Daniel

So I bought a Mazdaspeed3…
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My girlfriend used to have a Mazda3 hatch back when we met, it was such a fun little ripper but the anemic powertrain and 4 speed auto were pretty meh. I’ve been casually looking for Speed3s ever since, but they were always some combination of clapped, heavily modified, way high mileage, or like $7k+. Everything else I own is NA, V8, auto, RWD, so I figured it’d be fun to have something completely different. I found this one from a reddit post, they guy had it for like 11 years, the clutch went out, and he was tired of putting money into it so I picked it up for $800 instead of the scrapyard for $500. Turns out it wasnt a clutch problem, the dual mass flywheel had failed and caused quite a bit of chaos in the bellhousing. While it was apart, I did a lightweight flywheel with stock clutch, fully rebuilt the HPFP with @corksport O-rings and the larger piston, cleaned the intake valves, cleaned the PCV, and wiped a couple pounds of crud out of the engine bay. Turns out it’s a fun little ripper! The turbo spools hard from 3000-6000 and it accelerates shockingly fast, who knew that being light was important to a cars handling?
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It’s not perfect, it doesnt go into 2nd gear (hopefully just a shift fork issue), it needs a rear O2 sensor, it needs an alignment, the swaybars clunk, the seat adjustment is a little broken, the drivers window needs a regulator, but for a cheap little ripper I’m super happy with it. It might find it’s way to Streets or Chuckwalla this fall, but it will mostly be a street car. Big thanks to @tpmparts for getting the X comps mounted on the Evo X wheels, that massively helps the look of the car while still being very budget friendly.
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#mazdaspeed3 #mazdaspeed #speed3 #corksport