Southrnfresh Mazda Protege 5 Track car project: Road Atlanta Prep…

It has been a few months since we first took the Protege 5 out on its first track day at Atlanta Motorsports park with Jzilla .  There was another track day at Barber Motorsports park, after that , but me being only on my second track day, I was not able to drive on Barber since they did not allow instructed drives that day.  But in a few weeks I will be hitting Road Atlanta.  The car did pretty good at AMP, so I only needed to do a few things mechanically to get it ready for Road Atlanta.  

I recently ran across a great deal from a old friend in the Mazda community.  He has had this Mazdaspeed Protege since it was new in 2003.  The car had been taken care of very well in the past, and had been autocrossed a lot, and had started to have some issues a few years ago.  And it ended up sitting in his driveway.    

If you didnt know, the Mazdaspeed Protege chassis is no different from other 3rd generation protege’s.  But the Mazdaspeed was turbocharged by Callaway with a outstanding 6lbs of boost from the factory,  equipped with a LSD, Tokico shocks, racing beat springs, racing beat exhaust , sway bars, and a host of appearance, and interior updates. 

The car had a crazy misfire, and barely cranked, and had not been touched in a few years.  I was curious to see what was wrong with the car and messed around with it a little bit. I found out the spark plugs were swimming in oil, from a bad valve cover gasket.  So I replaced the valve cover gasket, removed the oil from the cylinders, and put some spark plugs in it just to see what it would do.  The car started up , and idled somewhat decent, we did a compression test on it, and found out that one of the cylinders test a little lower.  So we are gonna drain the gas out of it, and see if it will drive.  

I am indecisive about what to do with the Mazdaspeed because I have already owned a Mazdaspeed Protege in the past.  And I have always been partial to the Protege 5 wagon.  So as of now, I want to pull the setup out of the mazdaspeed, rebuild it and put it in the protege 5 for a much needed bump in power.  The Mazda lover in me does not want to waste a complete Mazdaspeed Protege, so the fate of the MSP after that is still up the air.  

In the meantime, I have been pulling off parts from the mazdaspeed and putting on the P5.  First was the mazdaspeed front lip.  

Pretty simple and straightforward swap, just requires you to remove the foglights, and the lip slides right on the P5 bumper.  

The lip was a little banged up, but it flowed with the rest of the dings and scratches on the P5.

The broken roof rack always bothered me, and I had been searching for either a way to remove it, or the moldings to replace it. 

I got real lucky and found someone selling roof rack delete moldings locally, they are typically $60 a piece new, but he had them for $75, but did not have the mounting clips.  After a few google attempts, I was able to find part numbers for the brackets to mount them.

Its a relative simple installation and straightforward, but you do have to remove the headliner to remove the roof rack, and install the moldings.  

Headliner out…

Moldings installed…

After I removed the moldings and installed the Mazdaspeed front lip, the car looked much better.  So I took a few shots as a milestone of its current state, just to see how far its come from when I first got it.  

Very pleased about how well the car drives with the BC Racing DS coilovers, and I am very excited to push the car around Road Atlanta.  The car scrubbed a lot at AMP, so i will be raising the rear up about a inch to help with this.  Road Atlanta is a much faster track, and the last thing I want is a cut tire on track.   I also will be installing the Racing Beat sway bars from the Mazdaspeed.  

I am beyond surprised on how well the cars engine runs with 293k miles on the dash.  The engine feels strong, but it is beyond fast.  The FSDE shines best with forced induction, so hopefully later in the year or end of summer I can get started on building the motor out of the mazdaspeed to swap in for more power.  

I am beside myself on if I want to completely gut the car, or keep it halfway gutted.  The car is in much better condition then it should have been, so I hate tearing apart a perfectly good interior to sacrifice a few pounds.  But I do need to shave some weight, and get better seats.  So I am looking to remove some of the interior, but keep it somewhat decent looking inside.  

I would like to go down to a 16″ wheel, later on and go with a taller profile, and wider tire.  I went to narrow with the 215/40 . But I would rather not spend more money on another set of wheels when I have 5 17″ Konigs, so I may try and squeeze a wider 235/40 on the wheel once these tires wear down.  The only issue with that is rubbing issues on the fenders, so we will see how that goes.  

I will end this post there, I have a good bit of updates to post, and a few maintenance things to do before Road Atlanta.  Thanks for reading.  

And check out some of the previous posts here