Southrnfresh Mazda Protege 5 Track car project: Maintenance and Repairs

February 5, 2019 Joseph Dale 1333 Views

Back with a few updates showing mostly maintenance and making sure the car makes it through the track day in one piece. The goal is to be at the March 17th Atlanta Motorsports Park Jzilla track day. I hope to be able to attend all the events this year, but the first event will be the most important one. Because if the car breaks then obviously things will change. I dont plan on breaking any records with the P5, but just enjoy it and learn. And hopefully motivate more people to bring their cars out and enjoy them.

I can take care of a good bit of the wrenching on the P5, but some things I have never felt comfortable with doing. So I had my good friends at Atlanta Speed Company take care of the timing belt and water pump for me. As you can see it was on its last leg, and way past over due.

Old belt off…

New belt / Pump on..

Next was to take care of the blown out motor mounts . The 3 of the 4 mounts on the P5 are pretty simple, but the rear mount is a complete pain in the ass, and i will save for a later date.

Managed to find a deal online for a set of used AWR Motor mounts for $75, it had all 3 I needed minus the rear. So it worked out perfect.

Passenger side mount installed

Front mount installed. I was afraid of too much vibration from but it was minimal. But the car felt much better without the motor tilting out of the hood.

After the mounts and the car driving so much better, I was gonna put it on the road and drive it more to see if any other things needed to be addressed with the motor. The previous owner seemed to have took care of the car as much as any other regular person would take care of a P5. So the next task will be to work on getting fresh fluids in it. As you can see the car was way overdue for a oil change.

The 2.0 FS motors have terrible baffles, and have a habit of oil starvation during spirited driving. So I decided to pickup some Liqui Moly Anti-Friction 10w40 from Atlanta Speed Company. And also help restore whatever was lost, with the conventional oils. I also will be upgrading the baffle for a aftermarket one before the track day to help with this.

Went to Mazmart to see if I can find any extra parts.

Wondering into Mazmart without a real reason, I ended up buying this Autoexe oil cap. And matching shift knob, that I like so much I didn’t even want to install it on the car.

Good quality product as always from Autoexe, but is not the easiest to remove after a few heat cycles. But I assume all Aluminum oil caps are like that.

Also got a 626 intake manifold, that I am debating on installing. It does not have the VTCS system , which to some it restricts air flow. But it is better used for force induction. So I may not install any time soon. But if I do decide to do it, It would give me access to replace the rear motor mount.

Corksport is one of the few original vendors that still support this platform. And one of their best products have always been their bronze-oil bushings. Front wheel drive Mazda transmissions are naturally notchy so these are a must.

I only installed the linkage mount bushing at this time. The rest of the kit goes along with the short shift kit. At the time I was not in the mood to deal with that.

This along with the motor mounts made one of the best improvements to the car. Excited to see how much of an improvement the rest of the kit makes.

After returning the other header from ebay. I was finally able to find one that fits properly. I found a used header from SNS Mazda Parts (Alex Todd) , that he sold to me for $60. I was finally able to get rid of the clogged catalytic converter, and get rid of the check engine light.

Unlike the first header, this one fit perfect.

The next project was to finally install the $120 eBay exhaust. I went in expecting the exhaust not to fit at all. But the initial layout looked like it may actually fit.

Old exhaust out.

Surprisingly the kit fit pretty well and bolted right up to the factory secondary cat . .

The only issues with the exhaust were the bends that go around the spare tire and over the rear subframe. The exhaust got a little too close to the frame underneath and did touch in a few spots.

Besides the look of the colorful titanium look tip, the muffler has a decent tone to it for what it is. But it is a little loud and drones pretty bad. So in the future I will swap out the rear section or replace the muffler.

The rear section ended up being a little too close to the frame, so I had it modified a little so it would not touch, until I replace it.

I am driving the car as much as possible now, and plan to try and take it on a trip up to the dragon before the track day. So hopefully next up date we can finish up the suspension and replace some of the worn bushings and get some fresh fluids.