Mazda MX5 NB, Bad Installs and a Win

Well I guess this will set the tone for the rest of what I will find in the car.

I went to the garage to have a real quick poke around (initially looking for an ODB2 port, but seems my car is too old for that) and found some horrible work that has been done in the past.

First off I wasnt given a key to the battery backup alarm siren, so that is going to be fun. My option from here are,
A: $200 for a new siren plus fitting it
B: Pick the lock and disable siren while I work on car
C: Disassemble siren and permanently disable
D: Cut cable and dump siren into bucket of water and see what it sounds like. If that doesn’t kill it, smash it to bits with hammer.

I personally like the idea of option D, but im going to work my way through B and C first, and use D as a last resort.

Not having a key means that if I run the battery flat, or disconnect the battery the damn siren is going to go off until I can restore power to the car. This means that if I want to re-fit an airbag steering wheel, I will have the siren blasting my ears off the whole time. Not an option.

So yes, looking up under the dash I did happen to find the alarm brain and most of the wiring…. just chilling out, not secured to anything, and all the wires a rat’s nest zip tied together. Quality.

Not only that, but I whipped the driver’s door card off (all the half a second it took, since its not secured at all) and oh gosh the horror.

The black wire in the door jamb I mention in the video? I thought that was for the speaker. Nope, that wire runs right across the door, to the locking actuator that has been (badly) added.

That’s not the worst part. This is

Whoever did this install should be hung by the wires. One does not just use tape and zip ties to complete the whole job. But I mean hey, it does actually work. No idea where the plastic moisture barrier went either 😞

Oh, this is the quality speaker in the door too.

I don’t even. Words are lost. Its held with two long wood screws. Seems secure enough though so I will leave it.

About here in this post is where I went back out to the car, removed the door card completely and had a look at the window issue.

The window only rolled down a couple of inches before it crawled to a stop. It seemed to me like something was catching the window and stopping it.

The door card isn’t in bad condition for its age. There is a big crack in the plastic at the top (can be seen in the bottom of the above photo) but I should be able to glue that back together. Most of the clips are there, they just aren’t being used.

With the door card completely off I could have a look at the window mech as it went up and partly down.

I found a couple of studs on the window motor missing nuts 😒 I dug out and fit some.

When watching the window, using my phone since you cannot easily see up into the top of the door, this is what I found.

The white round stopper on the window was getting caught on the grey regulator wire

The wire goes to the top of the door, to the rail. The clip that should hold it out of harms way was floating aimlessly in the air.

I had to wind the window down as far as it would go, and then get my hand in and flick the cable off the stopper. This allowed the window to go down further, take the strain off the cable and allow me to reposition and clip it back into place.

And then BAM

We have a working window. The Auto function works, as does the manual function (that’s me stopping and starting it in the video). I’ll tidy up the door card tomorrow, and then I need to find some plastic sheeting for a new moisture barrier and then it’ll go back together. I greased the rails whilst I was there, and will do the same to the passenger’s door.

So that’s the first win since getting the car. Feels good man.

PS. This is what backing the car into the garage did to the pump that was about a meter behind it. SO MUCH CARBON in the exhaust. If i rev it when stopped, it leaves a trail of carbon from both exhaust tips on the ground.