MikeA's NA8 Retrovation

[MikeA]

I deleted the radio antenna when I sorted the trunk battery rust issue and got onto removing the radio today.




Thought I'd check the shift boots while things were stripped, and not altogether surprisingly, I found the Upper Shift Boot torn.




Whipped it off to check the lower shift boot, and found it torn too.




Resulting in...




None of the internal bits appear broken apart from one of the Tabbed Wave Washers, but I'll replace everything I can while it's open. Fun at the local dealership sorting out parts tomorrow.

[— kung fu jesus —]

Excellent progress! I have friends, a couple living in Tauranga, with a pair of Miatas. Silverstone and a red, both NAs. I know that's a fair bit north of you.

[MikeA]

Excellent progress! I have friends, a couple living in Tauranga, with a pair of Miatas. Silverstone and a red, both NAs. I know that's a fair bit north of you.

Thanks for the words of encouragement. Quite frankly I'm a bit disappointed at how long it's taken me to get going with car but it seems there's always something more important .

Tauranga is about 520km or 323 miles by road, northeast of Wellington and is great, particularly this time of year. Lots of sunshine and great fishing. I don't get there much but I should as what is probably the biggest NZ breaker of MX5's is in the area. I've just bought quite a nice set of seats from there.

[— kung fu jesus —]

Just keep at it when you can, the car will take care of you. They are pretty forgiving.

I have another friend in Wainui, but he's more into muscle cars. He's an ex-pat from the US about to wrap up his custom e28 5 series BMW with a stroked, built Ford V8. It should scoot pretty well. ;). The aforementioned couple, he's from the US (Chattanooga, TN), she's from Norway. Great couple.

I need to get down there. *sigh*

[MikeA]

I set off bright an early this morning for the closest Mazda dealership and the customary arm wrestle with the parts guy whose well and truely focussed on the pending Christmas Ham and accompanying liquid refreshments. You all know the drill. Chassis number required despite me furnishing all the part numbers.

Long story short, the chassis number lead him to a diagram that didn't show the upper and lower bushes and an ensuing discussion that if my gearbox had these, it must have been changed at some point because the drawing he had was obviously correct. I eventually convinced him that without these bushes the bloody thing wouldn't work and that the diagram was incomplete.

Eventually he found an '89 exploded parts view that had most of the parts required and we could get onto the important task of picking the parts. Most were available but not the optional flat washers and the anti rotation bush that goes in the ball on the shaft itself. Luckily mine didn't look too worse for wear so I decided to go with using my old parts where I had to. I then parted with too much money and headed home to fit the aforementioned jewels.

There are a number of threads around discussing the parts and the process so I'll only highlight what I found different. The to wavy washers I got today had three lugs which locate than on the upper and lower bushes and prevent rotation. My old wavy washers didn't and I cannot see signs of them having broken off. Piece of cake to fit the parts to the shaft, drain and replace about 90ml of transmission fluid in the turret, and get everything fitted.

I can tell you that despite not replacing the anti-rotation bush on the shaft itself, everything else has made a huge difference to the feel of the gear change. I'd urge you to consider this if you're finding your stick a bit wobbly ;).

The part numbers for the upper and lower bushes seem the hardest to find:
M501-17-481 Upper change bush
R502-17-492 Lower change bush


Upper bush




Lower bush




Wavy washer comparison




Wavy washer fitted to lower bush




Shift lever fitted with inner boot in place




Outer boot fitted

[MikeA]

Just keep at it when you can, the car will take care of you. They are pretty forgiving.

I have another friend in Wainui, but he's more into muscle cars. He's an ex-pat from the US about to wrap up his custom e28 5 series BMW with a stroked, built Ford V8. It should scoot pretty well. ;). The aforementioned couple, he's from the US (Chattanooga, TN), she's from Norway. Great couple.

I need to get down there. *sigh*

Methinks it's time for a visit then. That e28 sounds like an interesting project. Do you know if he's documented it anywhere? The guy that did my wheels dropped a Chevy motor into a Ferrari (genuine, not a kit) to the horror of the Tifosi.

