Mazdaspeed3 to make commuting fun

It was time to get rid of the R56 Mini S that I've had for a year, and I needed something that could carry a dog, handles well (25mi mountain road to work) and was more reliable than a Cooper S.

I had forgotten about the Speed3's until joining this forum and seeing one for sale. After some research I determined that I wanted a 2nd gen with the technology package and I went on the hunt. Every one I found was 140k miles or more, and many of those were modified. I'm in CA, so those were not options. 

I conceded that I was going to have to get one with higher mileage than I really wanted. I finally found a few under 100k, but they were many states away. Then late one night I found one on Facebook. It was damn near stock with 50k miles, tech package, and to top it off, only 9 miles away from me. I jumped on it. 

It has a a CA legal Cobb airbox and tune (I'm shocked), Accessport, and an upgraded rear motor mount. I think I got a screaming deal for $14K.

So far all I've done is put some new tires on some RX8 wheels. Future plans are braided steel brake lines, brake fluid, maybe a rear swaybar, and replace the infotainment system. I'm not opposed to mildly lowering it, but I want to get used to it as it is for a few thousand miles before doing more.  I haven't decidied if I want to try and tune it, I live in CA after all, I'll upgrade the fuel pump internals.

Is there anything else I should consider?

I'd say you've done very well for yourself! Congratulations!

CooperTired and I were just musing on how we never see these on the roads anymore.  There is apparently a safe modding path for them to be pretty quick.  They have good eyeball and have aged well.

Rsb wakes these cars up a ton. Look at the rear shocks, they're notoriously bad in these cars. If you're going to replace, do coilovers. Expect to do end links when you replace that bar. 

 Does it have the lag like the Mazdaspeed Protege I drove a while back? If so upgrade the turbo system. Yours looks like a very nicely taken care of car.

In reply to MyMiatas :

Not even close. Stock you've got max boost before 3k. The k04 is a bit undersized and spools instantly. 

Had to ask. Wasn't sure about the turbo.

I hated the shifter on my Gen 1. Hacking 2/3 of the shifter weight off helped a lot. I put a delrin ball on mine as well. It helped. 
 

And electric Ford Focus rear motor mount tightened things up without adding too much vibration  

Intakes make nice choo choo noises!

Keep a firm grip during those lane changes haha and enjoy!

So apparently the 2nd gen speed3's are detuned in 1st and 2nd gear in an effort to reduce the torque-steer. The Cobb tune / map in the car now, eliminates that restriction. I need a whole lot more practice getting used to the rapid onset of boost...I'm getting a whole lot of wheel spin.

Always loved these things. Came close to shopping one but went Focus ST, which is close to being a 3rd gen one without the LSD. 
Those wheels look perfect on it

Thinking about the TIL thread, and the Poor Design thread...

Today I learned that the rear passenger door windows FULLY retract into the doors. There isn't any window sticking up into the opening. I think that's an awesome design.

Seems like you scored on this, the few that are around here that I see are a lot higher mileage and are more $. I've been interested in these and the Mini for a while, curious on your thoughts comparing the two?

In reply to HikerDan (Forum Supporter) :

The Mini was a love / hate car. It got great MPG even when I was beating on it. Maintenance and reliability were big concerns adding the relatively high cost of parts into that caused me to seek out a replacement. The car was fun to drive and expensive to upgrade. In stock form it was fine up to about 7/10ths, beyond that it understeered. Badly. I installed a bigger rear swaybar, and it helped, but the car really needed more camber in front. I discovered that was an expensive upgrade on OEM struts, and I wasn’t willing to drop the $ into a car that in the end was still a Mini. It was fun to toss around, but after 20k miles I just didn’t enjoy it enough to keep it. Some of the more annoying things were that it started in ‘normal’ power, and I had to manually turn on ‘sport’ mode every time (it’s gutless in normal mode). The center speedometer was inconvenient. There are 40+ different warning images that can appear on the Information display, and they weren’t always intuitive.

The MS3 handles more neutral right out of the box, the user interface is much nicer, and of course the bonus extra 100hp is nice too. It appears to be easier to maintain, aftermarket parts are less expensive, and I’m sure it will be more reliable. Who knows…in a few months I may have bigger gripes about it.

