In the 626 I'm driving, it's in a "canned" module that the factory manual calls a "delay/buzzer". Like the Miata, it's a plug-in module, but since I wasn't certain exactly what the "delay" part was about, I didn't want to just "chop it out". So I pulled the module and jerked the "can" off it. Inside, on the circuit board the "can" covers, there was an oddball device - A speaker, of sorts, only "inside out". Under an easily removed plastic cover with a hole in the middle was a diaphragm with a small magnet (Real small - About an eigth of an inch in diameter, and a bit more than a 16th inch high) on it, with the magnet sitting inside a coil. (I describe it as "inside out" because usually, a speaker is "the other way around", with the magnet stationary, and the coil attached to the diaphragm) Plucking the magnet off the diaphragm permanently silenced the buzzer, then I snapped the "can" back on it, and plugged it back in. The module is now functional for whatever it is that it's supposed to "delay" (I suspect it just handles turning off the "fasten seat belts" idiot-light in the dash, but haven't bothered to chase it far enough to be certain) but now it does its job silently, and I'm a happy camper.
The thought that you could leave a door open in a Miata and not notice is pretty amusing.
I too find the door buzzer useless (though not annoying enough to do actually anything about it).
I do really appreciate the headlight reminder though. My NA didn't have one, and I had to jump start it more than once because I left the lights (sometimes just the parking lights) on. It doesn't take long to run down a little battery like that -- especially when it's -20F.
The "Hey stupid! You left your headlights on!" dinger/beeper/buzzer is the only noisemaker I leave operational, and for exactly that reason. It saved me from going out to a dead battery several times during my stint dong newspaper delivery - It's easy to forget that you've got the headlights on at all when your normal routine is to kick on the high-beams at 0-dark-hundred when you leave the house, run a 200-ish mile paper route, then finally get back home in full daylight without ever having shut the car down in between. (And often, without seeing any oncoming traffic during dark-time to remind you to switch down to low-beams, and as a side-effect, remind you that the lights are actually on)
I have had people ask how I can forget the headlights with those barn doors sticking up. My only answer is that it happens.
At one of the sweatshops I used to work at to make other people rich, I did it several times, but the car was parked on a hill and I could always do a reverse roll-start.
I never did put a buzzer on, though I seriously considered one of those battery cut-off devices that shuts it down before the battery discharges enough to not let the car start. For some reason I never bought one.
What amazed me was I could forget and leave the headlights on with those barn doors sticking up like that. But, once you get used to them, you just don't see them anymore.
You mean that you leave the one you find helpful on there? What a concept. My parent's 1994 Camry has, or had, an automatic headlight shut-off feature. It worked great, then it quit working, leaving that automatic car stranded with nobody around to jump it.
That is one of the issues that I am talking about with things becoming too gadgety. The more sensors and crap that they put on a car, the more expensive parts that you have to fail and cause problems when they do.
I am not against automotive advances and suggesting that we go back to basics, it just seems to be going overboard. I don't need the car to make me coffee and read stock reports to me in the morning, it really just needs to drive to my satisfaction with the options that I feel that I would like to have, which does not include a door buzzer to let me know that the door *right next to me* is open.
But that is exactly what the vast majority of drivers do want. Unfortunately, their desires seem to influence even cars such as the Miata.
My pet peeve is that I can't route the heater to the windsield without the running the AC compressor. Trust me, when you take outside air that's at 0F and 20% humidity and heat it up to
pws wrote in news:EB24h.138$ snipped-for-privacy@tornado.texas.rr.com:
Of course you don't, you just plug in your 12v coffee maker and spread the newspaper across the wheel while driving at 70mph in bumper to bumper traffic on the freeway like everyone else does. How it must annoy these folks to have the cell phone ring and have to look up a phone number and write down an address while doing the above and shaving.....
Ain't it, though? The stuff that's useful gets left functional. The stuff that's simply annoying without any actual purpose gets clobbered. Gee... why don't *I* get paid the big bucks for designing cars?!?!?
