Thursday, August 9, 2012

The Start of the MX3 Rally Car

This one doesn't have any cute nick names yet. No MESStang, the MESS3, etc. It's a Mazda, we're going to put a cage in it and then go dodge trees in Rally America.

It's cute, eh?

I'm not a professional mechanic, but I don't think "put more goop on it" is better than spending $7 on an intake gasket.

Oh good, JB Weld Stalagmites.
This is the new ground clamp.  It's also the anti-theft device.  Note the high quality Walmart nEverStart battery.

After discovering our high quality intake, I ran to the junkyard and got various KL-series V6 parts without a lot of knowledge about what actually fits.  This is a KL04 intake.  I was told it doesn't fit into the MX3 on various Mazda forums.  Well, jeeze that sure does look like it fits.  Oh, and the TB is the KL47 (Millenia), which also "doesn't fit."  The throttle cable bracket rubs on the brake reservoir, by a few millimeters, my angle grinder will fix that later.

Oh, we were also told that it will hit the battery.  Damn, one of these times the Internet will be right.


While I was pulling the old intake, I saw and felt there was a paper towel in the back.  That happens sometimes and didn't really worry me.  It didn't worry me until the intake was off and I realized that it was used to hold in a large wad of JB weld.  The paper towel was an integral part of this intake.  Whoever did this work really needs to remove themselves from the gene pool.

4 comments:

  1. Good lord. The previous owner should have his hands removed with a rusty ice saw. Good luck with the build!

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  2. Starting to look better already! No more VAF I hope?

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  3. Cool! That is the funny thing about this car is that there is very little factual documentation.

    VAF will be taken care of by a MS standalone as soon as I put it together. I never knew there was such a thing as a VAF until this car. Who knew something existed worse then a flapper door air metering system...

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