Southrnfresh Mazda Protege 5 Track car project: Upgrades / Maintenance – Spin at Road Atlanta!!

So after the amazing experience at Charlotte Motor Speedway.  I decided to do a few things to the car before I return to Road Atlanta.  

The first thing was to replace the P5 intake manifold with the one from a 626.  It is one of the common modifications to the Protege platform for the turbocharged guys, because it gets rid of the VTCS system in the manifold.  The system is not all bad, but when it works properly it is better suited for what I have. Removing it opens up the car significantly on the top-end, but it does take every bit of power from the low end.

My race car brain told me that it would benefit me to have that little bit extra piece of power at the top end as opposed to the bottom when driving.  And I had the manifold every since I got the car, so why not experiment..   

 

I highly doubt this manifold has ever been off before, so you can clearly see what 300k miles of carbon build up looks like.  I had always gotten a random code for the VTCS solenoid not working every since i had the car.  But usually its the solenoid itself, but at this point, carbon buildup could have been the reason.. 

Throttle Body after 17 years, and 300k miles of use…

Cleaning..

Cleaned more…

AS good as it could get.. 

The replacement was this intake manifold from a older model 626.  The Mazda 626 uses the same 2.0 in its base and lower trims.  The engines share a lot of things, but they do have a good bit of differences.  The most beneficial being the intake manifold which as you can see has nothing but runners and no VTCS..

The second part of this adventure was finally replacing the rear motor mount.  Most cars its not as tough to replace, but on this chassis its in a terrible spot.  Its buried under the main harness, slightly tucked underneath the firewall.  

Most of the work, is removing the plastic bracket that holds the harness in place.  Again the bolt for the harness is tucked under wedged between the mount and the firewall..

The only way to remove them, without stripping is using a swivel, penetrating oil, and prayers.  I attempted to strong arm them, the first day, and it cost me a swivel joint.  So I surrendered and soaked it in penetrating oil and let it sit over night.. 

Woke up early, with this mount on my mind, and managed to break all the bolts loose..

You can clearly see the problem here…

In its place was this rear mount made by Hydra Motorsports, one of the few companies that still support the BJ chassis.  

Hydra Motorsports also makes thermal spacers for the Intake Manifold and Throttle body.  

Good fitment…

Swapping the manifold on a NA car does not require much, just rearranging a few vacuum hoses and its done. 

Everything all good, and back together…

Next order was new plugs.. even though I had replaced them when i first got the car.  The amount of oil this thing burns , i knew it was time to replace them again.  

The car ran well, but started to develop a weird idle at times.  I took it to work and used our smoke machine to find, a huge leak from the crusty old fuel injector seals, and some old vacuum lines…

Most of my prep had been for Road Atlanta, but there was another track day before that at Atlanta Motorsports Park that I went to.  The biggest changes to the car that made the biggest difference was the rear sway bar. I had installed the Mazdaspeed protege rear sway bar before Charlotte just to see the difference.  It helped me rotate very well at Charlotte with the extra stiffness in the rear.  But it took a heavy toll on my rear tires.  

So when I got to Atlanta Motorsports Park the car was really loose in the rear at every turn, so much I ended up rotating the rear tires up front to help counter the over steer.  It helped a lot , and it let me get much more comfortable with the car throughout the day.  But I never felt as comfortable as before.  It was a cold day so I chalked it up to just a cold track.  I did not manage to get photos setup by the event photographer  at AMP.  But I did have a few laps on video below. 

 

 

Finally back to Road Atlanta the second time with the new rear sway bar, and 626 intake manifold.  The car felt much better on the top end, giving me great momentum from Turn 3-6.  I did notice that the car did feel a little loose at some turns, but I thought I was just finding the limits of what was left of my tires..

The car felt so good , I started to push a little harder and harder.  I broke one rule, and started to see my lap times decrease.  I peaked over, and saw that I did a 1:50.  I had an idea on where I could make up some time and get under 1:50.  I pushed hard through 2,3,4 and 5, and finally took Turn 12 full throttle.  

I came down Turn 12 at the top of 4th, went to 5th crossing the finish line.  I made a mistake and down shifted and then getting on the brakes which unsettled the car, and combined with my extra stiff rear.  I lost traction in the rear and it sent me sideways at 80mph going into the wall at Turn 1.  My first fear was actually hitting the wall… but after the car got into the grass it slowed down dramatically.  But my next fear was the car flipping because it started to hop pretty bad. What felt like 10 minutes, only lasted 3-4 seconds…haha

You can see the whole thing here….

When the dust settled, and I finally got my bearings together, I took a quick look around to see that I had completely covered the track in grass.   Once I started the car back up, and limped back to the pits I can instantly tell something was wrong.  

When I got back to the paddock, I noticed the wheel had a ton of positive camber.. I thought I had bent the coilover, or knuckle or something by sliding and hopping in the grass.  I tried to make the best of it, and correct the camber at least to make it home.  Once I eyeballed the camber to match the side.  I drove it around the paddock and it felt a little off.  I messed around with the toe and tried to make it as best as I could so it drove decent 

I got the car to drive somewhat normal on the streets around the track, so I felt pretty confident about taking it back out on track.  But as soon as I got on track, the car just did not feel right after the spin.  After the track day, I found out that the coilover had just been loose at the knuckle after the spin, which explained why it drove so crazy on track.  A fresh alignment got the car back to driving properly.   

Results from my experiment… 626 Manifold was a good upgrade.  I need a bigger front sway bar to match the rear.  I had a discussion with a few friends that have been tracking and racing the Protege chassis for years.  And they were not surprised about the amount oversteer I was fighting with the rear bar.  They all warned me how much these cars like to rotate, and how I need to set the car up in the future.  And also it is something that I will have to learn to use to my advantage!  

Next stop… Barber Motorsports Park