mx5cartalk.com

Hi guys. The air vents on my NBs1 are vibrating and moving so that they are pointing down. Is there a little trick that can be performed so that stay in position? Thanks in advance. Simie

The usual trick is to remove them from the dash and apply a small square of electrical tape or adhesive felt to the inside of the ball section.

The factory uses felt from memory, and they droop over time as the felt wears off.

You may be able to do it without removing the vents by pointing them all the way up and trying to hide the tape on teh bottom out of view.

Only did this last week myself. I've had to do this with each MX-5 I've owned! I completely removed the vents and padded out the existing felt. This is a bit harder way, probably took me about an hour all up ...

I cut two strips from an ice cream container to push in either side of the vents until the clip holding the vent in the dash clicks, then they pull out really easy without damaging anything.

Once out, there's four little clips around the top edge of the vent holding the top ring on. I used a flat blade screwdriver to push these in to release and the ring pops off allowing the ball to come out.

I carefully pealed away the existing felt, there's four pieces in each vent. I then added some new two sided tape to each piece, stuck it back in and replaced the ball and ring to check that it was tighter. I actually found I needed to add a couple of layers of tape to each piece of felt to really tighten them up. Did this with each vent.

Fitted all back together and replaced in dash and should hopefully last a long time. ...

OR
you could buy the correct felt material and just replace the aged stuff - back to new for another 20 years!
I recently did this with mine

OR
On the US forums they talk about changing the ball vents completely for Mitsubishi ones that can be completely closed off


any way will fix it!
M@

Thanks for that. How do you get the vents out initially? Do hou just pull them out, sort of force them? Or what.

Sorry should have read your desciptio completely. Can you descibe exactly the icecream container method I more detail? How thick is the strip and where n how do you place the strips to get out the vents. Thanks I advance. S

About 3-4cm wide strips about 10cm long. You have to push them in between the outside of the vent and the dash on each side of the vent. Takes a bit of force to push between the clip and the lip in the vent but once there the vent virtually falls out. I wasn't keen on the string/wire through the ball methods. Always felt like I was going to break the vent.

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PS to my post above ... I'm away for the weekend otherwise I'd take a photo of one of my spare vents to show where the retainer sits and where you need to slide the plastic. BTW a credit card works just as well but never wanted to risk any of mine

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MXMatt wrote:On the US forums they talk about changing the ball vents completely for Mitsubishi ones that can be completely closed off

Did this on mine few months back...perfect!

Kevs fix looks good to me and it cost next to nothing- nice little write up as well.

markwid wrote:

MXMatt wrote:On the US forums they talk about changing the ball vents completely for Mitsubishi ones that can be completely closed off

Did this on mine few months back...perfect!

This ^ is nice!

As mentioned above, are these Mitsubushi vents and if so what models?

Cheers

aviper4u wrote:As mentioned above, are these Mitsubushi vents and if so what models?

The yanks get them from the Mitsubishi Eclipse



One of those hideous things.


Not sure though if any of the Mitsus we got in Australia had similar, I do recall seeing something with similar vents.

I did mine with the vents in place. just push the vent away from the felt section I was working on. I lifted up the felt as far as I could with a small screw driver then pushed a small bit of electrical tape under the felt as far as I could then pushed the felt back down again and moved on to the next piece of felt in each vent. I did it about 9 years ago and it's till working fine, if anything it's a bit to tight but I tend to set and forget my vents so it hasn't been a problem.

MXMatt, the original stuff Mazda used on the NB8B was rubbish. My NA8 vents worked much better. My NB vents were droopy virtually from the day I drove it out of the dealership. Initially I found if I set the vent to the required position then pushed the ball in it would stay there, but after a couple of years even that method didn't work.

Those vents look similar to the 2007 Ford Ranger?

Specifically, it is the 2000-2005 Mitsubishi Eclipse air vents.

It is longer (deeper) than stock, so a little hack-sawing to length is all that is needed to fit them.

aviper4u wrote:As mentioned above, are these Mitsubushi vents and if so what models?