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Thompson Oil Filter Relocation and AutoMeter Gauge
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A little background, all NB (99+) Miata does not come with a working oil pressure gauge. The OEM one that everyone sees in their gauge cluster is actually a ?idiot light? that shows either pressure or no pressure. An easy fix for this is to install a real oil pressure sender in place of the OEM sender, but since I never do anything that?s easy? I opted for a completely new AutoMeter gauge. And since I?m running wires for the pressure gauge, I also opted to install a oil temperature gauge too. I choose to go with electrical gauges instead of mechanical gauge for one reason. I didn?t want to have hot oil moving anywhere inside my dash, no matter how small of an amount. Electrical gauges are not cheap; they are usually $10-15 more than mechanical ones. They are also harder to install because of wiring and grounding issue, but I never like a easy job anyways. I went with the A-pillar dual gauge mount because it looks cool? but you can mount it wherever you can run the wires. A-pillar area is probably the hardest area to mount to while the easiest location is in your center console.

Second part of this project was the Thompson Oil Relocation kit. The Miata has the worst location for their oil filter. In order to access it, you have to jack up the car? undo three(3) bolts and remove intake manifold support bracket, than you have enough room for a filter wrench to get in there. You can build you own filter relocation setup with many aftermarket-racing parts from Earl Performance Plumbing and Russell Racing. There are also several kits out which has everything you need to get the job done (Moss, Greddy, etc). Here is a complete Thompson Kit.

I looked around and the Thompson kit was by far the best purpose built kit. And also a big ?thanks? to Tom for his input.. it would have been a lot harder without this help in figuring things out.

The special situation in my case is that I want to mount my gauge sender in or around the relocation kit. The first solution was drilling and tapping sender holes into the filter-relocation base. The idea was sound, but after looking at and measuring the area that I?m working with? there was no way two senders would fit. So I went down to my favorite hangout, a racing shop called Tognotti?s Auto World. Started talking with the guys behind the counter and was quickly upon a simple solution. Turns out Earl Performance Plumbing has a special adapter for mounting senders in their hoses which wasn?t listed in their general catalog. After a special order, I had two of these adapters that can mount inline with the Thompson Kit?s hoses.

Now that all my parts are in place, I'm ready to put it all together...

continue to the next two page for actually write-up