{"id":30,"date":"2010-05-24T19:38:02","date_gmt":"2010-05-24T18:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glasgowdave.com\/?p=30"},"modified":"2010-05-24T19:54:28","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T18:54:28","slug":"how-to-fit-foglamps-to-an-mx-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.glasgowdave.com\/?p=30","title":{"rendered":"How To: Fit foglamps to an MX-5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yet another How To guide for your MX-5. Just showing that doing stuff yourself is not that hard. First posted back in September 2009, this article takes you through the process of fitting front fog lamps to a Mk3 MX-5. Although I use the standard Mazda lamps, there is nothing stopping you from using other brand lamps with a suitable fitting. Let’s get to work<\/em>
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\nHi All,<\/p>\n

A little later than normal but here is this week’s How To. This time It’s how to fit a set of Mazda foglamps. Again, ebay provided me with a nice pair including the mounting bezels and indicator stalk. If you pick some up 2nd hand look to see if the kit comes with all of the above. It’s common for them to be supplied without the bezels although they can be picked up relatively cheaply from mx5parts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I had two reasons for adding foglamps. Firstly, I think the blanking plates that fill the gaps where the foglamps should go are rather dull. The lamps give the front a bit of a lift and, I think, make the car look more balanced. The second reason is that I have been caught out in heavy rain and snow before where fogs have been (or would have been) very useful. I also find that they pick out the edge of the road better when the lights of oncoming traffic are slightly dazzling.
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Firstly, you do not have to remove the front bumper to fit the lamps. You do not even need to remove the front wheels. What you will have to do is remove some of the fasteners that hold the wheel arch liner to the bumper. To get good access to them turn the wheel full lock in the direction away from the arch you are working on. The fasteners require a slight turn with a suitable screwdriver, the inner peg will become loose, then you simply pull on it to remove the fastener from the car. It’s up to you how many you want to remove. The more you do, the better access you’ll get to the lamps.
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There is also a bolt underneath the car, in the corner formed by the front lip and splitter. Use an 8mm socket to remove this. For many this will allow the wheel liners to be moved away freely. For me, I found that the liner was stapled to the underside of the bumper so removing this bolt helped very little.
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What you need to do now is pull back the liner firmly and stick your arm in the gap. You may be working blind but the next step is quite simple. You need to pop out the blanks. Be aware that the instructions do show a single screw holding the blank in place. So far I haven’t come across anyone who has actually found this screw present. Check first, and remove it if it’s there. As you can see from the photo below, the blanks are held by 3 tabs. All you need to do is push each lug in turn radially outward and pull back on the blank. It’ll take a bid of jiggling, and you need to free all three tabs before pulling the blank back any significant distance, but it’s not a tough job.<\/p>\n

Behind the blank you’ll see that Mazda have been good enough to give us all the wiring we need to fit the new lamps. Thank goodness the gram saving strategy didn’t apply here! You need to carefully cut the blue tape to allow you to unravel the cable.
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The foglamps can be mounted by pushing them into place and the tabs will click into place. Attaching the plug to the socket is just as simple. It’s all surprisingly simple.
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The lamps are then secured in place by two screws. My kit didn’t have these screws provided so I got a bag of 5 x 20mm self tapping screws with pan heads and zinc coating. These are ideal. One screw goes in the top. One in the bottom. It might seem a little awkward to do via the gap in the wheel arch liner but, hey, I managed to do it and take a photo at the same time so it can’t be that hard!
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Refitting the liner is just the opposite of removing it. Push the fasteners in by their outer ring, push in the inner pegs, quarter turn with a screwdriver to lock them.<\/p>\n

Now onto the interior work – fitting the new light stalk. If you have used your own fog lamps rather than the Mazda ones you should be able to pick up a stalk new or used quite easily. The MX-5 and RX-8 share the same stalk. Some other Mazdas may have the same stalk also but you’ll need to choose carefully. You will need to remove the steeling column cowl. This was perfect for me because it’s been making a squeeking noise so I could fix that too! Use scraper covered in insulating tape (or similar flat blade) to pry apart the cover. The top part pops up.
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From the photo below you can see where the clips are. Hopefully this will give you a better idea as to where to apply a little gentle force. The bottom part is held with three screws which are got at from underneath. A Philips screwdriver should make light work of them.
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You don’t need to fully remove the lower part of the cover. It will hang quite happily, suspended by the ignition light cable. You will need to remove the indicator stalk. It is held by two small screws. Remove both.
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You will also need to remove the wiring plug. It’s the type you press the tab and pull downward. It should come away without a fight (unlike many of them).
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Just before you remove the stalk it’s worth watching that it doesn’t scrape the piano black strip on the way out. You can tape it to protect it or, if you are very clever, there is a way to remove the stalk without coming close to the strip. It’s hard to describe but it is quite possible.
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Fitting the new stalk is simply the reverse of the removal of the old one. I put some grease around the places where the steering column cover parts meet. That killed the squeek so I’m doubly happy.<\/p>\n

Finally, test your new foglamps. It’s a simple job so there shouldn’t be any problems. One thing you may have to consider is checking the alignment of the lamps. This can only be done when it’s dark (obviously). I pointed the car towards a wall and turned on the fogs. If you are about 3m away the centre of the beams should be 60mm away from the ‘brightness borderline’. Yeah, I hardly understood it either but the beams seemed to be suitably low and focused so I left them as they are. What you don’t want is for the beams to be pointing slightly upward.<\/p>\n

Adjustment is made by loosening the adjustment bolt on the bottom of the lamp unit and sliding it forward and back in its slot. I’ll bring you more on that if I find I have to adjust the lamps when I recheck them.
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So, there you go. Another job done. I think I’m beginning to run out of mods to make.<\/p>\n

Dave<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yet another How To guide for your MX-5. Just showing that doing stuff yourself is not that hard. First posted back in September 2009, this article takes you through the process of fitting front fog lamps to a Mk3 MX-5. Although I use the standard Mazda lamps, there is nothing stopping you from using other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,10],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mx5","tag-how-to","tag-mx5"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glasgowdave.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glasgowdave.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glasgowdave.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glasgowdave.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glasgowdave.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.glasgowdave.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82,"href":"http:\/\/www.glasgowdave.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions\/82"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.glasgowdave.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glasgowdave.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.glasgowdave.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}