MX5 Full Guide | Essential DIY maintenance and fixes for any MX5 owner!

hey guys this is a rather belated video by about two years uh about my mx-5 and everything i did to it in the time i had it and it's probably helpful for those who either have one or are looking at getting them on or if you know someone who's getting an mx-5 this is the mark iii particularly but they do all suffer from similar things hopefully this video is some use so a bit of background on this when covered kicked off in about march 2020 my job became completely remote it was online teams and zoom meetings rather than cross-country travel so i decided to sell my motorway muncher a mercedes c-class very nice car great to drive but not really a driver's car you know automatic 2.1 litre diesel not really engaging just a very comfy car i got rid of that decided to get an mx-5 so i didn't really know anything about them i didn't know anyone who had one i just knew that i wanted a rear-wheel drive manual car something a bit more engaging because i didn't need to sit on the m1 for hours at a time something just to tinker with during lockdown and have an enjoyable car i am a bit of a subjective parody for this but i do tend to over service and fix things that aren't broken on vehicles i own cars and bikes and the mx-5 gives you plenty of room for this there's certainly a lot of things to look out for so these are not performance or tuning mods at all these are just good ownership mods um rust prevention leak prevention a couple of really easy fixes here the other stuff really is just aesthetic stuff that i did to the car that made it look a heck of a lot better but i'll rattle through some of these so let's get on with it [Music] so a couple years ago i made a video which was well received by the mx-5 community on how to change the gearbox and the diff oil the engine oil probably been changed as part of the routine maintenance but the gearbox and the diff are often never touched they're really easy to access the drain and fill is really easy i went through what products i used and why because what's available on the market now is so much better than the factory fluids and the gearbox notchiness the wine from the differential completely eliminated and i highly recommend that video if you've not seen it so we'll kick things off with leaks these are quite common on the mx-5 but there's some really easy fixes i'll freeze this video showing this grommet here which is found underneath the plastic cover and just screws down that plastic trim onto the car's body it hides away things like the wiper motors the washer fluid sprayers but unfortunately it is a prominent point for leaks the leaks if they do occur run the water straight through into the cabin straight into your footwell either driver or passenger side depending on which side has leaked i woke up after a night of rain to a wet footwell on the passenger side hence the rubber replacement mats i didn't know what was causing the issue or how to fix it turns out it's really simple quite literally a couple of quid to get a replacement set of grommets you'll pay more for postage really easy to change and i decided to lather mine up in silicon as well clear silicon covered it all up never had any problems again so another night of rain and yet another leak on the mx-5 this time in the boot compartment completely soggy at the bottom had no idea what was causing this issue i was looking for any obvious culprits i ended up checking the surround the black silicon seal that connects the boot to the boot lid i cleaned this up cleaned the area that it made contact with it made no difference took a while to figure this one out it turns out it was simply the light assembly that shows the rear bar brake light shown just here this is another really easy fix it's accessible through the boot you undo the nuts lift up the light assembly and then silicon around all the area i outlined the area with the shape of the light fixture siliconed all around the nut and bolt holes and made sure it was really well done again couple of quids worth of silicon i never had any problems again so the final rain slash leak related issue on the mx-5 and this is really common um is the rear drain holes i didn't know anything about these again not having known anything about the car got in one day and the back was fogged up but just on the driver's side which i thought was weird figured out it's these drain holes which effectively take the rain water from the roof into a little container they capture it and then feed it out the bottom of the car these can get blocked i don't know if it's either from the top or from kicked up underneath the car like twigs and leaves and things but either way mine were blocked what you need to do is get a pipe cleaner if people use a trombone cleaner feed this through until it comes out the bottom of the car when i did this i noticed a bit of resistance at the bottom pushed a bit harder the leaves came out all the water drained fine i then used hot soapy water and zaflora on both sides to make sure it was