The MX5, like any car has a lot of connectors. Individual components do not connect directly into the wiring loom, instead they have little plastic connectors that can be unplugged and removed individually. Unfortunately with many of these connectors it is not immediately obvious as to how they come apart. Small spring clips need to be compressed, sometimes with more hands than you have and in some cases it is not even clear which plug will come away.
As we take Ermy and Car-Daver apart we aim to provide some helpful photos of how to detach the various connectors. In some cases we broke them, but hey at least we learnt from it!
The first connector occurs in 3 places (That we know of) It connects the dash loom to the main loom (Under the steering wheel), the steering column, ignition and airbag to the main loom (Also under the steering wheel) and connects the front and rear looms (Under the carpet just behind the drivers seat)
These fairly chunky blocks have a central pin which sits between the two parts of the connectors. You need to pull this pin out to detach the two parts.
In order to do this, push in the spring clip on the dark grey pin and pull the whole pin away from the connector block. On the image above, you can see the pin pulled out and the spring clip on the left of the pin.
From the top down, the spring clip will be a small square piece about 3mm by 3mm which juts out from the rest of the pin. You can push in with a finger, or a flat bladed screwdriver. The central pin will then be released and will slide by pulling it away from the block.
If using the screwdriver, push in under the square piece and angle the blade of the screwdriver up and away from the block easing the pin out. It will stay inside of the block as per the photo.
Once the pin is out, when you are holding the cables, the blocks will then slide apart.