Southrnfresh Mazda Protege 5 Track car project : Back in action

July 13, 2020 Joseph Dale 4312 Views

It took me a few weeks to find a good replacement engine for the P5 because the car has gotten a lot older and finding good replacements for reasonable prices has become very difficult. Local yards were asking 5-600 for 170,000 mile engines that had been rotting in a yard.

After going through and communicating with a few sellers on Ebay , I ran across Tennessee JDM online, and saw that they had 2 JDM engines available. There are 2 versions of the JDM engines, one is a FSDE which is rated at 130hp (similar to the us version) and the other FSZE that has higher compression and more aggressive cams. At first I was not looking to go with the FSZE because with out the proper harness and ECU, it does not make the power it is supposed to and I just wanted to get the car back on the road.

One of the engines was nice and pretty, and the obvious choice, but upon further inspection it was determined to be the lower compression version out of a Japanese MPV from 2002. After communicating with them on IG I gathered enough information to know which engine was which, the main giveaway was the valve cover, which has studs for a plastic engine cover. That and the plastic resonator box on the intake manifold are 2 of the easiest ways to identify it. The engine came out of a 2002 Mazda Capella GZi AWD, which is the 626 in the US.

It was my first time purchasing a JDM engine from a company, and it was a breeze, and it was delivered in about 2 days, so I highly recommend Tennessee JDM if you are looking for a engine.

Another way to determine if it is a FSZE or not is the FSH9 cam on the intake side.

The engine tested good and had good compression, but it was very old and had a lot of signs of corrosion mainly from the coolant side.

The intake manifold looked like it had been sitting for a long time.

The Engine was marked as if it had under 70k miles on it, and by the looks of the cylinder head it did not look like it had many miles on it, and it looked to have had a decent life.

I went through a few things, and pretty much swapped everything off the other motor onto this one, and replaced the water pump and timing belt and it was ready to go in.

As mentioned before, this engine is a Japanese version and a higher output then what is available in the states. But in order to achieve its full potential you must use the matching harness and ECU because it is a OBD 1 engine. I did have the matching harness and ECU come along with the engine, but they had cut the harness at the fuse box connection. Being a completely different vehicle the fuse box is much different from the US protege. So I would need to source another one or use standalone to tune it for its full potential.

The good thing about these engines is that they can run on the US harness just fine, the only thing you need to swap is the crank sensor and pulley and it will fire right up.

I got the engine in, and it cranked right up…

I had gotten the engine in and made sure it was running right. The next job was to clean up the harness as much as possible. With the battery gone, and much less in the engine bay, it annoyed me to see so many wires all over the place, so I cut some of the harness wrap back, and re- routed a few connections .

Cleaned up and re routed..

I ran most of the harness under the intake manifold and it made a world of difference with the look of the bay without getting crazy with it.

Swapping from power windows to manual windows…

My next task was to shave some weight from the car. The P5 only came with power windows, so I was able to source a set of manual window regulators out of a DX base model. I was also removed the door speakers, the window regulators themselves saved me about 8lbs total, not sure on what the door speakers weighed, but it was much more then the regulators.

I initially was trying to make my own door panels, but after heavy consideration I gave that up for now, and just resorted to the DX manual door panels.

So after this photo was taken that night, the car all of a sudden had a really harsh idle, and stumbled under 2k rpms. It was late, and I had to get home from work, so I drove the car home. Once I got to my exit the car stumbled again, and I limped it home and started to check all connections and everything that you can imagine. I spent the entire weekend trying to figure out the problem. As days went on, it got worse. To the point were the car would crank up fine, but stumble and die within 10 seconds, unless I unplugged the MAF or O2 Sensor. I have plenty of spare parts , so I started to replace them, and nothing changed. I then went on to replacing the Intake manifold gasket , Throttle Body Gasket , Throttle Body , Intake Manifold , Injectors , Injector seals , all the vacuum lines , EGR Valve , checked timing several times , I even started the process of chasing wires, and started to go through the wiring diagram to see if I missed something and or pinched a wire. Because it was really strange how the car all of a sudden just started to act crazy.

I had literally replaced and tested every single component on the engine , someone had suggested I check ground wires. The engine only has 1 main ground that mounts to the transmission mount. That is when I immediately remembered that I painted that…..

I grabbed a razor blade, and scraped off the paint on top of the mount, and re attached the ground wire and the car started and idled perfectly. I sat there in disbelief happiness and shame all at the same time. After 2 weeks of chasing a issue, something so simple had me so confused..

So after that nightmare was over , I started to look into removing the rest of the HVAC components.

I had always dreaded removing the dashboard, but at this point the car was pretty apart, and taking it out was not as bad as I thought.

Dash removed…

Vent ducts removed

Heater core and HVAC components removed

With the dashboard out , I was able to remove the rubber OE pedals and install the pedals from the Mazdaspeed Protege , which were made by Sparco.

Removed the fire protection fabric off the firewall…hopefully ill never regret it..

I had been wanting to redo the exhaust for awhile. The exhaust is a mix of ebay catback, and a modified Racing Beat axle back from a Mazdaspeed Protege, that had been modified to fit the P5. It was rusting, and way too loud for my taste.

I was able to find a Autoexe Japan axle back off of Yahoo Auction Japan , by way of @thepartsstache on Instagram.

The axle back is a direct fit on all BJ chassis cars, but it is only made for the JDM market cars. So it is a little short on US cars because the JDM cars have short rear bumpers.

My rear bumper was cut, so it is barely noticeable, and it fit really nice.

The muffler is really quiet, but does give the car a really nice tone.

After months and months of work and heartache and headache, the car was back on the road and much better then ever. I had achieved all the goals I set for the car, just in time for the upcoming track day.

The exhaust was great, but it was very very quiet, but I loved the way it looked. The new engine seemed to have a much more aggressive tone, and it felt so good to have a solid power plant under my feet this year.