I finished installing a new soft top.

 

Drove it up a cool road with some fellow MX5'ers. It was neeeeat .
Possibly slightly understeery this car at the moment but not too bad for old stock stuff.

Also bought wheels for the other 5, and a spare hose set and filter for my car.

 

How difficult was it? I'm going to be replacing mine at the end of summer.

 

I folded some laundry on the hood of it. Just not enough space in this house for "non multitaskers".



Lets see pics!

 

Honestly, it was a bit of a pain in the ***. The hardest parts where unbolting/re-bolting the rear bolts due to lack of space (near the rain rail), putting the screws back in the front of the frame once the new top is on*, and sliding the new top onto the frame (best done with the top on the car).
I took the top off, did a tare down, pit it back on to slide the top onto the rails (you'll see what I mean), took it back off to install the rivets, and put it back off to to the rest.
*When your putting the screws on that hold the front of the top in place I found that making the tiny holes for the screws bigger with a drill made it much easier to find the holes that the screws where supposed to go in. You will need help during this process, preferably somebody who can follow directions, not get frustrated, and has some amount reasonable of upper body strength.
I'll post a few when I get back home. I will say the car looks better with a new top, is quieter, and doesn't leek when it rains. I'd prefer a hard top personally but the new soft top only cost $175 shipped.

 

You forgot to be careful with the tension cables when pulling them out of the sleeves and sliding them in the new top. If you snap one while your in the middle of the sleeve it'll make it a bigger pain in the ***

 

Removed soft top.

Removed random nuts and bolts inside the vehicle.

Raised vehicle off rollers and on to jack stands for extra height.

Removed rear harness.

Removed pass. side steering knuckle, attempted drivers side.

Sat and looked at the miata to decide how I want to do some things.

 

Drove it without any problems! Been chasing an intermittent fault for 2 months; finally isolated it down to either flaky coil packs (a little out of spec for resistance on both primary and secondary windings) or a bad coolant sensor (barely out of range on the 3 primitive specs given by Mazda, but pretty far off when compared over the 68-212 degree range my car sees all summer). Ran all day Thursday with the temp sensor unplugged and had no problems (other than the Check Engine icon in the dash). Put in new thermosensor Friday nite and drove car today with no issues!

 

I have to seriously start preping for the harness build. Gonna be fairly intense.

 

went to work, lost the radiator and got sent home early.