It appears I have a short to power going to the starter. Twice I have caught the car try start itself without the key in the ignition, both times within a minute of being powered off. This only happened twice in the last two weeks, but it's enough to warrant an investigation.

I recently installed a starter relay to fix the all too common starter issue, and I'm wondering if anyone has seen this symptom as a result of a bad relay. No vendor kit here, just a spare Hella SPDT relay + the instructions at Banzai Racing which worked well in general.

The other oddity is that this is a 2002, so it should have a clutch switch, but the clutch switch has either been bypassed or is not working as I can start the car without the clutch (will look into this as well).

Any pointers from anyone else that had to troubleshoot this are welcome before I start going to town with a multimeter.

 

The one time I heard about this was from a friend. His starter engaged while driving and did not stop until he disconnected the battery. Fender harness was rubbed through and bridged some wires. Fixed the wires, fixed the problem.

 

Thanks, I did see that thread. No frayed wires for me, but it is puzzling.

One thing I did find is that the clutch switch was bypassed, which I immediately fixed. This should at least give me one additional layer of protection here assuming the short isn't after the switch.

There also seems to be a piece missing on the push rod bracket here, but I can't figure out what it's supposed to be based on the parts manual.

Why would you engineer this part with a hole when it could just be solid and serve its purpose? I assume some level of adjustability was wanted, but for some reason I can't find any reference to the part that goes there.

Anyways, bolt to the rescue for now until I figure it out.

 

It's supposed to be a rubber stopper. Over time they crumble and fall out, similar to the "always on" brake light failures that people have with these cars. 46584S0100 is a Nissan part that works as a replacement as the Mazda part is NLA. I replaced all of my old/missing stoppers with them when I refreshed my pedals and haven't had any issues.

 

Unlike USDM, JDM did not have a clutch kill switch. So only one switch on the clutch instead of two.

However, the mounting point for the second switch may have been left intact. Just a guess.

 

The two naked posts sticking out from the heater box may have been for the RHD cruise control module. Cruiise control for JDM was dropped early on.