I brought the car in December of 2000. It was 13 years old and had 200,000 kms on the clock. The car was fully stock and apparently only had one lady owner. I brought it from a car yard, so who knows what to beleive. I havn't had any major problems with engine or the rest of the car, and it seems to have been looked after.
The standard engine produces around 100Kw at the flywheel and is good for a 15.9 second standing quarter mile depending on wich magazine you read. However, with over 200,000 kms on the clock, fully bald, factory size tyres, and the only mod being a pod filter, I managed to do a 15.4 second quarter at a test'n'tune night at Willowbank.
Sick Mods.
6 months after buying the car, I did my first mod. I installed a rampod foam unifilter. I brought it second hand from a mate who had it in his corolla, so I had to fabricate some bracets to support it and the air flow meter. Zippy ties also came in handy during this excercise.
The car still had the factory 'electric adjustable' shock absorbers which were very soggy and caused a few spin outs during my random acts of road-rally driving. Pedders were the only company that offered a kit to fit the strut arms without modification, so I installed a set of 'Sports Rider' Shock absorbers with 2 inch lowered springs. These have improved the handling dramatically, and are much better than I expected.
The 8 pounds of boost produced by the factory turbo was beginning to get boring and giving me performance anxiety. So I went ahead and installed a 'Spitfire' boost gage, and a Turbosmart boost bleeder valve. Much to my dismay I discovered that the factory computer has a 10 pound boost cut, and the 2 pounds of boost was acheiving nothing. I took the bleeder valve off.
To conform with all hot 4 inthusiests I had a 2½ inch press bent steel exhaust fitted from the end of the dump pipe back, with a hight flow cat, a new muffler and a crome tip. This gave a surprisingly noticeable increase in performance but at high revs caused overboosting of the turbo which the computer does not like.
Big Plans
This is the section that would normally appear in 'Readers Rides' at the back of 'Hot 4s', and generally makes the owner out to be a bit of a tosser. So I will try not to spin too much crap.
Due to the overboosting of my turbo since having the exhaust insalled, I have two options. 1. Try too keep the boost under 10 pounds, by maybe putting the factory airbox back in, or mucking around with the waste gate actuator diafram.
2. Make the engine work with higher boost, by installing a performace chip or fuel cut defender (not sure if that would work), or going all out and getting an aftermarket computer.
My pressure plate doesn't seem to be clamping down on my clutch real well at the moment, so a clutch kit will be needed soon. I think I will stick the standard syncromesh style to retain a bit of driveability, and maybe get a high torque pressure plate.
I may give some attention to the gearbox while it is out. I would like to get a limited slip sort of idea happening, but I think the only way of doing that is to modify the imported 4WD GTX or GTR gearbox. This means money and a bit of luck. And no, I won't be converting my car to 4WD. Simply too much effort and too much weight.
A couple of decent racing slicks to go on the front when I am out at the drags wouldn't go astray either.
Help Me!
If you own a Mazda similar to mine,
and have done some work to it, please email me at bad_323@hotmail.com
and tell me all about it.
THIS PAGE IS STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION.
Last updated 13 April, 2002
