Interior swap

I always found the original black cloth interior being a too dark, so I swapped it for a tan leather interior, which made the interior look a whole lot brighter.  

The interior swap is not all that difficult, but it involves removing really everything in the car.  The dashboard, seats, center console, all plastic trimming, seatbelts, rear deck, carpet etc needs to come out.

The doorpanels have already been changed.  Steering column, instrument panel and central console are removed.   
The steering wheel and the column can be taken out in 1 piece, there's absolutely no reason to take them apart.

The dash has been taken out.  It's beginning to look a bit scary... For more info on how to remove the dash visit my ABS page.

To remove the carpet in one piece, the heater core has to be taken out.  Since I didn't want to do that, I just cut the old carpet in pieces. 

Of course leaving the heater in place also makes it more difficult to get the new carpet back in.  I decided to cut the carpet and stuff it under the heater.  The red arrows in this picture shows where I made the cut.  It starts at the gearlever and goes towards the front of the car.   When the carpet was in place, I stapled the ends back together.  It's not visible once everything is back installed.  

Since the tan dashboard came from a mx5, the wiring was different.  Instead of trying to modify it, I just builded the wiring of the old dash over to the new one.  I reckon this to be the safest way.  Took me about an hour.

Almost there, the dashboard is back in place.  Only steering wheel column and center console to fit.  It's beginning to resemble a car again.
Since my wife's Suzuki Swift was being sold at the time of the interior swap, I took advantage of the situation and removed the heating elements from her seats and stuffed them into the Miata...  

Then there's the carpet on the rear deck, the seatbelts and the plastic trimmings around the seatbelt pillars to change over.  BTW, it isn't necessary to remove the top.  I just did that because I replaced mine.

Here's the final result, everything looks brandnew, there's even a new hood cover.
While I was at it, I also added the '94-on cockpit brace.  The holes for the mounting bolts are there, but the nuts aren't.  So it will be necessary to weld these in place.  Sorry, don't have pictures of it...  It's not too difficult to get the nuts in, but the access is limited.

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