clean and this is good to just do every few months just to double check these are clean next it's on to rust now i have a few things about how the japanese don't salt the roads but i don't believe that's the problem here i think this is a specific mx-5 problem you know honda's toyotas they don't always have this problem but the mx-5s do and so i went under there a couple of times with a wire brush attached to a corded drill not not just a battery drill a proper plug-in drill and was wire brushing that rust off there as best i could really getting at it getting back to bare metal where possible i then used a rust converter i think it's called din troll or dinitrol i'll leave a link in the description to the one i used and then i covered it in a wax oil or an equivalent kind of rust preventative that alone didn't take too long half a day but made a big difference hopefully this has been of some use to people so far and might save some people some time if they do have these problems quite a lot of them are just good maintenance or quick fixes if this problem occurs to them and the other bits and pieces i'm going to rattle through now are just stuff i chose to do to either enhance the look of the car just make it more user-friendly better for me but i'd recommend a lot of these anyway to any mx-5 owner so one of the highly recommended things to do is to replace the door bushings they're the male part that fits into a female recess in the door makes rigidity on the frame a bit better stops the door sagging that kind of thing however the factory ones are really soft you can get a harder plastic one reduces vibration inside the car that was more what i was concerned about how much it increases the stiffness in the frame i'm not sure but that was something i definitely found worthwhile that did make it shut and sound like a modern german car i also swapped out the original factory aerial which was really long obscenely long actually looks quite ugly in my opinion i swapped that out for a stubby version simply screw off and screw on you could always put it back to stock if needed but this factory aerial just reminds me of the toy story car the factory wheels weren't too bad and they did have signs of pitting and a tiny bit of rust but they weren't scuffed so i whipped these off had them powder coated in gunmetal grey i do regret not getting bronze or gold i think i would have maybe looked a bit better so i replaced the standard bose cd player with one i got on amazon full screen apple carplay android auto it also had settings where you could map buttons from the steering wheel press the button on the steering wheel choose what you wanted that button to do on the head unit which is really good for siri and volume and things so my last video where i changed the gearbox oil there was one thing i didn't mention i forgot to mention this entirely but the gear stick on the mx-5 is directly above the gearbox on many cars the gearbox is way out in front and there's a few linkages connecting the gear stick but directly under this part of the car is the gearbox you can actually feel the heat radiate through into the car after you've been driving it there's a tiny nylon collar which goes into the gearbox and obviously this wears away over time and gets a bit loose you can replace this with a brass collar which makes the gearbox feel so much more direct and if you're in first third or fifth for example it's a direct slot in really improved the handling of the gearbox it's a little bit involved changing this so it's maybe not for everybody but from an anorak like myself it was certainly worth doing so i replaced the amber indicators on the side of the car with some cheap 10 quid ebay led smoky indicators really completes the look of the car and brought it forwards a decade into the future so last but definitely not least on the things i did to my mx-5 is the coolant tank it's found under the bonnet these cars now or certainly mine was 15 years old at the time i had it they've heated up a lot they've cooled a lot they've become brittle and they're prone to failing if you want to go on long weekends away and want to get this completely out of your mind and not have it as an issue you can replace as i did with a stainless steel welded system looks really nice under the bonnet you disconnect the hoses you remove the three bolts holding it in replace the unit and get rid of that problem from your mind entirely so hopefully this video has been of some use to you certainly if you're a new mx-5 owner hopefully it can fast-track you through to some solutions to problems you might have um but do feel free to like comment and subscribe and i'll leave you with a nice cold start [Music] [Music] foreign

Channel: TwoWheelTorque

Views: 62,348

Keywords: mx5, miata, mark 3, mk3, NC, mx5 NC, mx5 gearbox, mx5 differential, how to change mx5 oil, how to fix leaking roof, how to fix mx5 gearbox, mx5 diff whine, how to change diff oil, mx5 limited slip diff

Id: 6EouL5kDvDc

Length: 9min 11sec (551 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 19 2022