I’m just looking for reassurance really. Yesterday I have just bought a 68 Plate MK4 RF. I went to view the vehicle and looks immaculate! The only concern I did have was that the instrument cluster was replaced due to a technical fault at the start of this year (Under warranty at a Mazda dealer). I just wanted to know if faulty clusters was a common thing with the later MK4’s? Unfortunately the odometer doesn’t read the original mileage as this can’t be changed even by the dealer on replacement of the unit. I’ve called my local Mazda dealer and the car is on the Mazda system for having a replacement unit. All the original miles are on the system as well obviously so you just add them on to what the new odometer displays!
I don’t think it’s very common, I think when the cars were first launched there was a battery drain issue which was a software update and I vaguely remember hearing that some cars had a new cluster fitted, I frequent Miata.net quite a bit and it’s not something that seems to be discussed. As long as all the documentation looks OK I wouldn’t be concerned if it was me buying the car.
Had ours replaced under warrranty at about 2 1/2 years. I did a bit of “googling” at the time and it did not appear to be a common problem, (not many reports on this forum), but not unknown.
To clarify it was the left hand digital dial that went south. Originally we noted that it had gone “blank”, then came back on but started to flicker. We took it in to the local main dealer and at the time it had started working and I was concerned they would just say they couldn’t fing anything wrong, (I had taken some pics). But luckily (?) the tech noted it was flickering and after “approval” from Mazda they replaced it.
At the time they said the mileage / oddometer would not be affected, but it actually went back to zero when they fitted the new gauge and they were unable to “re-set” the mileage so they just recorded it on the service record…