Miata NC 2008 cupholder addition
I added a fold up cup holder to my Miata because I have to have a cup of coffee with me at all times and the Miata cup holders weren't doing it for me.
Here is a picture of the finished product, with a cup of good coffee sitting in it.
I bought a really nice fold up cupholder from Ultimate Cupholders. So far it seems like a very well made cupholder.
Right after I got my Miata I realized that I could pry out the "coin slinger" -- after trying to put coins in it, of course -- and I was left with a nice location for my Delphi Skyfi2 XM receiver. There was even plenty of space inside that area for the car power adapter for it and my Palm Treo charger.
I noticed that there are two decent sized screws on either side exposed by the removal of the coin slinger, so I decided to put them to use.
My solution was to create a bracket using a standard hardware store 4" angle bracket.
I cut off 1.25" of metal and put a hole 1.5" from the end. In the picture you can see the longer mark for cutting off the bracket, and the small dot for where to drill the hole. After cutting off and drilling I then took it to a bench grinder and rounded the edges. Things end up pretty well sized for the Miata console. The long end that is not cut goes down the side of the console to just below the plastic. For the cup holder this means the plastic back of the cupholder is against the carpet.
I mounted the cupholder back to the long side of the bracket by drilling holes in the bracket and the cupholder and attaching with small flat head bolts.
Because the screws are recessed in the coinslinger area, I used a long screw of the same diameter and 3 nuts to make sure the bracket doesn't hit the top of the console plastic.
I painted the bracket, screw and stand-off nuts with semi-gloss black paint. The paint seems a little shinier than the stereo unit, but matches all the various shades of black fairly well.
Even though the system is only mounted by that one screw, it is extremely solid.
Since the cupholder intrudes on the passenger area, I was very interested in making it fold. The location turns out to be very nice since I can easily reach my drink and the Fischer cupholder seems to hold different sized drinks pretty solidly.
Here is one final picture with the cupholder mounted folded up. You can also see the XM receiver in the center of the coinslinger area, and will notice that the front panel on it is painted black as well.
