AWD "Into the Blue" and RS Products surround (NB)

[scenturion]

I just registered here and thought you all might the enjoy some pictures from the process of making my customized gauge cluster.
I didn't know anything about Miata clusters or how they worked. I know a lot more now

I started out looking for an Artworks Dewa cluster on YAJ after I heard about his passing early this year. By pure chance, within a week after I heard the news, my second-favorite design, "Into the Blue", popped up.



The one I found had the "New" cover panel (surround) on it, which I didn't particularly like, but I couldn't say no.

When it arrived via EMS some time later, I immediately swapped my odometer in and installed it.

Pictured here with my original cluster and a donor cluster (more on that in a bit!)


and crappy installed picture


There were a couple immediately obvious issues.
-No dimmer for gauge illumination (why didnt JDM cars have this?)
-No CEL, as JDM cars arent OBD compliant
-No cruise control light, as RHD cars didnt have cruise
-Speedometer does not report speed correctly when used with a USDM odometer unit

I fixed the first issue by putting the gauges into a USDM NB1 gauge housing. Using the USDM flex circuit returned the ability to dim the illumination, and also put the CEL and cruise lights where they would be on a normal NB1 cluster. I simply rerouted the signal from the CEL light to the unused "HOLD" light for automatic cars, and cruise lit up the "ABS" light.



Since the USDM housing has more lights at the bottom it has more plastic and I needed to trim away the plastic with diagonal cutters to make sure the backlighting was even. I also ordered, at great cost, an RS Products surround direct from RS Products in Japan, and a new set of AWD Needle Caps from RSpeed



I reinstalled it and it worked great after this, but the speedometer still wasn't reading right. The last issue ended up having a fairly subtle cause.
Some of the JDM speedometers (the fancy 6-speed ones) had a different "scale" on the gauge than the US speedometers. The JDM speedometer tops out at around 190kph while the US speedometer is 260kph. The odometer unit drives the needle by angle, so by using my original odometer, the speed ended up being about 22% off from a true reading.

For some reason, this really really bugged me.
Shortly after I reinstalled the cluster, I ended up buying an 04 MSM and selling the NB1, pulling the cluster out and leaving it on my shelf. I didn't feel like reinstalling it because it clashed with my black/red MSM interior, and also I was incredibly annoyed by the incorrect speed reading. I got this crazy notion that I could fix it somehow. I couldnt change the frequency of the pulses coming from the speed sensor without making my odometer not count properly, so that was out.

To make a super long story short (maybe I can do another post on it if anyone is interested), I taught myself a whole lot of electronics and designed a custom board that would allow me to arbitrarily adjust the sweep/scale of the gauge. I named the board the Sweep-O-Tron and gave it an appropriate 60's computer font logo.







I also decided that I didnt want to trust my AWD gauges to my own stupid electronic design, so I bought a normal JDM 6-speed cluster from YAJ to act as guinea pig



It took three revisions and dozens of hours of design, testing, and debugging to get it right, but it works great. I set the cluster up so that instead of reading kph, it reads actual mph. It's now a 180mph speedometer lulz. I tested with a GPS, and it's actually more accurate than the stock speedometer.



I installed one of the boards onto the AWD cluster. Having put all this work into it, I definitely had to install the cluster in my MSM. I had to change the wiring slightly, since the NB2 has a couple lights in different locations and has a different headlight circuit. The MSM has ABS but no Cruise, and I had to remove the gas light to get the ABS light. The speedometer was very well calibrated and all of the lights worked.



I also fiddled with the lighting by trying different bulbs and bulb covers until I got a decent even neutral color. I ended up going with Nokya "Hyper White" bulbs for the backlighting, and using a light blue cover on the odometer bulb.

Here's what it looks like currently:









And I'm left with a rather large graveyard of cluster parts