I don’t know anyone at the moment, but dangling a for sale yellow in front of me is always dangerous. I find them hard to resist. I was very tempted to buy a yellow Mk1 that was on sale at a local car show last year for a very fair price and it was in very good condition too. I’ve owned quite a few yellow cars and a nice bright yellow (like yours) looks great on the right car IMO. I really wrestled with my conscience about it. Ultimately I decided against it because I’d already owned a Mk1 and (eventually) parted with it because it was just a little bit too small for me (I’m 6’2") but, more importantly I already had 7 cars sitting around my house! Fortunately (for me and my wallet) those factors are still current. I’m half-heartedly trying to part with a yellow MR2 roadster actually.
Anyway, back to dials and so on, continuing my “for what it’s worth” line within this conversation, here’s how my converted dash looked after I’d replaced the dials with better ones (and recoloured the needles too).
Not a great pic because it was mostly to show the wheel and it was taken on a now out of date camera but you can see some of the speedo and most of the other dials. Not only did they look a lot better and have better speedo illumination, the speedo was nice and accurate with this face on it too.
I don’t see a problem fitting this http://www.lockwoodinternational.co.uk/dials/mph/mazda/mx-5/mx-5-mk1/eunos-mx-5-part-no-c001.html then just calibrating your needle with a sat nav as mentioned in some posts above.
I had an imported Mk2 and changed the dial faces (all 5) for a set of Lockwoods. The instrument cluster already had a converter (electronic gizmo) fitted and it retained the original dials and they just stuck a MPH sticker over the KMs when imported. When fitting the Lockwood dials I removed the converter from the cluster, a bit of soldering to do with the wiring and put the new dials on. This was necessary as it then made is so I could calibrate the speedo to the new dial faces, I did it with a sat nav. I got it to within 1-2 MPH which was roughly where you would be with most speedo v sat nav calculations on any car.
Instructions to change dials should be on the Lockwood site, just follow their advice, just doing the speedo one should be easy.
Yes, that’s because there is no such thing as a UK automatic Mk1. Also, you cannot generally fit a cluster from a US or Canadian spec car, as these included an engine check light. There is no need to change the entire cluster just to get a KPH speedo. You change just the speedo. 1996-98 Mk1s were OBD2 in some markets, so possibly in non-OBD2 markets, such as the UK, there might be some excess circuitry.
The speedo is only held in by a few screws. You should have done this. The speedos didin’t change.
Speedo drive is taken from the gearbox output rpm. It is quite possible a taller diff has been fitted which will cause the speedo to under read regardless of the units or that a sender for a different final drive combination has been fitted.
For the OP, there is more than likely no point in challenging the NIP if you were caught on camera. The mobile operators check the kit before they start “recording” and again on finish. They make sure they get it right so as to reduce “court” time. If your lucky you will be offered a speed awareness course. If you have not been on one before you will avoid the points, and learn alot of what you thought you knew but didn’t.
Keep speeding on the track! I just did a day at Abingdon airfield it was great fun, there were other MX5’s on the track…and they were way faster than my standard speck, but my god how these cars can brake and turn 