OT: The streets of Tombstone

The hazard/headlight switch was starting to fall into the dash of our 1991 Miata.  I'm not sure, but I think someone was re-enacting the old "Headlights go up, Headlights go down" routine from the Regular Car Reviews Miata review.  Anyway, to fix it meant removing the "tombstone" from the dash.  To remove the tombstone, you need to remove the two eyeball vents at the top to expose the two screws that hold the tombstone in.  The factory shop manual says to loop some string in between the grills of the eyeballs and pull them sharply out of the tombstone.  That seemed a little too violent for me, especially on some brittle 25 year old plastic.  Each eyeball is held in by two metal clips at 3 and 9 o'clock.  I had read on miata.net that you can use a cut up 2 liter pop bottle to wedge between the tombstone and the eyeball and pop the clip and the eyeballs just fall out.

Not having any pop bottles around, I used some sparkling water that my wife drinks.

To make the removal tool, I sliced the top off the bottle where it transitions into a cylinder and then sliced that in half to end up with this:

Wedge the bottle tools into the 6 o'clock position between the vent assembly and the tombstone and then work it up to the 9 and 3 position and under the clip.  If all goes well the vent assembly should just fall out.  The drivers side of mine came out easy.  The passenger side required a fair bit of wedging to get it under the clip, but nothing like the string method.

You can see the brass metal clip that holds the vent in here and the philips screw that holds the tombstone on.

Next, unscrew the shift knob and the 5 philips screws that hold on the center console.

When you take the top screws off the tombstone, stuff a rag into the vent holes and be VERY careful not to let them fall into the vents.  You will never see them again otherwise.  Our tombstone had only one screw holding onto the bottom left.  I think there should be two, one on each side.  It looked to me like the right side might have been broken off.  Maybe when the factory radio was swapped for an aftermarket Pioneer.  Someday I may see if I can get a factory radio to replace the aftermarket one.

I assumed that the switch was screwed onto the tombstone, but no, it snapped onto two posts on the tombstone.  The bottom post of ours was broken off in the switches snap.

If I was a craftsman I would have modified it so that the switch used two self tapping screws to hold it onto the tombstone, but I'm not so I epoxied it on.

Assembly, as they say, is the reverse of dis-assembly.

Hopefully, that will hold it.