Mazda B-serieses. The year of the minitruck.

90s graphics please!!

I have a graphics idea (a long way away, paint won’t be for a while) but it’s not 90s style. I don’t like graphics that ignore the existing body likes like the 90s stuff does.

I am the type of person that buys an engine for the noise it makes alone. Rotary, Good. SBC, GOOD! However as always whatever you do will far outshine my limited inspiration.

I had a wee B2200 years back, bought from my mother-in-law’s neighbor who had a career as a ships engineer in the navy, and as a result the underside of the hood looked like a handwritten novel for all of the maintenance notes he had written on it. Sadly I lost it to a drunk driver who ran a stoplight and hit me so hard it bent the frame.
Good luck with this one.

Today I did some wiring.
I started by testing everything obviously messed with because trust no one and especially not the work they’ve done on a car.

All the obvious stuff heading to the fuel shutoff solenoid tested ok for continuity so I reconnected it. Still no power to it though.
I then started at the other end and dropped the column plastics off to test the function of the the ignition switch, as they are a known fault on these. That tested ok too.
So next I determined where the wire in the engine bay loom ran back to, I could see it went through the firewall so the options without unwrapping the entire loom were either to the fusebox or up to the dash loom. I figured the former was more likely and found a wire the same colour off the back of the fuse labelled ‘engine’. Hmmmm.
This looked suspect as it had some *mystery wiring* that went to a light on the dash and then disappeared down under the floor mat and along the sill. I still can’t quite figure out what it was for as it wasnt switched at least as far as the back of the cab.
I removed it anyway.


I still had continuity as far as here so I pulled the fuse out just to check. I mean no one would unwrap half the engine bay loom looking for a fault without checking the fuses first, right?


Well yeah it turns out they would. That and the ‘heater’ fuse replaced and it has power to the solenoid, oh and the glow plugs have magically started working (funny that…) so it starts instantly. It runs like a different truck. Absolutely unbelievable 😂

With that lot sorted much quicker than expected I did the stereo wiring.
It had the usual rats next of crimp connectors, half of which had pulled out-


I wired in an ISO, all soldered and heatshrinked, with a new earth fly lead to run up to the mounting bracket.


I noticed this a couple days ago. Those who know will know that that’s a DAB aerial.


So I had a look on eBay as to my options. You can buy a DAB radio for like £30 now. This as good as the only radio station I’ll actually listen to these days is absolute ruddy radio.
But, because I was born in the last century I also quite like to be able to use CDs now and then, as I have loads of them collected over the years. But all the cheaply headunits are mechless.
So random searching lead to find a now discontinued pure model that fulfilled all connectivity and media format criteria without looking aids, and I found one for £45 delivered. I bought it and it turned up next day. Just as I’d finished fixing the wiring funnily enough.


Turns out the whole two speakers I have are upgraded FLI items, which work a lot better if they’re actually screwed to the dash rather than just rammed behind the speaker grilles. I’ll add two more in the optional extra positions in the B pillars at a later date.

Missed this: I'm in for the ride. These are still pretty popular over here in NZ, actually, the whole minitruck scene is (albeit with no silencers and over fuelling aplenty), so there's plenty being wrecked if you need smaller parts finding and posting.

what sort of power does a standard 13b make??

My Work wheels had what seems like exactly the same stickers on them🤔

But that could offcourse be an universal export practice, Japanese script would not be very practical outside of Japan.😅

6 stud used to be a great source of cheap cool wheels the. Just throw some adapters at them. Not really the case anymore though. They’re not quite 5x114 prices but you still need about 500 for something decent. 10 years ago we were buying them for 50 quid a set!

I reckon the wheels could be part of the raguna/D works stable. I can’t find the exact same model but the details of the bolts and wheel backs make me think this.