1990 Mazda Miata MX5 - service

I’ve been stopped once by the police, I ran round in a mk6 transit for a couple of months waiting for a new van.
previous van got hungry and ate the turbo! The transit was very reminiscent of the sort of van driven by a certain subsection of society. It was 10pm, I stepped out and got breathalysed and was polite and helpful and they didn’t know what to do

Although in this case modern is relative as the vehicle sin question are '04 and '07.

Discovery - wife has been saying something not right for weeks which I've ignored putting it down to difference between a new started and the old one. Last weekend there was a failure to proceed, after much churning etc got it started, a few more instances and it's pretty obvious that air is getting into the fuel supply. Off to garage for new fuel filter and air bleed valve, fuel pressure is OK. OK for a day then another failure to proceed, helpfully while I'm a coupe of hundred miles away, so now in garage for new injector seals, ~£300 :-(

Alfa - wife using Alfa while Disco' in garage, yesterday non-starter while she was a stables. Jump start and get it home, flat, really flat batter, charge up over night seems OK this morning but tailgate won't unlock (it only has an electronic lock). It has done this before and I just put it down to Italian car quirkiness (otehrwise known as character).

Meanwhile MX5 just keeps working, I think my next daily might be a more modern Mazda!

What’s the cockerpoo route? Is that instead of a horse?

Time vs money on the alternator. If the garage are good I'd value some car tinkering time over £100.

They say every petrolhead should own an Alfa Romeo at some point so even if it was a diesel estate sport wagon I can now cross that off the list!

I was hoping to get another year or so out of the Alfa but at the weekend it started to make funny noises (probably power steering pump) and on a couple of occasions puffed out a lot of smoke after lifting off (turbo going bad?). Also I have my doubts whether it would get through another MOT on visible smoke and the windscreen is cracked. Having a bit of disposable money at the moment and despite it being in the middle of the coronavirus panic hitting autotrader seemed like a good idea...

Aim was;
- RWD (I'm fed up of front wheel drive)
- petrol (I'm fed up of diesel)
- hjatchback or estate (because dogs)
- reasonably powerful
- climate control (I've been spoilt)
- ~50K miles
- not white

Which really only lead to one car, at the money I wanted to spend, a BMW 1 series*. Lots of diesels and lower powered petrol and a very tempting 125 but right at the top of my price range. Then I found a 116i (170bhp petrol) with climate control good price (reduced by £500 as people cancelling viewings), at 49K miles ticks all the boxes except being white. Whatever, I bought it and got a measley £500 for the Alfa but at least I was spared the issues with getting it repaied and then trying to sell it in the current climate.

*I'm sure others could come up with alternatives but it suits me, and there are 2 locasl BMW specialists.

No pictures as it's a boring white modern car that you can see any day of the week. Won't even mention it in my signature. There is a temptation to take it along to a treack day and run it round Castle Combe though. My wife is pleased as she never really liked the Alfa and wanted something German.

The Alfa did a good job got rid of it at 108K, that's 67K in 5 1/2 years, cambelt went on it, needed a new (secondhand) gearbox, DMF and clutch plus lots of messing around with EGR/DPF.


On the MX-5 front lack of motivation has struck, again, I used it a few times before Christmas but since then it hasn't been used. Need to sort through the cooling system and give it a service then think about getting it painted. Would like to do the RR track day in July, virus willing.

I think my door locks are in a similar state to yours. Not sure if my keyhole cover is stuck in there or if it's fallen off.

Door card wise if the hardboard is still good I think quite a nice job could be done with some quilted upholstery material from and some contact adheisive over the old door cards. That's all mine are, just with new backing.

How come you want to monitor the volts?

I've only got oil temp and oil pressure and the pod that holds my gauges does have a 3rd empty space.

Unfortunately not flush as in lots of money, but thought it was time to finally sort out the cooling system. I've always been a bit suspicious about the cooling system, when I bought the car the thermostat housing was bodged (see some of my original posts) up (a common issue on MX5's) and I replaced the housing. I had issues before with the top hose partially collapsing, whether this was cause ore effect I don't know, and I do seem to lose some coolant over time. Last year in preparation for a track day I bough a new thermostat and radiator cap directly from Mazda but never got round to fitting them. I think there was some posts from ChasR about using original spec thermostats so I went OEM.

Today was the day, first off remove thermostat, ummm dry as a bone.



Removed the radiator drain plug, didn't strip which is a win in my book, and flushed the system, hose in top of radiator and also thermostat housing (couldn't get the bottom hose off due to access to the fastener, I probably could if I'd really tried).



Very brown 'water' came out but eventually ran cleaner



Filled up ran up to temperature, then had a cup of tea, drained and semi-flushed again and refilled. I've only filled with plain water for the time being will run it a few times (post lockdown) and then drain/flush again and re-fill with anti-freeze. Also to check if I am losing water and if I am try to work out where.

Oh and a nice new OEM radiator cap (and comparison with old one)







What a rats next I'm left with!



That's going to take some sorting out, for some reason the speaker cabling has been bypassed/replaced.

There is a cooling reroute kit to addtess the rear cylinder cooling, but pricey at £172