[— kung fu jesus —]

Methinks it's time for a visit then. That e28 sounds like an interesting project. Do you know if he's documented it anywhere? The guy that did my wheels dropped a Chevy motor into a Ferrari (genuine, not a kit) to the horror on the Tifosi.

He's documented it on a small, close, private Facebook page. We've been helping where we can, both with parts and knowledge. Common performance parts we find easily here have been a royal pain for him. He couldn't locate some aftermarket BMW aero bits, so he made his own, which turned out fantastic! He got it to run recently, but he's doing additional training as a nurse, so it's small steps moving forward plus the learning curve on the electronics. His paint should be happening soon, hoping we convinced him to go with a different color than what he liked. I have been trying to persuade him to paint it mode grau (Porsche Fashion Grey), but he likes beige. :/

[MikeA]

He's documented it on a small, close, private Facebook page. We've been helping where we can, both with parts and knowledge. Common performance parts we find easily here have been a royal pain for him. He couldn't locate some aftermarket BMW aero bits, so he made his own, which turned out fantastic! He got it to run recently, but he's doing additional training as a nurse, so it's small steps moving forward plus the learning curve on the electronics. His paint should be happening soon, hoping we convinced him to go with a different color than what he liked. I have been trying to persuade him to paint it mode grau (Porsche Fashion Grey), but he likes beige. :/

Simplistically the scrapping of NZ tariff protection and dropping of import restrictions kicked off a booming Jap focussed used-import business. Pure economics around location(proximity to Japan v Europe), availability and price meant that Euro models just didn't get a show in. It's also a very small market in reality.

I have issues with beige so just about any color would have been better, but I do like Porsche Fashion Grey.

[MikeA]

With the centre console, tombstone etc stripped out, it's probably time to fit some other bits I've had stuck away for a while.


Reproduction M2 Tombstone I picked up for half of nothing off YAJ. At the time I wasn't ready to shell out the big bucks for the genuine thing, and to be honest, the reproduction is not badly put together, although the spray finish is probably not ideal.




M2-1028 centre carpet with gearshift boot and ring.




M2-1001 Handbrake and boot.

[BRGNA8]

I saw that M2 tombstone reproduction on YJA too! Scored yourself a bargain there mate! nicely done!

[MikeA]

Paid a visit to one of the local signwriting/plastics guys and picked up a piece of textured ABS to fill the hole in the tombstone seeing as I'm going without a radio. Also picked up a piece of acrylic to use as backing.

All held together with some ninja double sided tape.

I took the opportunity to enhance the outcome with some Revlimiter love.

[MikeA]

Spent a bit of time getting some of the bits and pieces mentioned earlier installed.

I must admit I found myself sitting and thinking about where some of these parts had come from and what stories they could tell if they could talk.

• Reproduction M2 Tombstone and blanking panel
• M2 1028 Centre carpet, shift ring and leather boot
• M2 1001 Handbrake and leather boot
• M2 1001 Gear knob
• Revlimiter hazard and light switches

All went without a hitch apart from finding a that a small ant colony had taken up residence in my Dremel case. Everything needs a good clean up but here's a photo taken when I finished up.

[— kung fu jesus —]

I have a similar center console configuration. I find it more comfortable and not as inconvenient as I thought. Looks great in yours.

[MikeA]

I have a similar center console configuration. I find it more comfortable and not as inconvenient as I thought. Looks great in yours.

Thanks for that. I did give it a bit of thought as it does limit storage in an already limited interior, but decided I'd give it a go. Funny thing was that he first thing I did when I got into the car today was look for somewhere to stow my phone. Into the glove box it went.

Apart from some short motorway driving, I'd not been on a decent drive since the wheels, tires, shifter rebuild, so I took advantage of some good weather and no pending chores/projects around the house to head out for a bit of country driving which included around 15km of twisties.

What a differences the afore mentioned work has made to the feel of the car. I can only imagine what a good set of coilover would do.

[MikeA]

Deleted duplicate post.