^^
Oh, and when DD here speaks, people listen. He drops little nuggets of SA wisdom on the forums here and there. Like this one. I always copy and paste them.

 

...and several of them are even mostly right!

 

Hey. Congrats on the SA22. It's in much better shape than mine. Unfortunately, for the car, I drove it in college. My father's insurance company finally booted me.

I bought new (a demo with 7k miles) what the dealership referred to as a '78 even though Mazda technically never produced a '78. I think it was actually built in April of 1978. (Don't quote me. I'm not looking at the tag.) It has vinyl seats but the center section is perfed. Other differentiator: 1) no door pockets. 2) perforations in the right side of the dash for a mono speaker that was never actually installed. They all came with stereos, even the S models. 3) No button to turn off the air cond.

It is now on a rotisserie waiting for me to finish blocking, painting then reassembly. I'm staying close to stock for nostalgia's sake. I don't think these cars will ever be worth much. The up side is that gives you the freedom to do what you want.

 

I think its much more probable that Mazda used one design of stalk / switch for both models, just never made the intermittent option functional for the S models. (hence, "the click") I think this is an S that someone replaced the stock steel wheels with FB whls and added the 5 speed and body moldings.

 

Nice red SA but it's not a museum piece so do whatever you think you want. My 2cents is keep the a/c if it is working properly. If it doesn't work, pitch it. And take good care of the interior and paint.
Enjoy!

 

From what I remember the difs between the S and GS are:

2 spoke steering wheel.
Steel wheels
No Intermittent wiper (Invented by Lucas)
No side moldings.
No electronic hatch release.
No power antenna
No console
No ugly stripe kits

Basically all the crap that doesn't work on the GSs now.

Herb

 

The April 1979 parts catalog shows Intermittent Relay part number 101 167 820A "for all w/Int Wiper", and Short Connector 124 467 821 "for all W/O Int Wiper."

The "Switch, wiper and washer" part number doesn't change - - only one version of it.

What do you want to bet that removing the short connector and installing the relay would make the intermittent function work?

 

-and of course the 5-speed box...
-ugly stripes: dealer "option"
-I think steel wheels were actually standard across the range, but damn few, if any, GS's ever got off the boat without this "option" pre-mounted (+$250 at the time)
-door pockets and lower carpet on door card also a GS feature, as I think someone noted here.

Stu Aull
80GS
Alaska

 

Zactly....

 

I've had my spark yellow GS since new. (It was one of the demo cars given to dealerships that they couldn't sell for 6 months.) Perfed vinyl seats, no door pockets or carpeting on door bottoms. The "78's" seem to defy all of the rules.

Herb

 

i haven't driven the sa in a week :/ it needs a carb rebuild bad and a muffler. I need to check and see if i can just buy an rb muffler for now and then replace the rest as money allows. I did just get a nice promotion at work I talked to my auto body guy about touching up some things and straightening/painting the lip this winter. We're going to wetsand and polish it too to get rid of some slight orange peel in the clear and some minor scrathces will also hopefully disappear. I need to find a new wiper motor cover panel, someone must of leaned on this one and dented it in slightly. I didn't notice the first few days believe it or not.

 

You can buy all the pieces from RB separately if you want. You'll just be paying
more for the extra shipping I think.

My cowl panel has been bent before by some idiot putting his ham fist on it while
leaning into the engine bay (me!). You can remove it and usually straighten it
up pretty easily.

 

Those cowl panels bend if you look at them cross-eyed.

 

Wet sanding the clear coat was mentioned. I do't think that my yellow car had a clear coat. Were the metalics base coat / clear coat or single stage?

 

I thought all the paint colors back then used clear coat. I know the metallic did for sure.

 

that's correct, the solids are single stage (no clear) and the metallics have a clear. with Mazda this is true depending on the color, up to 2005! the black and red get clear for the FD and FC, respectively, but the white stays single stage up to the end of the NB miata.

 

Just like the service manual and other manuals Mazda put out, they also distributed service update bulletins to the dealers. Kind of a catch all, that contained updates and corrections to the regular manuals. If you get ahold of the 78 or 79 service bulletin updates, in the back are the actual paint formula's for each color offered that year. Gives the mix of base colors by weight and if it got clear or not. Not sure if they are on Fox's website or not.