What's in the Miata.net Garage
The Garage at Miata.net is the largest collection of Miata how-tos anywhere, contributed by owners over more than twenty years. I read all 292 articles and sorted them. Here is what is actually in there, which articles are bigger than they look, and what NC and ND owners should expect to find.
The reason I read all of it is unglamorous: I write software that reads repair pages, and the only honest way to know whether it works is to check every page rather than the ones that are easy. The catalog was a by-product, and it turned out to be the more useful half.
Only about two-thirds are how-tos
Of the 292 articles, roughly 195 are genuine step-by-step how-tos — a job, in order, with something resembling instructions. The other 97 are something else: reference material, specifications, buying advice, opinion pieces, and write-ups that describe what somebody did without ever quite telling you how to do it.
All of it is worth reading. But it is worth knowing which kind you have opened before you get the car apart, because the difference is not obvious from the index.
Some articles are much bigger than they look
A handful of pages contain far more than their title suggests, usually because a contributor documented several related jobs in one write-up.
| Article | What's actually in it |
|---|---|
| Rear differential | Two separate measuring procedures inside one page |
| Cupholder fix | A short job on paper, but documented picture-by-picture in around a dozen distinct stages |
| One-touch windows | Longer and more involved than the title implies |
| Mirror lights | Several variations covered in one article |
| Window TLC | Multiple related jobs grouped together |
If one of those covers something you are about to do, read the whole page first rather than starting at step one.
The pictures sit beside the steps, not under them
There are around 1,450 images across the Garage. Most articles were written when tables were how you laid out a web page, so a picture usually sits in a cell next to the text it illustrates rather than beneath it.
On a desktop browser this reads fine. On a phone, and when printing, the layout collapses and pictures can end up separated from the step they belong to. If you are taking an article to the garage, check that the picture you are looking at belongs to the step you are reading.
NA and NB owners are well served. NC and ND owners are not.
This is the single most useful thing to know before you go looking. The Garage grew up with the first two generations, and the depth of coverage reflects that: NA and NB owners will find a how-to for most common jobs, often several.
NC and ND owners will find much less, and much of what exists is generic rather than generation-specific. That is not a criticism of the site — it is what happens when a volunteer archive matures. But it means that for a newer car, Mazda's own workshop and owner's manuals, the specialist vendors' install guides, and the forums are going to do more for you than the Garage will.
A note on titles
A number of articles carry a page title that is not the article's name — the contributor's own site name and a date from 2002, or a fragment of the first sentence. That is why searching for an article by its heading sometimes fails even when you know it exists. If a search comes up empty, try the Garage's own index rather than a search engine.
It is a volunteer archive, and it deserves care
The Garage is decades of unpaid work by owners who wrote up what they learned so the next person would not have to figure it out alone. It is not a factory manual and it does not claim to be. Articles vary in quality, in how much they assume, and in how closely they match your particular car.
Treat it the way you would treat advice from a knowledgeable friend: extremely valuable, worth double-checking against the factory manual before you torque or shim anything, and worth saving offline if a job matters to you. Desktop browsers do File, then Save Page As, and choose "Webpage, Complete"; Chrome on Android saves a whole page from its menu under Download. Keep saved pages for your own use. They remain the work of their authors, so don't republish or share them.
A note on what I do
I make Ref Sensor, an Android app that saves repair pages onto your phone and pulls the steps, tools and torque specs out of them so you can work through a job one step at a time in the garage. Auditing it against the Garage is how this catalog came about. Nothing in this article needs the app — the saving instructions above work on their own.
Miata.net and its Garage are independent of Fischer Interactive LLC, and its articles remain the work and copyright of their authors. This article is an independent catalog that describes them and does not reproduce them. Nothing here is published with its involvement or endorsement. Counts were recorded in September 2026 and the site may have changed since. Mazda, MX-5 and Miata are trademarks of Mazda Motor Corporation, used here only to say which car is meant.
© 2026 Fischer Interactive LLC.