After only 8 months of administrative wrangling, I took delivery of my sparkling (because it's been resprayed) 1998 Mazda Roadster (Miata). It has some stuff Wikipedia says it shouldn't, along with some stuff my friend's USDM 2003 didn't have.
1. Indicated 7500 rpm redline (with a fuel cut at 7300!)
2. Six speed box
3. No ABS
4. No LSD
5. Seemingly quite a bit more structural rigidity than my friend's rust free Miata
6. Hilariously optimistic speedometer
Has my car been weirdly parts bin swapped or is it JDM yo?
The fact that you have a 1998 is unique enough to us Americans. For the USDM there was no 1998 model of Miata. 1997 was the last year offering of NA and NBs were marketed as 1999 models
Is your 1998 a NA or a NB?
Do your gauges have an aftermarket dial face? If yes, in the process of putting in the new face, the dial pointers would be removed and that is common for them not reading reliably.
In reply to John Welsh :
It's definitely an NB. Interestingly, my previous car was also non existent in the USA - a 2009 Genesis Coupe.
A friend who works for Mazda in a fashion said that Mazda likes to build cars in batches. Like, almost all US market 1993 FDs were built in one batch in early 1992, when they realized there would be no 1996 US market FD they ran another batch of 1995s very late in 1995 while they were producing 1996s for the home market, and so on.
Point is, they are very good at making different cars on the assembly line, so it's unlikely that the car was made with accidental parts.
I do kinda wonder if the cluster and trans were swapped from a newer model. I'm assuming you have a 1.6. Even the 1.6 got VVT for the Japanese NB2.
A rearend ratio change might account for the speedometer error. Are there kilometer markers on the roads that you can use to check odometer error? Or, alternately, did the car come with a GPS or three? I ask because a ratio change would make the odometer read incorrectly too. Mazda, at least for the FB RX-7s, was pretty lax about accuracy. The odometers would be accurate but the speedometers and the tach would be up to 10% high.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
The batch theory makes sense.
It's a 1.8 with no VVT.
An indicated 50kph is 42kph on gps. Mazda being lax plus what seem to be shorter than stock tires probably explain that.
That said, an indicated 100 kph (62 mph) in 6th is 2800 rpm, a solid 300 rpm lower than my buddy's 2003. Different pumpkin maybe? 3.9?
