Selene - Nev's NB SE

[Nevyn72]

Pics! Or nothing happened, and you stayed inside all day on the internet!

Here you go, pretty exciting isn't it?

[ManiacLachy]

Nice center console delete ;)

[Nevyn72]

Nice center console delete ;)

Don't worry, it'll be re-leted once some repairs and new coating has been done......

[ManiacLachy]

You know, I quite like the idea of a centre console delete, with an appropriate gear stick and handbreak housing. I think it looks clean and minimalist which suits the car IMO. But I need at least a single cup holder!

[Nevyn72]

You know, I quite like the idea of a centre console delete, with an appropriate gear stick and handbreak housing. I think it looks clean and minimalist which suits the car IMO. But I need at least a single cup holder!

There is actually a kit out there, Okibi has one, but no cup holder for you!

In all honesty though, unless your elbow is double jointed the factory cup holders aren't particularly useful for cups.....

[ManiacLachy]

Yeah, I know there are options out there. I will entertain them in time. The Audi only has the single cup holder around the same place, but being an auto it was never in the way. I know there are options for cupholders on the side of the transmission tunnel as well, but they're ugly. We'll see what time brings.

[Nevyn72]

A very sad state of affairs indeed.....

No worries, we can rebuild it, better, faster, stronger and above all else bluer & shinier!

BTW, like the nice gouges in the steering wheel the previous owner left with her rings....

[emily_mx5]

Are they... SP floor mats ?

[Nevyn72]

Are they... SP floor mats ?

Yep, it's surprising how many SE's have them, I think Mazda over-ordered and were just using them up.....

[Black_Penguin]

My mum got SP floor mats from a Mazda dealer around '06 (she owned my car before me).

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[Nevyn72]

I was going to leave this until I'd finished the interior but have come to the conclusion there will just be too much territory to cover given everything I'm doing....
So in the interests of sanity I'll start to post up some updates of some aspects of the mods as I go along. I've got time to kill waiting for paint to cure and some parts to arrive anyway.

First of all I'll outline the scope of what I'm doing to help put some of this into context.
- Blue light mod - change all the interior backlighting from red to blue.
- install 4 gauges - including replacing the dummy oil pressure gauge in the instrument cluster with a boost gauge (as Lokiel, Roadrunner and others have).
- eliminate the big slab of silver in the middle part of the dash where the radio and HVAC are.
- add chome detail until I'm happy.
- some small other mods while everything's apart.

First off, when you remove the dummy oil pressure gauge to install a boost gauge in it's place you lose any indication of what's happening with the oil pressure, you don't even have a warning light anymore! The solution to this is to wire up a separate warning light using the factory sender (it's only a switch anyway), the factory wiring in the instrument cluster and an LED mounted somewhere. It ends up looking a bit like this....



I'll be doing something along these lines but also will be installing a separate, dedicated, functional oil pressure gauge.

The solution for the warning light above doesn't really work for me as it really stands out on the cluster face as something that doesn't belong there. As a result I went looking for somewhere else appropriate to mount the light when I realised there are two unused warning light positions in the gauge. There's one in the speedo face that says 'HOLD' and has something to do with automatic transmissions, the other is in the Tacho face and is for rear fog lights where they're fitted.

I thought, that's perfect, I'll use them both!

I've always hated the fact there's no indication inside the car if the fog lights are 'on' and it's easy to accidently bump the switch which could result in a fine.
So I pulled the foglight rocker switch and with the help of my trusty multimeter determined which wire (it's the green one) I needed and tapped a line into that and ran it up to where the instrument cluster is mounted. Next was to find a way of mounting a globe in the cluster and that's where eBay came to the resuce, I ordered some wired T5 bulb holders which have fitting the same as the ones already there.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/5-x-T5-Dashb ... ab0&_uhb=1

I would also be able to use one of these to mount a light for the oil pressure warning.
This oil warning light is where I used a little lateral though.... I thought the word 'HOLD' without the letters H & D is 'OL' which is pretty close to 'OIL', near enough for my purposes anyway. So next was to remove the speedo (done by removing the 4 screws on the back and bending the 4 metal tabs) and paint out the H & D on the reverse side of the gauge face.

Now actually wiring them up is quite simple you just need to find some suitably tiny screws to go into the rear of the instrument cluster.
Here's how it looks with the two fittings installed and wired up.



