For a couple of years, my car was parked in a carport. Even in California, winter nights are frigid. I have always wanted a heated steering wheel feature in my Miata. Finally, I made it.

I ordered a custom steering wheel from GardianDesign and asked them to put nichrome wire under the leather wrap.

The most complicated part is bringing power to this heating wire. The ND1/ND2 car has one unused space in the clockspring connector, which I was going to use. But in ND3, this space was used for something else, probably radar control buttons. There is one wire for LED illumination, which I did not care about, so I reused that wire (black wire) for my heating element. The ground wire was just bolted directly to the wheel frame.

From the other side of the clock spring, I installed a short harness with 14-pin male/female connectors to power this pin location. To reduce the current going through the clock spring, the heating element is powered by 36V (0.8A). I used a small sealed DC-DC converter. Power is provided from the fuse box, using a fuse jumper in the ACC power position.

The current implementation is controlled by a button, but I’m thinking of making it automatic based on cabin temperature. So, heating will turn on when the cabin temperature is below a certain point and turn off when it is warmed up to normal. It takes 3-4 minutes to heat up the wheel to 35 °C