Recent Posts

ECU Reverse Engineering Step 1

Going down the rabbit hole towards understanding the ECU, that I had had bought a few days ago, led me to realize based on ECU model numbers that BPL9-18-881B is the ECU for a 1995 Miata rather than a 1999 (Miata.net forum reference). I was disappointed and reached out to the seller on Facebook who did say they will send me the 1999 version and it was an error on their part, but so far they have not fixed their error. I consider this a loss of $60. I decided to move on, however. I bought a 1999 ECU on eBay and it should arrive in a week or so. Meanwhile, I will continue with this 1995 ECU since it will be cool to build two test benches to understand the difference between the cars.

Posted on May 17, 2019 by Vikas N Kumar

Miata ECU and Car Hacking

A few years ago I had purchased the Car Hacker’s Handbook (Figure 1) from No Starch Press as I was interested to see what that book taught. I work in software and did some reverse engineering for a few years, so with the current Miata project it made sense to learn some tricks of hacking the car software (or firmware).

Posted on May 14, 2019 by Vikas N Kumar

First oil change

I purchased the Miata almost a year ago, and it was time to change the oil. Since I had never done it before, I expected it to take longer than normal as I would need to familiarize myself with the process. It was quite easy to drain the oil, but removing the installed oil filter took a long time and I struggled with it, but eventually got it off. This post describes step-by-step how to do it.

Posted on May 11, 2019 by Vikas N Kumar

Antique Briggs And Stratton Engine

On a whim, I started looking at Briggs and Stratton engines on Craigslist this week, and ended up getting a great deal on an antique horizontal shaft 3HP engine made in around 1989 or 1990 for just $20. It was owned by a retiree before this and she was just getting rid of junk in the garage. The engine did not start at the time, and that plays well into my plan of disassembling and learning how the engine works and fixing it.

Posted on Apr 27, 2019 by Vikas N Kumar

Painting the Wheels Red

The wheels I bought earlier were from different cars, and I wanted to paint them bright red to get a unique look on my silver Miata. It took about 12 hours of work spread across 3 days to get it done. In this post, I describe how to paint wheels at home for cheap.

Posted on Apr 20, 2019 by Vikas N Kumar