Just one more reason to love a stick. Oops... left the lights on... Unless the battery is *TOTALLY* pancakeville, my humble little $500 Mazda beater-mobile cheerfully goes "zoom-zoom", while the umpty-thousand dollar Lexus with all the bells and whistles that's piled next to it sits there waiting for a tow truck to come give 'em a jump. Ya gotta love it :)
Actually had that happen one night when I was driving pizza delivery - The assistant manager of the joint left his lights on or something in his Lexus, and had a dead battery. Apparently, I did too, 'cause when I came out at the end of the night, I got nada when I turned the key. The boss is sitting there looking disgusted at his ride, then when mine didn't fire up, he started ha-ha-ing and talking smack about how he told me it was a pile of junk, and that I should just have the tow truck take it straight to the junkyard when it arrived. Without missing a beat, I said "What tow truck?" and proceeded to pop-start it. As usual, it caught on the first attempt, and suddenly, the smack-talking stopped and he wanted a jump. "Sorry, but I'm already straining my alternator trying to charge my own battery. Which pile of crap needs to go to the junkyard now?", and I headed for home. Not very charitable, I know, but...
Next day when I came to work, he was pissing and moaning about how much the tow truck charged him for a jump, how long it took for them to get there, and what an asshole I was for not taking care of him the night before. I just kinda smiled and said "What goes around comes around", and went about my business. Oddly enough, he never again said an unkind word about my car, and was even rather pleasant about asking for a jump a few weeks later when he left the lights on AGAIN.
Yep, no argument from me there...
The one that's currently got me going "You gotta be kidding?!?" is the commercial I've been seeing for a new vehicle (Brand I can't recall - I
*THINK* it might be Lexus, but it could also be Cadillac) that "practically parks itself". Oddly, I've never found parallel parking all that difficult. I can't help but wonder how big the lawsuit will be on the day the driver of such a vehicle tries to get it to park itself and it doesn't work, or worse, it malfunctions and scuffs somebody else's paint-job?
Again, *NO* argument.
Y'know, Pat, it sounds like you and I are definitely on the same page! :)
I used to agree with tooloud on almost every vehicle issue, but that has changed somewhat. Still, he is not a troll, he is very intelligent but is somewhat brash and is usually ready to argue his opinions, much like me, (except for that intelligence thing, which I lack), but not as bad as me, imho.
The car needs to be able to hear and respond to everything you say, you shouldn't have to use your hands for anything.
I am not going to be happy until our cars have all of the gadgets, supplies and creature comforts of an interstellar, multi-generation colony spacecraft.
No, RAMMM isn't anything close to a "general-purpose Mazda" newsgroup; that's what rec.autos.makers.mazda is for. Read up on the differences between the rec.* and alt.* hierarchies and that might all make a little more sense.
Sure, and no offense to some of you guys, but not all of us own Miatas because they remind us of British roadsters. I'm really liking that the Miata is finally starting to catch up with some other great cars in the amenities department--HID headlamps, heated seats, keyless ignition, etc.
Hey, I'm just here to point out some of us are enjoying the Miata's, er...MX-5's progression into the future. I *love* the power hardtop option and I'm glad to see that the Miata is getting some options that I've enjoyed on other cars for years now. I guess I sometimes think that people are complaining about the direction the car is going and I'm here to stick in my
2¢.
That said, I'm a little dismayed (annoyed?) to find that I have to point things like that out to my man Bruder, a pizza delivery guy that pilots a beater car that's not even a Miata, simply because he's not here for the same reasons as most of the rest of us.
Tell ya what - Show me a server on the planet that carries any such group as "rec.autos.makers.mazda" as anything but a name on the path into RAMMM, and I'll cheerfully use that group instead of this one. Until then, I'm here as the closest available alternative. I've gotten good information here that applies to my 626 just as well as it would to a Miata, and when I know that my 626 information applies to the Miata I gladly pass it along.
Here's my attempt to bury the hatchet: You wanna be an ass 'cause your car says Miata and mine says 626, that's your choice. But I'd much rather we try to remember that they're all Mazdas, they share a surprising amount of details between them, and be civil to each other. Keep up the obvious attempts to pick a fight with me, and I simply flush you down the killfile drain like the rest of the usenet clowns that can't behave like reasonably decent human beings.
Ah crap. I don't know either one of you personally, but I like both of you. This feels sort of like high school when two of your friends start fighting....I am bowing out.
I have to wonder who is more relieved about that. I don't think that either me or Leon wants to be the other. What a frightening thought! ;-)
We are two of the few on here that aren't that concerned about the car being a convertible. I like the miata coupe that Mazda made in 1996 and may have considered it if it had gone into production.
I do, however, like to drop the top, and the power hardtop would make that happen much more often. I can't even fathom buying a new model without one, no offense to those that have, so I am obviously not completely anti-gadget.
I just wish that there was some way to retrofit one to the older models, but that is obviously not possible and since I have never seen a custom folding hardtop on a NA or NB miata, it can't be an easy thing to do.
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