My 2002 Maita/Protege wheel came in and it is as promised, in near mint condition so I am very excited. I paid a whopping $62 for it off of eBay. There are a few others available but not at that price. I pm'd the seller with a lowball offer and he accepted. Tough economic times mean our gain
Good call Brent on searching the Miata/Protege forums for airbags. I just found an airbag in very good condition and closed the deal this morning. Cost? $50 shipped! So my total for the new steering wheel swap will be $112. Beats the heck out of buying a used Nardi RX7 wheel as they go for over $300 with most in the $400 range.
As mine is a Miata/Protege wheel (search eBay for each of these and you'll find others), I'll have to drill out two holes at the 12 and 6 positions but I think I can do this. For cruise control to work, I'll need to connect two wires together off of the wheel to the one on the RX7 wiring, but I can handle this also I think. Jesus Padilla is going to help anyway.
As an aside, I found the airbag on
http://www.mazdas247.com/forum so you might want to check there for used steering wheels. There are a few right now with the airbag that appear to be in good shape for a good price.
A few shots of the wheel (I haven't cleaned it yet so what you see are smudges not scrapes). I wanted one with perforated leather after seeing goodfellafd3s:
And the airbag:
