Southrnfresh Mazda Protege 5 Track car project: Penny pinching and getting grip

December 12, 2018 Joseph Dale 1342 Views

12/10/2018

The Protege 5 is not the fastest car available for this sort of thing, and the FS motor is not the most powerful without some sort of force induction. So I just want to try and get some bolt-ons and squeeze every bit of efficiency out of this 2 liter. The car does have 288,000 miles on it, but it does not look or feel like it , and the motor runs like it has half of that on it.

One of the issues that previous owner told me about was the catalytic converter code the car had, so the best solution was a header. There are not many companies making bolt-ons for these cars, so budget in mind and saving money when possible. I decided to go with the cheapest header I could find on ebay. I found one for $56 free shipping, it arrived a few weeks later, and this is the result. A decent piece of metal in the shape of what should be a header. I at the minimum expected shitty welds, and eventually having to have it repaired several times.

For a $56 piece it was half way decent, and looked to play the part and allow me to remove the heavy and clogged catalytic converter and let the engine breath a little better. It did none of that..

The FS 2.0 came in so many different cars, and has tons of small variations, sometimes vendors do not really know what to make the parts for. This header could fit a Mazda MX6, Probe, 626, but it did not fit the Protege 5.

In the photo above you can see clearly that the EGR pipe is way off, and has no chance of connecting to the header.

The second problem is that the header either fits the head, or the exhaust. In this photo the header is bolted to the exhaust, and it does not line up to the head.

This photo shows the header installed on the head, and it does not line up with the exhaust at all. I thought it may work with a aftermarket exhaust, but you can also see it forcefully resting on the oil pan. After about 45 mins of thinking of ways to make this thing work. I went on Ebay, and setup the header for a return, and as of today it has been returned and I have been refunded. I was forced to re install the OE manifold and Catalytic converter back on… so to be continued on the header situation.

I tried my luck again with eBay with the intake. Injen and AEM make intakes for these cars, that are known to fit, but they are more then what I wanted to spend. So I found a cheap ebay intake for $31 shipped. It came with a crazy heat shield that I did not install. But the intake very well and was straight forward and it fit pretty well for the price, I will more then likely swap out the filter later on.

Foggy headlights have always been a pet peeve of mine, and the plastic headlights on the Protege are known for yellowing. My first thought was to get a cheap set online, but I could not find a new set for a reasonable price. The regular protege single beam headlights are under $100 , but the dual beam P5 ones are still a little pricey.

I got lucky and found a set of used headlights from a guy on Facebook for $100. He said they were the Japanese version headlights, but I really did not care. I just wanted something in better condition. They ended up being different from what we offer in the US, and possibly Japanese market. I am very familiar with these cars, but the Protege 5 was a really popular car and sold all over the world with pretty much the same parts, so its hard to truly tell what region these headlights are from. The bulb for the high beam was totally different, and it has a city light in the high beam also. The low beam and turn signals work fine, but I will have to wire the high beams and city light in later to get them to work.

I also found a deal on the Falken Azenis RT615k for track duty. Found a set of new old 2017 stock for $360.

I had been debating on if I should stick with a 16″ wheel and save as much weight as possible. But I did some research on wheels that are affordable and lightweight that can hold up to track use. And did not want to take a chance of old ancient JDM relics that would need work to look decent and be safe for track duty. Konig has made a effort to hit that market perfectly with their flow form series. My good friends at Koruworks are one of the only Konig vendors in Atlanta, and they had a set of the Ultraforms in 17×9 +34 (18.4lbs), eager to get the oem wheels off of the car, I snatched them up.

The overall look of the gloss graphite ultraforms looked great on the car, but were a little too aggressive for the P5.

Another thing with the P5 is how the rear of the car is more narrow then the front. So you can really see how much they poked.

I decided to change up from the gloss graphite Konig Ultragram to the red opal Hypergram in 17×8 +35 for $720

The 17×8 Hypergrams are also lighter then the 17×9 ultragrams by 2 lbs at 16.3lbs. With the tire mounted and aired up to 36psi, it came up to 37lbs even. I would highly suggest the Konig wheels to anyone looking for something lightweight and inexpensive.

That is where we are at the moment, we have a good bit of mechanical things to get done to the car for the next update. And finally get to the most important part of the build the suspension. Thanks for reading.