just sold new OEM tan seat covers I'd go with that but unfortunately they don't. Lots of aftermarket ones around but none of them seem to fit properly. So I suspect I'll end up going to a trimmer but I don't want it to look too posh if you know what I mean. Just needs to suit the car and be smart. I don't know how obvious it is on the pics but the finish on the seats at present is far too glossy and some of the crack repairs are really nasty. It's presentable enough for now but certainly something on the long term to-do list
threespires said:
A nice collection there OP.
I'm about to put my wonderful 1991 BBR up for sale. I'm also a serial MX-5 owner but having just had my 80th birthday it's time for me to thin down my collection.
Ha! That's a great little selection. The car I ended up breaking was red. Really fancied a good early red car to match my Lotus and start off a bit of a red car collection but when it came to buying a replacement there weren't any red cars around that I liked the look of and I've always been a sucker for green over tan. I'm sure someone is going to be very happy with your BBR when it goes! I'm about to put my wonderful 1991 BBR up for sale. I'm also a serial MX-5 owner but having just had my 80th birthday it's time for me to thin down my collection.
That looks splendid, sounds like you have a good solid one there! I think the combination of the wheels, colour and interior just works so well. I applaud your decision to return to manual windows and natural air temperatures too. A lot of unnecessary weight and complication saved!
My mother still has a 1.6 NA (1997) and there’s a lot of charm in driving it. Enjoy!
My mother still has a 1.6 NA (1997) and there’s a lot of charm in driving it. Enjoy!
darkyoung1000 said:
That looks splendid, sounds like you have a good solid one there! I think the combination of the wheels, colour and interior just works so well. I applaud your decision to return to manual windows and natural air temperatures too. A lot of unnecessary weight and complication saved!
My mother still has a 1.6 NA (1997) and there’s a lot of charm in driving it. Enjoy!
Thanks! Yep, they certainly have a lot of charm. A nice bit of escapism driving these. They feel quite 'classic' now but without major worries of AA callouts. My mother still has a 1.6 NA (1997) and there’s a lot of charm in driving it. Enjoy!
It's funny, on the simplicity thing, the red MX5 was as basic as they come with manual windows, no AC and non-PAS. The engine bay was fantastically empty. I still have the non-PAS rack from that car and I briefly contemplated swapping to it but having done a bit of reading on the subject, many seem to suggest they don't drive as well like that. And it's quite faff to swap over just to try it. I might give it a whirl one of these days but so far holding off. Having even less to leak/break is appealing though.
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