Digging deeper, it appeared this JDM car had some things not often available on UK cars of a similar age - a limited slip differential (supposedly a good thing – more about that later), anti-lock braking, air conditioning, power steering and electric windows. I found a website with old brochures, from which I identified my car as a “Special Package” with a few factory extras. These included a Nardi wood rim steering wheel (in excellent condition), a Roadster boot liner, original footwell mats, a cover for the hood when it was down and a Bose Double-DIN, flip-screen, multi-function audio/navigation unit with separate amplifier and Bose speakers. This may have been a top-end system in Japan, but all the screen instructions were in Japanese and, although the importer had fitted a simple frequency converter the radio could only get BBC Radio 2.
I also discovered the bracket in the passenger footwell was for an emergency flare, which went some way to explaining why there was an emergency channel button on the radio. If you’re interested Google J-Alert, which is the latest system.
Finally, if you’ve ever wondered how to properly fold the hood cover see
I was given a Haynes manual with the car but, for the 1.6 it’s mostly based on the NA. I’d come across many sources of workshop manuals, but these are predominantly for the US Miatas. Mellens gets mentioned a lot, but the site appears no longer available. I found an alternative at
This is useful, but I kept hunting and came across
I ran it through an online translator and found parts list and wiring diagrams for JDM cars. It appears there are different lists for different years of NB production.
Copy the URL (internet address) into the translator and it will present you with a (mostly) readable page. Sometimes you can simply keep clicking on the links, but I found limitations in the translator meant that some nested pages would come up as an error. I overcame this by running a translation and the original in parallel. OK – I’ll admit this may look a bit obsessive, but I saw it as a challenge.
Bob
(South Essex)