Pic with RX8 wheels. My daughter has recently shown more interest in cars and helping me in the garage. She asked if we could put some stickers on the wheels. If it keeps her interested in cars and helping...I'm ok with it. 
 

The other Mazdaspeed3 thread has bought me back to this.

I've become better at dealing with the torque steer, but launching quickly off the line is still a challenge. I added a rear swaybar w/end links and it was a great improvement. It was $ well spent. Next mod is suspension w/adjustable camber in front.

The adaptive headlights included in the Tech package were a pleasant surprise. I live in the mountains and they work really well pointing into the turns.

I will adjust the tune in the car eventually, but it is low on the list at the moment.

Coming back to the thread...

After noticing more wear on the outside edge of the front tires I decided to install a front swaybar hoping it would help. While I was in there I also installed a bump steer kit. The installation of the bar was involved, but not complicated. The front subframe had to be removed to swap the bar. After about two hours I had the new bar in and subframe bolted back up. I connected the left endlink and when I went to connect the right endlink I noticed the right 'arm' of the swaybar was contacting the frame of the car. I loosened both mounts and tried to move the bar...nope, not happening. I trusted Whitline to have installed the locating collars in the same relative location as the OEM bar. I kick myself for not comparing the two swaybars before putting the new one in.

When the new bar was installed, the preinstalled collars on the new bar were in full contact withe the inside of each mount. It wasn't possible to slide the bar to the left or right. I dropped the subframe and removed the bar. I decided to move the one or both collars to enable the bar to be moved to the right. The collars have 3 set screws and I wasn't able to loosen any of them. Out came the hammer and chisel, and I persuaded one collar to move the desired amount. While doing that I noticed evidence that the collars were rubbing on the subframe. Out came the grinder and I carefully thinned out both collars.

I slid the bar onto the subframe, then installed the subframe onto the car. I centrally positioned the bar and moved it up and down smoothly and easily without contacting any other hard parts. I placed a third collar on the outside of the right mount to prevent the bar from moving laterally. After putting everything back together I set the toe to zero, and took it for a test drive. The ugly noises were gone, and the car feels better. I'd like a little more negative camber, but will live with it for now.

I daily mine too. Here's what I found with the alignment:

The factory front toe recommendation is way too aggressive on these and so is the factory camber range (I think the max is something like -2.6 degrees). Add to that that the rear camber and toe is nonadjustable, as you probably already know, and they eat tires. I ended up setting the front toe as close to zero as possible on mine, adjusting the front camber to -1.3 degrees, putting in a set of adjustable rear camber arms, and adjusting the rear camber to about -1 degree. It's helped a lot with the wear but the car can be a bit squirrely with zero toe. I don't mind it since I'm the only one that drives the car.

I added camber plates a number of years ago as well. Doing it over I probably wouldn't cut the front towers again to put in the camberplates since I don't get on the track as much as I would like, but they offer a lot of adjustability at the expense of some noise.

I actually sheared off the spherical bearing on the passenger side camber arm, which sucked, and ended up replacing them with a set of adjustable SPC's. Rubber is way better from a livability standpoint.

If you're going to lower it Eibachs will give you a mild drop with pretty good daily driving compliance. Be aware that you may need to get a set of adjustable rear toe arms since it does introduce a touch of extra in the rear.

Other random things:

If you haven't checked it yet see if the HPFP fuel pump internals have been changed to a higher pressure set. The OE HPFP internals run out of capacity at higher RPMs under boost, leading to it leaning out and detonation.

If you haven't changed the shifter, or plate yet, the Adapted Performance Shift Hammer is miles ahead of any other short shift plate I've tried. It shortened things up and got rid of the really crappy 1-2 shift feel/grinding I experienced with others.

Once upon a time, I broke the journal shaft of my K04 in half at about 30k miles. The OE(ish) Corksport replacement has been fantastic for the 50k miles it's been installed. I've got a bunch of other things done, too mostly in support of the turbo, but the catted downpipe will be a no-go for you because of CARB.

