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Note: these instructions are for 99-05 Miatas. 96-97 NA Miatas should be exactly the same. I don’t know how this would work on older models without the light at the top of the windshield frame. Maybe ask the seller to make sure they fit.
Miata sunvisors are garbage. They get floppy and fall down, and they’re too small to do much of anything anyway.
Pretty much everyone I know removes them and just throws a pair of cheap sunglasses in the console instead. Plenty of vendors sell blanking plates that just cover up the hole the sun visors, but that seems like a wasted opportunity. I had already installed an LED replacement light bulb for the interior light, and it’s much brighter than the factory bulb, but it’s still pretty dark inside a Miata at night.
I found some vendors selling blanking plates with LED’s in them, but they were all pretty pricey for what amounts to two bulbs and some wire. Finally I stumbled across these on amazon.
They check all the boxes. They’re less expensive than the ones from the Miata vendors, they have LED’s, they say they fit the NB as well as the NA. I ordered these dudes.
They arrived a couple of days later, and I totally forgot about them for months, lol.
I finally got around to installing them the other day. Installation is pretty straight forward but will require a soldering iron. I picked up this soldering iron and this solder on amazon.
So you start by removing the factory sun visors, they are held in with two Phillips head screws each. Just remove the screws and they fall right out. Keep the screws, you will need them to install the light plates.
Next pop the plastic lens off the center map light with a small flathead screwdriver. Inside it, you will also find two Phillips screws, remove them and keep them, and the light assembly will come out. It’s still attached to the wiring harness, so it will dangle there, but it gives you access to the hole that goes through the top of the windshield, which is what you need.
Go grab a wire coat hanger, and straighten it. You’re going to stick it in from the center, run it over to the hole the sunvisor left, them tape the wires from the LED blanking plates to the coat hanger and pull them over to the center. Repeat for the other side. We’re gonna get power and ground from the factory interior light so the lights come on when the factory light is on, and turn off when the factory light is off.
Once you have the wires to the middle of the windshield, you need to pair them up. The red ones go to the left side, where the factory wires are coming in, and the black ones go to the right side, where no wires are coming in. I used the tiny little round holes at the bottom to route the wires through from the back to the front. Trust me, this makes more sense when you’re looking at it. You’re basically just getting the wires from the back side, aka inside the top of the windshield, to the front side, aka the front of the overhead light, so you can attach to power and ground there.
Now the fun part. You need to kinda flip the light assembly over so that it’s front is facing up so that you can solder the wires to it. For obvious reasons you can’t solder upside down. At least I can’t. You’re going to want to solder the red wires from the lights to the pad where the factory blue with red tracer wire goes.
Like this:
Now we’re gonna go over to the side with the black wires. You have a metal connector poking it out of the light assembly. It has a round hole in the middle of it. That black wires are going to attach to that. The best way I found was the twist the wires together, loop them through the hole, twist more, then add a dab of solder to make sure they always have a good connection. Here’s a pic of the finished product.
Now would be a very good time to test this. You do need to put the screws in the light assembly, because the driver side screw acts as a ground. You should be rewarded with working lights in place of your useless sun visors.
At this point, assuming everything is working, you can button everything back up. Pop the lens cover back on the center light and use the original sun visor mount screws to screw in your new lights.
Here are a few more pics of the finished product. Watch the video above for more of the soldering process.
