Good evening everyone,

My last post was in March of 2023. While my plans stay the same, the timeline has been pushed out quite a bit. If you haven't seen my welcome thread, this isn't my first miata(it's my second) and when I first got the car in 2023 I decided to do coilovers and wheels/tires. I'll walk through that really quick with some pictures and then get to the "interesting" part, the soft top install that I had to do this weekend.

Here's the car when I first picked it up in February of 2023, my GTI in the background.



Here's the car after wheels/tires and coilovers, sometime in september of 2023. I had to do some adjustments to the coilovers so this isn't how it's sitting now.



Next I found what I think is a steal of a deal, an ISR Performance exhaust for $200 cash up in Austin. You can see here that the top is still bonded, this was may of last year.




Finally, we're at this weekend (April 2025). The window fell out of the last top and I decided to splurge a little, I got a robbins cloth top with zipper and defroster glass. However, I did no rain rail. I figured I could save some money but as I'll talk about later, it genuinely was not worth it. Now I'll talk about the install which, forewarning - took me about 12 hours over a weekend.

To preface this, I am not a mechanic. I work in cybersecurity, I just work on my cars to save money and because I (sometimes) enjoy it.

Let's start with the tools I used or needed to buy:
Impact driver w/ 10mm socket
Ratchet and short 10mm
Rivet tool (I purchased a swivel head one, and it helped a ton)
Right angle adapter (to remove the retainers)
3M weather sealant (I don't know how much this is actually required, but I did it)
10mm open box wrench (to adjust the latches)
Drill bits, various sizes... I don't remember off the top of my head.
Some boxes, paracord or string, etc... Rest the window on, and to help pull the top down while you latch it.

Now, I'd highly recommend that you just get the rain rail attached, but if you're insistent on not doing it you want a cheap ball peen hammer and anvil from harbor freight. These end up being like 25 or 30 bucks in america. Let's go over what I had to do and some stuff that annoyed me about this.

I don't want to waste anyone's time, but instead of snipping the rivets off of the rain rail I drilled the top of the rivet off. The main reason I wouldn't recommend re-using the rain rail is the alignment of the holes for the studs. This is something I think the instructions should have harped on. Instead of trying to line them all up, I just opted to drill out the holes a little bit so that I could get it onto the studs.

Here's the rain rail with all of the rivets drilled out.



Here's the frame, with the velcro on and the plastic end caps on the second bow.



Here's the new top with the old rain rail, riveted on. Getting this installed is the biggest challenge. If you're running the cables, run them BEFORE you rivet the top to the frame or you won't be able to do it at all(speaking from experience).



Next, you have to lay the top over and run the cable through it before you rivet it to the frame. Here's it basically put all the way back together. In order to get all of the top onto the back studs I ended up lightly putting on some of the nuts so that I could get one retainer on. The center retainer was the most difficult, I ended up using a box to hold the window up and another box to hold the retainer up.



Here you can see the paracord I used which went around my foot to pull the top down and latch it.



I know this has been long, but I managed to do all of it without any help. The biggest complaints were the cables and getting the top onto the studs. Expect an update in the future when I end up doing my timing belt and water pump, and then eventually turbocharging it. Thanks for reading.

 

Good stuff dude. Props for powering through all twelve hours of that skin install. I'm an auto tech myself and still don't like doing jobs like this haha.

Given your tenacity, I'm sure you'll have no issue doing the timing belt job. Nice work man!

 

Thank you! I tightened up the latches after about a week and did a leak test. Surprisingly, no leaks. I've been reading your build thread at work and love the NC.

I found a pretty good deal for a MS3Pro PNP on FB Marketplace that I plan on picking up this weekend (4 hours away). In preparation for the acquisition, this showed up today.

I'll probably get it put into the car tomorrow since it won't be moving again until after the MS is in.


Once I get the MS set up and a reasonable tune going, I'll probably get some FF640s and re-tune it sometime next month. I've been reading every thread that I can(and megasquirt install guides) to get my head wrapped around set-up and where to run the vacuum line for MAP.

For my intake manifold(2002/NB2) I believe I am supposed to tee off of the one on the rear valve cover side of the mani. Can anyone confirm? I've read some threads that call out different ones to use but I believe the general consensus is that it doesn't have that big of an effect until I'm FI.

 

I wanted to make sure this was updated. I used the following resources to ensure that I've set everything up properly. Still not entirely sure about MAP, but I bought the options connector and should get it next week since I plan on wiring my UEGO as CANbus.

Here's the AEM UEGO wiring: https://static.summitracing.com/glob...vm-30-0300.pdf

This means using CANbus, I need to wire green/black(CANL) and white/black (CANH). Where do they go? For this, we use this: https://www.ampefi.com/support/pro-mm0105-miata/
This tells me that CANL is pin G on the options, and CANH is pin I.
I plan on wiring ground to a chassis ground, and 12V power will likely be radio or window.

Because of my background in nerdology, I have some experience with soldering. I've cut the wires and put heat shrink on the UEGO harness in preparation for the installation. I don't want to have any issues or shorts due to user error, and I'll post pics tomorrow or sunday.

I have to drive the miata at least half of the week, so expect another update on thursday with how far I get.

 

I got the megasquirt installed and the AFR gauge working.

I've followed all of PedXing's videos on idle tuning and have gotten the car to idle decently with 14-14.7 AFR. I am having one issue that I think is probably my fault and likely stems from the initial table or the VE settings.

When I blip the throttle or come off of the throttle, the idle drops to ~500 RPM or stalls and goes super lean. I've tried modifying values so that there's more fuel in that section of the table but nothing seems to change it. For now I've decided to give up on it and come back tomorrow to try tuning again.

 

Hey all,

Dealing with some issues tuning. Posted in the Megasquirt section:
https://www.miataturbo.net/megasquir...6/#post1664691

 

This is the fun part haha. I'll let the professionals on here answer the MS questions as I was never a pro myself and it's been a long time since I've messed with idle tuning. What I can say, however, is that one day you'll look back and laugh at the teething issues you're working through right now. Stick with it! It gets easier.

 

You got me there LOL, last nights I had serious thoughts of just going straight back to the stock ECU. I was thinking on it this morning and just decided to start over with all of the calibrations/options set but with the DIYAutoTune basemap. (https://www.ampefi.com/downloads/#firmware) So today I managed to get everything set reasonably well, it will idle and reset perfectly fine even with AC on. It's a little rich, but actually drive-able.

So when I got home I did a fist bump of victory.