What have you done to your MX-5 today? (Part 2)

Did you check the display to see which of the three errors were showing? The disconnect has never failed for us.
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I have used the disconnect battery -ve terminal in the past and it’s worked to reset the start/stop. Since January, the battery icon never glows ready so since I had a cell problem I assumed the voltage was never stable enough. We’ll see if this fixes it permanently.

If it’s the original Panasonic battery, it may have just spat the dummy. I had to replace the one in the sensible car a couple of weeks ago (Mazda 3), despite giving it a top up on the charger every 3-4 months. Looking around the forums, there are a lot of complaints about poor battery life & performance from Mazda’s OEM batteries.
Mine didn’t have stop-start issues, but it has the hybrid battery to pull from. Without that, I can see stop-start being pretty tough on the battery.

Are you sure that your OEM battery was a Stop-Start one? My wife’s 2023 Mazda 3 and her previous 2020 one - both top-of-the-range, and my daughter’s Polo with SS, all three had OEM batteries which were not SS batteries. I told the Mazda main dealer and he just looked at me blankly and said “I just sell ‘em”. On the basis of a sample of 3, including 2 £30k Mazdas, I’d suggest that OEM batteries on cars with SS are not necessarily SS batteries.

Re your battery - it sounds to me that it is duff, for whatever reason. It just needs to be changed. Connect it to a trickle charger (eg C-TEK) when not planning to use the car for a week or so. One a lead-acid battery is allowed to go completely flat it is likely to sulphate and be irrevocably damaged,

I change my battery every 3 years and don’t think about it.

If your wife’s Mazda 3’s had the m-hybrid engine, apparently they don’t specifically need a stop-start battery. This confused the heck out of me until I checked the manual, and sure enough…

The stop start on the MX5 does not rely solely on the battery to restart the car. The engine stops exactly before a firing stroke and on restart the relevant plug is fired to ignite the fully charged combustion chamber thus relieving the batter of most of the strain strain.
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I have a copy of a Mazda Service Information sheet regarding the battery on the MX5, if anyone would like it just send me a private message with your email. It explains everything.
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It was Mazda OEM. If you put the ND2 on a CTEK the stop/start will stop working until the battery voltage and the voltage sensor resets themselves after xx miles OR until you do a simple reset of disconnecting the -ve lead for 10 minutes.

Both were Mazda 3 Hatchback 2.0 Skyaktiv X GT Sport Auto.

I still think you just need a new battery. Mine is an ND1 which doesn’t have the luxury of Stop-Start - thank God!

I sanded, primed, repainted and lacquered my wheels.

Never done this before, would give the finish 7/10.

Not bad, and a lot cheaper than getting them done professionally.

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New steering wheel day!

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Looks like a right royal improvement :sunglasses:

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Last stages of polishing , sealing and waxing the paint on the car. Been a mission and had to ask the current wife if its any different as was taking so long. But it looks better, but not on a cloudy evening. Hope to get out tomorrow evening to catch some midges and flies on the nose :yum:

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Some parts arrived sooooo

Not running perfectly because it’s a brand new map, but feels good man. Just shy of a year since I took it off the road, that quick 2.5 swap snowballed a bit :stuck_out_tongue: But now it has new everything. Last time it ran it pissed petrol everywhere because I had the wrong injectors, time before that it ran on 3 because one of the donor injectors coincidentally died while the engine was out. But if those are the biggest problems it has then I’m very happy.

Got the rear brakes together at last too, the last bits of exhaust and underbraces fitted and coincidentally finished the arch rustproofing yesterday so it’s back on its wheels, it’d drive but tbh I did a rubbish job of the coolant so I kind of want to drop it out and redo from the start (though, needs a bunch of small stuff sorted before the MOT).

Bit of a holdup on brake discs which is a bummer, I really don’t want to run the new PBSs on the old discs. Not sure how that’ll shake out, I think I still have the old pads so might just slap those back in just to get it going.

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4 new Kumho’s from Black Circle and fitted at my local garage.

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You won’t regret it.

Ordered some Daytime Running Lights. With a thank you in passing to @RichardFX for his step by step guide here:

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You’ll have run out of things to do at this rate Nick! :joy:

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Replaced both front callipers and muckied my finger nails.

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