Rescuing a Red '08 Speed 3

Picked up my project yesterday with my husband. Needs a bottom end that will be swapped with a 2.5L. TMIC and tail lights are being sent over to us from seller, needs a throttle body (can I use a cx-7's?), power steering lines, front and rear bumper, driver's side fender, hatch, passenger mirror cover, battery, probably some other stuff I'm missing at the moment, and a wholeee lot of love. Don't know the story behind it spinning a bearing. Odometer reading on the title says around 85k miles, tried seeing how many miles the odometer said but the odometer isn't working (not lighting up at all), so we'll be troubleshooting that sometime soon. Turbo's shaft doesn't have any play in it. The only mod we've seen come with/on it so far is a turbo inlet pipe. We didn't spend too much time looking over it just yet, that will be either throughout the week or this weekend. If you guys want to know any more about it let me know, I'm going to stop now because my brain is still fried from a very long day yesterday and I can't think of anything else to say right now. Thanks guys. Really excited to update you guys when I can.

Plans after all of that is done (in the future, and not in any order):

• RMM
• AutoTech HPFP
• SRI
• CPE TMIC
• front lip
• Rota SS10's
• downpipe
• tune
• weighted shift knob
• catback exhaust
• oil catch can
• shifter bushings
• throttle body coolant bypass (doing that when we're swapping the block)
• eonon head unit
  
  

 

Get a Corksport throttle body, very happy with mine.

 

Plugged in all of the unplugged connectors in passenger floorboard the other day and got the interior/odometer working and lighting up. 145,073mi on the chassis. Still can't find any other mods on the thing besides the turbo inlet pipe, even the exhaust looks untouched, I would hope with just an inlet pipe. Stock fuel pump. VVT is tight. Puzzled because the valve cover is different than gen 1's so I asked my husband why and he said that it looks like gen 2's. So we think that the engine has already been replaced once at least. Maybe due to VVT needing to be done and they just replaced the whole thing or maybe they blew up the engine before that too. Don't know.

Trying to think of what else we did. The headlights weren't turning on. Didn't really mess too much with them yet though. Probably just needs new bulbs but I will let you guys know what it ends up being.

Now to what we looked into. Found more stuff it needs:

HPFP housing
HPFP hard line
AC compressor
Coolant reservoir
Power steering line (rack to pump)
Power steering cooler lines
MAF sensor
Fuses and relays for engine compartment ***

** - I have NO idea why it's missing these. It was being used as a part out for a short time, save for when last owner took some of the body parts off of it to fix his after an accident right before we bought the car (not upset just rambling at this point). He bought it from the owners who spun the bearing, kind of a middle man best way I can describe it. We don't know the owner who spun the bearing, just the guy who owned it after and sold it to us. He has half of these parts that he's sending us already so yay!

The rack to pump power steering line we're going to do when the engine is out.

I just want to fast forward to when we have everything so we can start putting in work on getting it back together again. I'm chomping at the bit.

That's today's update. Probably not going to do too much this week because it's going to be in the upper 80's/90's and that doesn't feel too good in the southern heat in a non-climate controlled storage unit in Virginia. Plus we don't have any parts yet to really do anything big either.

Side note: For some reason it has base 3 wheels on it?? I don't know. I'm just gonna go back to sleep.

 

If the valve cover has a baffle plate under the oil fill hole, then it's gen2.

 

Update today:
(I will get pictures the next time I go to work on it)

You know those reallllyyy satisfying mechanical press videos where stuff pancakes out from the bottom when it crushes it?
That's how the crush washer between the drain plug and the oil pan looked today on the speed 3. Just pancaked out.
Also, shavings galore in the oil pan and the oil smelled like straight GAS. Crankshaft still spins freely. The pistons looked surprisingly clean, the spark plugs weren't even gapped. Oil in cylinders 2 and 3, completely dry in 1 and 4.

Sorry it's not much for today, but that's how the cookie crumbles sometimes. Until next time.

 

Got the 2.5 today. 6 or 8,000 miles on it. $300. Starting teardown and assembly soon. Coincidentally I saw someone post in the Mazdaspeed owners group on Facebook just now asking pros and cons of having the 2.5 and witnessed an absolute shitstorm go down of people arguing about it/talking shit/in support of it... I don’t like to get my info off of Facebook anyway.

I don’t plan on building my car to be a crazy powerhouse so I think I’m okay. Can’t be that bad to have it.

I’m tired [emoji23]

I just want to start working on it already


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