Mazda Protege 5 Track Car project: Long term update..

Its been awhile since I have posted an update on the P5.  I assure you I have been working on it as much as possible, I just have not had time to put any posts together.  I did take a ton of photos, but after months of not posting, they all get jumbled together and its hard to put it all together and make it make sense after so long.  So I will do my best to go through whats been going on and am going to try my best to keep the posts coming!

Some how randomly the clutch slave cylinder hard line started to leak at the fitting..

I considered just getting a another one out the pull a part, but I had the idea to replace the whole hard metal line and get a stainless braided line to clean up the engine bay a little.

I had a local hydraulic hose shop make a replacement.  The length was actually about 6 inches too long, but I did not really measure the length, I just had them remake what I gave them.

The only annoying part, was not being able to fit in the bracket anymore off the transmission bracket.  Maybe I can get something together for that made later on.  So this was a temporary fix for now.  But if I ever go back and get it made shorter, there maybe no need for it.

Attached to the clutch master cylinder

Installed and ran to the clutch slave cylinder..

Another random project I did was wrap my center console in gloss black , and dress it up with some Autoexe badges to match the Autoexe Silver Carbon shift knob!

I got a deal on a Garmin Catalyst from a friend, and wanted to mount in permanently and hardwire it to the car.  So I modified the center console so it sits in it.  It works for now, but I want to go back and maybe clean it up a bit.

I have always wanted to minimize my wiring harness and clean up the engine bay as much as possible.  Being a track car there was no need for most of the harness.  Now with the Megasquirt there really was no need for anything but maybe 8 or 9 sensors.  At the time the engine and transmission were already out the car ( more on that later).    So I started to breakdown a old good harness I had and removed all the extra sensors and emissions stuff that I did not need.  As stated before I took a lot of photos, but getting them off my phone onto here for the post is starting to become a hassle.  But I managed to get some of the process.

Harness minimized and split up..

While the engine was out, it was the best time to connect the harness and get the lengths right, and run it how I wanted to before installing the engine..

Progress…

Done, and wrapped up as best as my skills would allow.  The only thing left was the fuel pump harness.  I tried my best to clean up the top side and run the fuel injector connectors and clean as possible, but using the yellow shrink was a bad idea..

The next project while the drivetrain was installing a set of Mazdaspeed Short Ratio gear set from the world challenge race cars.  I was lucky enough to get a set from a good friend that bought them awhile back for his build.  Ideally they would give me a shorter and tighter 3rd, 4th and 5th gear and help maximize my 145hp!

I tore down the transmission and started to swap the gears over, and found out that I was missing one of the 4th gears to complete the assembly.  By this time the car had been down for about 3-4 months just sitting.  I made the decision to just take the LSD out of this transmission and install it into the original 300k mile transmission that I had taken out last year.  It worked fine, but was old and always had a slight 3rd grind.  It was pretty annoying, but it isnt a total loss, I can hopefully use the gears for a later time when I can invest more into a proper transmission build.

The clutch was fine, but I had some worries of the life on the flywheel.  Fiidanza flywheels have serviceable friction plates, so i took the opportunity to replace.

Removed the OE P5 Open differential out the trans..

Welded MSP LSD

Trans assembled and ready to go back in….

Another task while the engine was out was to test fit the MZR into the P5.  I scored the engine and trans out of an abandoned Mazda 6 that ran really well, so I took the chance to see how the MZR actually would fit into the engine bay…

The rear offers plenty of space to fit.. the header would be a challenge, but nothing a nice fabricator could not handle.

Passenger side is not too far off from the original mounts…

Front to back engine brace would need to be removed or tremendously modified..

Driver side engine mount fits with some minor modifications, but the oem mount looks like it can be modified to work.  Being that this is a 5 speed Gseries transmission it makes sense.

Looks good in the engine bay, and it would be great to have the power boost, and a modern engine in the car.  But I did not want the car to be down with trying to figure out so much to make it work.

Received some longer tow hooks from a good friend Joseph King.  

As seen above the OEM ones are pretty short, and in the unfortunate event that I have to be pulled they will damage the front bumper pretty bad with the tow strap.  

They hang perfectly below the front bumper..

Late night google search lead me to a lonesome Autoexe / Recaro seat in New York of all places.  In the early 2000s Autoexe and Recaro had a set of SP seats for the Mazda 3 (Axela) and 6 (Atenza ) generation of cars.  This seat was listed as a Recaro STi seat on a importers website  I recognized the seats and was able to get them for a decent deal. 

The seat was in decent shape, but had a slight tear in the bolster.  Coincidentally I was able to find another seat on UpGarage as well within the same week.  

Sparco seat mounts and Recaro sliders and brackets.  

For some reason the sparco mounts did not have any pre-drilled holes for the Recaro sliders.  But a simple hole was made and we were mounted…

Installed and set in place.  Sits pretty low compared to the OEM seat.  But being an Autoexe fanboy, its one of my favorite pieces to show off!

Ill end the post here for now! Plenty of things to catch up on, thanks for reading…