The one on the left is behind the Tacho and is for the foglight, you attach one wire to the ground point (nice how they're labeled) to the left using the existing screw. The other end has a blade connector fitted which then connects to the wire I ran up earlier from the foglight's rocker switch.

The one on the right is for the oil pressure warning light and, after removing the dummy gauge, you wire one end to the location marked 'OIL' and the other end to the nearby location marked 'IGN'. These two wiring points were previously used by the dummy gauge and you'll need to find some very small and very short screws (only about 5mm long) to bite into the plastic of the cluster housing but not protrude through to the other side where the boost gauge will be installed.

If you use LEDs in these fittings you will then need to test them as they only work in one polarity so you have a 50% chance of getting it right first time. If they don't work then spin the globe through 180 degrees in the fitting and try again!

Here's the oil warning light in action.



And here's the foglight switch in action.



Needless to say I'm pretty happy that all worked out!

Now in the interests of completeness I also wanted to make the dimmer switch light blue.
Some fittings can be changed easily by simply putting a blue LED in place of the old red sleeved incandescent globes. This is possible where the instrument face has a clear finish, however in many cases instruments are tinted red and use a clear globe (more on this later). The dimmer switch is fortunately one that has a clear face. Unfortunately the blue T5 LED I bought for this purpose wasn't going to work as it used a unique type of globe.

The solution was to remove the globe and strip off the 'red sleeve', the globe is accessed via a small circular base in the side of the switch's housing seen in the picture below.



Now the black cover piece (visible from the outside when fitted) pops straight off so I removed this and put a small piece of translucent blue plastic inside. The result isn't great, it's sort of bluish which will have to do, at least it's not red anymore!
I'll experiment a bit more and see if I can come up with something better.....

More to follow in the next post......

[emily_mx5]

Wow fog light warning is a great idea, especially as the picture is actually a fog light warning haha.
Yet another thing I'll add to my to do list haha.


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[Nevyn72]

Now as I mentioned in the previous post, some areas are more difficult to change the backlighting to blue, the HVAC is one of these....

If you wish to alter it's appearance you will need to remove and replace the indicator dial faces in the HVAC faceplate.
Be careful when removing the faceplate that you remove all the switch pieces EXCEPT the AC switch. This is attached to a mechanism that must be pulled out a distance when you remove the faceplate otherwise you'll lose the AC switch internally and have a hell of a job retrieving it!
When you're ready the faceplate is held on by two small plastic tabs on each side, carefully lever it off on one side and it will come away.

Here's what it looks like with the faceplate removed, note the AC switch connector hanging out and the two sorry T5 blubs that supply the backlighting.
I'll be replacing the two globes with high dispersion LED replacements. http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/6pcs-3-LED-w ... 751wt_1256



Now as I mentioned earlier you will need to change the HVAC dial faces to get the desired result, simply changing the globes to different colours will give undesired results as the faces are tinted orange/red. For example, putting blue LEDs back there will result in a dim muddy, brownish sort of result.....

Fortunatley you can get replacement dail faces in a range of colour combinations but only from one place in the world, IL Motorsport in Germany (make sure your page translator is turned on!).
http://www.ilmotorsport.com/shop/articl ... 2d6d892f09

What you will get are only the dial face inserts, not the whole faceplate as the image suggests and they're not cheap (shipping is horrendous!) with mine working out at ~$100 delivered.
I ended up settling for the 'silver face with blue numbers' as that's what all the gauges everywhere else in the car have.
Make sure you use white backlights as the faces are pre-coloured for the translucent portions, if you use blue globes the red parts will end up looking purple!

Here's a little tease showing the old verses the new. You've got to love the 'revised' icons used in the replacement gauges!



So that's where I'm up to so far, next up is to start installing and wiring up the new gauges.
They're all custom made units from Speedhut in the US and made to as closely match the existing gauges in the instrument cluster as possible.

http://www.speedhut.com/gauges/

Here they are looking all expectant!

[ManiacLachy]

Nice work, and great attention to detail! Looking forward to seeing the end results

Man those are some sexy gauges!

[Roadrunner]

Excellent idea with the oil and fog light! Wish I had thought of that.
Might still go back and do the fog light one though
Have fun cutting the boost gauge up, not for the faint hearted!