Indicator Replacement

The n/s indicator repeater on the cycle wing was only half working. One of the LEDs had gone so I have to replace the unit. The shame was I had fibreglassed the wires in place.

I soldered the wires of the new unit to the old wiring, covered with heat shrink then re-covered with fibregalss:


All working now:

Trim behind seats

There is a piece of trim that goes behind the seats at the top to cover the edge at front of the boot box (this was one of the items I had to re-stick the vinyl).

I contemplated a couple of options on how to fix it in place but in the end decided to rivet in place with the rivets under where the harness mounting go so they would be hidden.

I first taped it in place:




Then put 4 split rivets under the harness mountings:

Re-sticking covering

With the small panels that go at the sides of the dash and the piece that goes behind the seats stored in a warm room for a long time, the vinyl covering had come away. I stuck them down again using impact adhesive.

What it looks like now

Windscreen wipers

Fitting the windscreen wipers was a simple job. The only complication was you have to bend the arms to get the right angle so the blades sit on the screen properly:

The n/s wiper doesn't sit down as flush as it'd like it at the pivot end. It's not something to worry about now, I'll add to the post IVA list:

Fillet adjustment & sealing windscreen

This was a really fiddly job. It took ages to get a good fit of the fillet that goes at the bottom of the screen. It needed at lot of very careful Dremel work removing tiny amounts at a time to get a good fit at the edges. I used a thin piece of paper to identify the high spots again and again. Eventually I was happy and so we could mastic in place.

I had to put some packing under the thin end of the wedge shaped spacers to get the right angle:

There is quite a big gap in the centre under the windscreen. All you can do is fill it with mastic. Lots and lots of mastic:

Carpet fitting

Westfield provide sticky backed velcro for fitting the carpets. I'd got a second roll from them when discussing how to fit the ECU but even with that I still needed another 5m roll.

I put the velcro onto the car (both strips together), pealed off the backing and carefully placed the carpets in place.

Sorting out the front of the transmission tunnel was the hardest part with the gear stick, handbrake and the wiring coming up from the tunnel:

Carpet cutting

Cutting the holes for the gear stick and handbrake were tricky. I cut some small holes initially, then placed the gator over and marked the edges on masking tape. I could then widen out the hole leaving enough for sticking the gators to the carpet.

ECU plate adjustment

I'd made the ECU plate so large there wasn't enough space to fit rubber edging (an IVA thing), so I had to  cut a bit off the edge. This was another Dremel job:

Dashboard end adjustment

Bit of a nightmare here...

With the constant adjustment of the dash postion I found the n/s end was short. Luckily I had kept the off-cuts so I was able to stick a bit back on.

First I filed both end so I got a perfect match. I was concerned about the extra thickness not allowing the dash to sit flat against the scuttle so I removed a bit of thickness of the fiberglass at the back, I superglued together to hold in place temporarily then fibreglassed at the back.

The result was an almost perfect extension. You can see the join if you look for it, but no one has seen it unless it's been pointed out to them:

Adjusting roll bar holes

The holes for the roll bar were just a bit too tight so a took a fraction off before the final fitting:

Fuel pump sender callibration

The fuel gauge was totally out. Checking on the FM forum I found a post that explained the resistance range of the Westfield sender is very different to that of the original Mazda. The solution was to put a 120ohm resistor in parallel across the sender contacts. A trip to the local Maplins (D120R - 2W Res 120R are the details) and 29p later I had what was required. Once fitted the gauge read okay. You can see on the right of the fuel sender pictures the resistor in place (before I taped it up).

With the float at the lowest point:

the gauge shows about 1/6 of a tank. It would be great if it were lower but close enough:

With the float at half way:

the gauge reads just under half:

and with the float at the top:

the gauge reads just over full:

Dashboard lower mounting

I'd not seen anything anywhere in the manual, forums or blogs about how to fix the bottom of the dash. I wasn't happy to have it loose so I fabricated a bracket. Due to the way it had to angle forwards it needed a kink:

I put 2 rivserts at the ends to fix the dashboard in place. The bracket was then riveted to the tunnel top pannel. I planned to put two small slits in the carpet to fit over:

Electrics under scuttle

Final bit of electrics (I hope!).

I arranged all the wiring under the scuttle:

There were a couple of relays and other electrical units which I made mounting points for:

Slight adjustment

Even with all the time spent trying to get the windscreen pillars in place, we still had to adjust the holes on  one side. We made 2 crescent moon shaped packing pieces from scuttle off-cuts to pack the hole and glued in place:

Windscreen & pillars

This was quite a big and tricky job and definitely not something you can do on your own or in a spare 5 minutes. We started off putting the side screens on the windscreen pilars. One wouldn't go in so we had to clean out the hole (mainly the powder coating I think). The we put masking tape on the sides of the scuttle and marked where the theoretical mounting ponts should be from the manual.

Then put the windscreen in place the offer up the pillars. With all the various curves and angles you just have to keep adjusting until it all fits into place as good as it can:

The pilars are fixed in place with 2 bolts through the scuttle:

One problem was the bolts are horizontal but the scuttle is at an angle. This means all the pressure is on one side (the top) and even though the washer will spread the load we decided to put and angles spacer and a second washer on to even out the load (this shot is before we put the angled spacer on):

Side screen fixings

When fitting the screen it is advisable to have the side screens (if you are going to fit them). This means you can check to rake of the windscreen matches with the side screens.

The side screens come without the hinges fitted. There are pre-drilled holes in the window frame but they are hidden under the covering material which is quite thick and I really struggled to find them. After making the end of my fingers sore trying to locate the holes, I found the ends of the hinge pins were the right tool: 

I used a sharp drill to cut through the material to get a clean hole and fitted the hinges. Note the location of the hinges relative to the top/bottom of the window, this will help anyone locate the hole in future:

Mastic scuttle to body

Masticing the scuttle down wasn't difficult, just one of those fiddly jobs. I held the scuttle up using blocks whilst I put a layer of mastic underneath.

Then removed the blocks one by one, putting in a bit of mastic where the block had been, and lowered the scuttle down:

Speedo cable

The speedo comes froward up the transmission tunnel, then up and through a hole under the bottom of the expansion tank. I'd left the original plastic mounting from the Mazda on the cable so I made an appropriate hole and re-used it:

Covering holes

There were several holes in the panel under the scuttle. I assume for different variations to allow wires & cables to come through. I looked around for blanking grommets of the right size but couldn't find any. I even asked Westfield one time I was speaking to the parts department if they had any - they didn't. In the end I riveted on small plates to cover:

Electrics - front all done

Nearside:




Offside:




Front: