The resolution thread volume 2

[SpeedThrills]

So last year I started a thread asking people to chime in on what their plans were for the year as far as their cars. Had some good results and I wanted to bring it back. Obviously its a little later in the year so I'm going with:

What have you done/ HAD to do so far?

What did you do to your MS last year? Did you hit your goals?

What are your plans for your MS this year?

I'll start.

Last year my goals were:

TMIC upgrade
HPFP internals
Oil Catch Can
BPV

I still don't have the OCC and admittedly I installed my internals last Friday but I did end up with a hybrid BPV, the CXRacing FMIC rather than the upgraded TMIC, added a new JVC deck and Blaupunkt powered sub to replace the BOSE setup (already had Alpine Type S door speakers) and I'm very happy with my sound system now. I unexpectedly lost my job at the end of the year right after dropping around $700 on the system and FMIC so that abruptly ended last year's progress.


This year began with me hitting an unmarked stretch of one inch raised pavement in Massachusetts at 80MPH, cracking the inner circumference of my wheel to the point it nearly split in two. Put on my spare, headed home, shitty tractionless donut spare hit a patch of snow drift going around a corner and took the car into what at one point was a snow bank, but had become a massive pile of ice... Fucked up my bumper, wrecked my OTHER wheel on that same side, and have a chunk of ice lodge itself in the engine bay and pierce my washer bottle. So needless to say...

So far this year I've replaced my washer bottle, 4 wheels, 4 tires. Two lug studs after two of the broke off when switching over the wheels.. And this was all by around Jan 3.

Since then I've replaced two strut mounts that blew over the past 15,000 miles since new, all my wiper blades, I'm replacing my once again seized Corksport rear shock (corksport sending replacement free of charge, awesome service), I'm rocking a new CS power series CBE, my HPFP internals and i'm in the process of getting a professional tune from the exceptional Justin over at Freektune.

This has all left me with little room in the budget to go much further this year. I hold myself to $2400 a year to spend on the car and the exhaust alone cost almost $900 after having to get brand new hardware for the cat flange and labour cost, and i'll soon need to register and inspect. So my modest plans for the rest of 2018 are to get the rear windows tinted, do the OCC and start looking into methanol options for 2019. Oh and I need to repaint my front bumper and repair some rust on my tailgate right below the glass. Body shop wants to replace the whole tailgate for the modest sum of $800 so... I'm going to hit it with the dremel, hope the rust hasn't perforated, and rattle can that shit. Won't look pretty up close, but neither do any of the women in this town


Sorry this was super long. But I hope a few of you chime in and as always I wish you all a year of happy modding and very few repairs!

[MS6/CX-9]

I feel your pain. I found my '06 on Craigs list. Engine had a little tick so I knew the engine was bad. Figured I could find one in a salvage yard but, didn't realize the impact of these having an only 2 year run. Driving home the engine blew and now I'm waiting for the rebuilt new long block from SP63. My block is toast so I have to pay $2K as a core.
Waiting, waiting... hoping the car ends up being a lot of fun as I've been hearing.

[SpeedThrills]

Originally Posted by MS6/CX-9 I feel your pain. I found my '06 on Craigs list. Engine had a little tick so I knew the engine was bad. Figured I could find one in a salvage yard but, didn't realize the impact of these having an only 2 year run. Driving home the engine blew and now I'm waiting for the rebuilt new long block from SP63. My block is toast so I have to pay $2K as a core. Waiting, waiting... hoping the car ends up being a lot of fun as I've been hearing.

Thats super shitty man, sorry to hear it. I'm always nervous hearing about all the blown blocks. Sorry you're in it so deep now, but first couple of WOT runs on the fresh rebuild will make you feel a little better. Best of luck!

[KiwiFlavor]

Yo @SpeedThrills; what's going on my mayne?

Welp I think im done modding my genpu. Thinking to stock out and sell it because for this year this is my plan:





Borg-Warner turbski









Hoping to get her running by the summer!

[SpeedThrills]

Originally Posted by KiwiFlavor Yo @SpeedThrills; what's going on my mayne? Welp I think im done modding my genpu. Thinking to stock out and sell it because for this year this is my plan: Borg-Warner turbski Hoping to get her running by the summer!

Whats up Kiwi, hope you've been well man. Love the new project, finally got some sense knocked into you, coming over to the genwon!

I almost bought a silver one that's in Nashua with a blown motor but didn't want to split my attention. Wishing you the best with getting yours up and running my man.

Originally Posted by Watchwolf I bought my Speed3 last June. It was completely stock with 71k on it. It needed a little bit of love but was really solid. After just a month of owning it I bought an intake so I could hear those cool turbo sounds. Now not even a year in I have everything listed in my signature as well as some cosmetic parts and upgraded stereo system. My plan for this year into next is to upgrade the turbo, bigger intake, EBCS, and whatever other maintenance that it needs.

I feel ya guy, I bought mine entirely stock from an older guy. Wasn't sure what my plans were but these things really give you the modding bug. I have no interest in going big turbo or anything, eventually I want to make this a second car behind a Focus RS, but I do intend to keep her running as a daily for the foreseeable future.

Let us know how your plans go and what you wind up choosing for the turbo upgrade.

I'm going to do the turbo next year, I wanted to wait and just do the downpipe and turbo together, not a fan of working in the same area more times than necessary. But as said, i'm likely to go with a fairly conservative upgrade option, still need to do the research

Originally Posted by MSMS3 This past year I finally got serious about the "smoking K04" and made a permanent fix. The OEM turbo and two rebuilds all had eventually smoked. Yet, I did not want to lose the rapid spool and early onset boost of the K04 and was content with the power it made for a daily driven FWD car. Mods are in sig. below. 13.2 quarters at 107, Virtual Dyno still says 300-310 whp with correction factor of 1.01 on 93 octane pump gas. Was not interested in going "big turbo". So I installed a BNR Stage 1 turbo. This is a GT28 CHRA inside a modified K04 snail/housing. It has essentially identical flow characteristics of the stock K04 and bolts right up with no modifications. No need to change the tune. Problem solved. And it will be easy to go back to stock to sell the car, if I ever want to. About all I'll need to do to sell it legally is remove the catless dp/rp, reinstall the stock dp and midpipe with the two cats (have kept them in storage), and flash the tune back to stock.

This sounds like a solution I may look into. I'll definitely be reading into that turbo option. Glad you were able to ditch your smoking turbo and retain the positive traits of the K04.

[KiwiFlavor]

Originally Posted by SpeedThrills Whats up Kiwi, hope you've been well man. Love the new project, finally got some sense knocked into you, coming over to the genwon! I almost bought a silver one that's in Nashua with a blown motor but didn't want to split my attention. Wishing you the best with getting yours up and running my man.

Do it and build it!

[Watchwolf]

I bought my Speed3 last June. It was completely stock with 71k on it. It needed a little bit of love but was really solid. After just a month of owning it I bought an intake so I could hear those cool turbo sounds. Now not even a year in I have everything listed in my signature as well as some cosmetic parts and upgraded stereo system.

My plan for this year into next is to upgrade the turbo, bigger intake, EBCS, and whatever other maintenance that it needs.

[kTaLgsTo]

My speed is stock and gets driven like I'm a grandpa, however the Torque app sucks my huge hairy nuts and so does the guy who wrote the speed three pids for it. So I did buy an AP to have a better scan tool...
Now when I get in my actual grandpa car I beat the hell out of it...

[Fstrnyou]

I don't have goals as much as plans and they happen when they happen. No timeline here.

Mods in sig over the last 2 years since I got her. Most recent addition was both diff mounts, Whiteline sway bar, and urethane bushings in the rear.

Plans going forward:
Start putting together forged motor
Replace TMIC with W2A
FoST intake with port injection
Custom exh manifold

[Db09ms3]

My mods include very little since purchasing. I wanted to stay stock and fix up my old chevy instead but of course I couldn't help myself. Modding has since stopped for the rest of the year meow, needs to get the old chev's rolling again.

Current mods:
CS RMM - "Race" Mount
CS TMM Insert
Mazdaspeed CAI
Test pipe w/ muffler delete - previous owner

Future:
AP & Tune
Downpipe
Bigger intake

[MSMS3]

This past year I finally got serious about the "smoking K04" and made a permanent fix. The OEM turbo and two rebuilds all had eventually smoked.

Yet, I did not want to lose the rapid spool and early onset boost of the K04 and was content with the power it made for a daily driven FWD car. Mods are in sig. below. 13.2 quarters at 107, Virtual Dyno still says 300-310 whp with correction factor of 1.01 on 93 octane pump gas. Was not interested in going "big turbo".

So I installed a BNR Stage 1 turbo. This is a GT28 CHRA inside a modified K04 snail/housing. It has essentially identical flow characteristics of the stock K04 and bolts right up with no modifications. No need to change the tune. Problem solved.

And it will be easy to go back to stock to sell the car, if I ever want to. About all I'll need to do to sell it legally is remove the catless dp/rp, reinstall the stock dp and midpipe with the two cats (have kept them in storage), and flash the tune back to stock.

[Thor Hammer]

Last year in November/December I replaced:

-Front Wheel Bearings
-Inner/Outer Tie rods (those inners!)
-Upper UCA bushings with Whiteline urethane
-Both lower control arms new
-Aligned subframe to correct caster on passenger side

-New Rear Diff (40K miles old)
-Rebuilt DSS axles I've had for a year
-New Master/Slave clutch cylinders (OEM)
-Master cylinder firewall to frame brace. (My firewall cracked and pedal assembly did as well in 3 places!)
-Braided Steel Slave Line

Recently picked up a BNR S3, HTP 3.5" intake, MAPerformance ported/polished intake mani, and soon will be acquiring a XS power exhaust manifold.

Also to put in is the Devils Own meth kit with D10 injector pre-throttle body, Damond OCC and CS injector seals I've had laying around the past year or so. Plan to keep my ETS TMIC. For now.

Plan to install all of the above once my injectors are back form cleaning. I'll be cleaning my valves for the first time as well. I expect that to take some time as its never been done and I'm around 137K!

I'll be sticking with Freektune to get it all dialed in.

As far as looks? Meh, wouldn't mind some nice bright silver VMR V810 wheels (few pounds lighter than stock). But, not high on my list.