Rear toe is adjustable on my non speed 2007 Mazda3, eccentrics in the inner joint of the lower control arms, works fine.  Maybe swap to non speed 3 parts to adjust the rear toe.  Aftermarket rear UCAs are fairly cheap and easy to use, had them for a long time. 

lovely car 

I had a 2011 celestial blue on when he had a second kid and upgrade from Miata as a DD to this. 

I bought mine for $12,500 (ex fed ex executive) with 31k miles. Kept it till 90k miles and sold it for $14,300 

2 bent rims

one set of brake pads

all new  fluids 

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in 2013 ms3 were sitting on ca lots with new ones for $19,700

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funny we have had MCS JCW in our fleet since 2002, and these cars couldn't be any different. 

Sonic said:

Rear toe is adjustable on my non speed 2007 Mazda3, eccentrics in the inner joint of the lower control arms, works fine.  Maybe swap to non speed 3 parts to adjust the rear toe.  Aftermarket rear UCAs are fairly cheap and easy to use, had them for a long time. 

That's a good point. Moog and Doorman recently (2 or 3 years ago) started to sell an excentric kit for the 2010+'s for the rear toe. I think it'll give +/- 1 degree for like $25. I already had the arms though since they weren't available for a large part of my ownership.

Nice score!!!  My first 'real' car was a Mazdaspeed protege, and I loved the crap out of it.  I do recall that it understeer'ed and wheel-hopped like the dickens though.  And hopefully the MS3's found a better alternative to the 'turkey gobble' Bypass valve setup on the Protege.  Man, that part was annoying, haha. 

In reply to The0retical :

A HPFP is on the list. Is there a way to tell if the HPFP has been upgraded without taking it off the car? Can the Accessport help me? The off-the-shelf Cobb tune has a brutal hesitation when the throttle is modulated between 2800-3500rpm. Once I have the HPFP sorted out, I'll have the car tuned to hopefully address that.

While I'd like to lower the car, the steep and off camber transition from my driveway to the street would be troublesome. In addition, I have a set of 350Z wheels ready to mount, and they'll stick out about 3/4in farther than the RX-8 wheels currently on the car. I suspect that clearance would be an issue in my neighborhood and town. I'm not opposed to camber plates, but they would have to work with the OE suspension, not require modification to the strut towers, and not be too expensive. They aren't putting a check in those boxes, so I won't be buying them. I installed a short-shift plate but left the OEM weight in place. Works great! I see PowerFlex sells an adjustable camber bushing for the front control-arm. It's cheap enough that I may go that route even if it only gets me half a degree of camber.

I really need to limit the $ I toss at the Speed because I want to bring my C6 Z06 out of hibernation and get back to doing trackdays.

In reply to The0retical :

Thanks for this. I dropped a pair into my Amazon cart.

In reply to myf16n :

Unfortunetly, there really isn't a great way telling if the HPFP internals have been changed without tearing it apart. Luckily it's pretty easy since the HPFP is at the top of the engine. The hardest part was getting the keepers off because I'm always leary of hitting a piece of mechanical equipment with hammer.

The Corksport camber plates will install without cutting the towers, the range is just a bit more limited and they're harder to adjust. They're pretty spendy though, I just got lucky with mine and scored a returned set from them for a discount.

There are a couple other major issue you'll see with the car. One is the injector seals. There's a rubber seal under the injectors that occasionally disintegrates. Corksport and CP-E sell copper cups that solve the issue.

The other issues relate to how the direct injection system was designed. The EGR causes some carbon buildup on the back of the intake valves and eventually the car starts running rich. You'll want to walnut blast them every 30k miles or so. Since a blockoff valve isn't legal, and requires a retune, a catch can can help to some degree without inducing any issues or having an inspector freak out (usually). The other options are either port injection kit or meth but those methods reliability issues and I'm pretty sure won't fly in CA but I never tried when I lived there.

Congrats! I had a 2008 Mazda3, fully loaded with a manual. It was a blast, even without the Mazdaspeed goodies. I hope you enjoy your 3 as much as I enjoyed mine!

I just saw this thread: learn-me-volvo-c30, and it got me thinking. How much crossover is there? If I can make use of the fcpeuro lifetime warranty by ordering common parts, that seems like it would be a big bonus.