Pop-up headlight motors
The NA's pop-up headlights each have a motor, and one that sticks or will not retract is a common fault. This page says what owners found, and who sells new motors. It is not a repair guide.
How to read it. The owner accounts are from one Miata.net forum thread from November 2002 and a short Grassroots Motorsports thread, both read on 1 October 2026. The 2002 thread is 24 years old, so what it says about parts and costs is out of date. Seller descriptions are from their own pages that day. There are no prices on this page.
What owners say
From "Ever dis-assembled/repaired headlight motor?" (November 2002, NA):
- Do the factory checks first. The original poster had done the wiring and relay checks in the shop manual, which led to "replace the motor", before he took one apart.
- A quick motor test. One poster said that if you can turn the manual knob and the motor kicks in about halfway, the motor is fine, and you need not open the vertical part with the knob, which holds the armature. If you take it apart, the brushes fall out and are fiddly to put back.
- Cleaning the contacts. One owner took his apart, cleaned the rotary contacts and found it worked again; another saw dark deposits where he thought arcing had occurred.
- A bad diode. The original poster's fault, a light that rose but would not retract, was one of the three diodes under the contacts in the plastic wiring assembly, which a multimeter check could not show because it failed under load. He said a light that will not move at all points to the middle one, one that rises but will not retract to the inner one, and one that retracts but will not rise to the outer one. This is one owner's finding on one car.
- Replacing it. One poster decided a salvage motor was a better answer than a repair that might fail on a dark rainy night. Another suggested racers who race Spec Miata, who must keep the motors but not have them working, as a source of used ones.
A Grassroots Motorsports thread describes a right-hand motor on a 1991 car that ran the light up and down several times before stopping, and another owner said his did the same after a large bump. The page I could read gave no cause or fix.
New motors
| Seller | What it says it offers | Fits (as stated) |
|---|---|---|
| Mike's Miata Parts | factory-new genuine Mazda motors: driver side NA01-51-SBX, passenger side NA01-51-SAX. Includes the bolts and the retractor rod bracket; the retractor rod itself is sold separately. The driver side was shown as backordered | 1990-1997 |
| Treasure Coast Miata (Florida) | new OEM driver side motor, NA01-51-SBX, genuine Mazda; it says a passenger side motor (NA01-51-SAX) is also available. Search results show it also lists used motors | 1990-1997 |
Not covered yet
- Used or rebuilt motors from sellers whose pages I read; eBay lists many, which I did not open.
- The retractor rod and the plastic caps on the arms; search results suggest the rod is a separate Mazda part, and I did not confirm that.
- The diode and contact repair: I found no seller of a repair kit and no recent account of it.
© 2026 Fischer Interactive LLC. Written for the Ref Sensor app's Miata users. The seller's page is the authority.