Connors2k
Greenie N00B Member
So I’ve been going back and forth about posting a build thread on here for a while. I usually avoid it because I’m mostly learning as I go and I’m by no means a professional. But I do like reading others build threads so I figured I’d toss mine up, it can’t hurt. Just a little background on me for those who care, if not just skip ahead to learn more about what’s currently happening with the car.
I bought my 2010 mazdaspeed3 in 2015 as my very first car. I bought it up in Trenton, which was approximately an 8 hour drive one way from where I lived back then. Why a speed3? Well I needed something practical as a first car, it needed to have enough room for my bmx bike and my snowboards. I remember the day I went out with my parents to look at cars, and after checking out a few mazda3s, I saw a second gen speed in the back of the lot. I instantly fell in love with the looks of the car. I knew absolutely nothing about cars, I just knew it was something special. After going for a test ride (I didn’t know how to drive stick) I was hooked and knew I needed one. So the saving began. The car I ended up with had around 80k km on it when I bought it, which is like 50k for the non Canadians. Lots of highway use, as the previous owner used it to travel between Trenton and Quebec where his family lived. He was the original owner of the car and kept it in very nice shape. The car was essentially stock, with just a corksport intake on it for those turbo noises. To 16 year old me that was the coolest thing ever. I don’t have many pictures of when I bought it, like I said not really big into cars quite yet, and honestly it wasn’t driven too much. The car was way to nice and stressed me out driving it, with it costing so much and knowing if something happened I wouldn’t be able to replace it. Over the next like year I maybe put 3k on it in total. Then I moved and things changed a bit.
My commute to school and then work became an hour one way and I really started getting comfortable with the car. Still haven’t done anything to it, just oil changes and washing the car obsessively. I was slowly getting more into cars, and started looking into modifications. I didn’t really have money so I just mostly dreamed and saved just in case. One day, I’m pretty sure it was the dead of winter I think almost 2 years into driving the car? It had 90ishkm on it, on my way home from school I heard a terrible metal on metal noise. Limped the car home which looking back not knowing what was wrong at the time, I probably shouldn’t have driven it that long in case it was a motor issue. This was my fist ever forray into working on a car for real. My dad luckily knows lots about fixing cars so we dug in and found that the stock turbo let go. The compressor wheel was scraping the housing and was wearing away the blades. I called up my local Mazda dealer and got a price on a new oem turbo, and then ended up buying a bnr s2 turbo for it. That swap took a hot minute as I’d never been that deep into a car before ever. But got it done, threw in a set of autotech hpfp internals, and a jbr 3 port boost controller along with my corksport intake and finally an accessport, and got an e tune from Justin at freektune. Car ran amazing, made 18 psi and was quick enough to smoke all my friends cars so I was on cloud 9. No idea what the car actually made, probably like 270 or something but to me it was the fastest car I’d ever been in.
Couple pictures of said car with my ricer stickers on it.
That’s pretty much how the car sat for years. I just kept stacking on the km, it was my daily driver, put brakes on it, stop tech pads, rotors and stainless lines, obviously maintenance, and did the 2 front wheel bearings. I got my first real job where I started making a tiny bit of money so I instantly went out and bought a first gen rx7. After a couple of those I ended up with a properly built 13b rew swapped first gen with all the cool parts, big single and all the hp. I’ll toss in a picture or two of the rx7s I’ve owned for those who care at all. I did a ton of work on that car and learned so much. This upped my confidence a lot, but the speed still stayed untouched as it was just reliable. After a string of bad luck involving splitting an rew down the centre iron I sold my clean shell and tucked the grey car into the back of the garage to sit while I pondered what I wanted in life. This is when I bought my dream car, my black on black ap1 s2k.
My first ever rx7. Should have kept this one, it was insanely clean for a Canadian rx7 from 1982
My 13b swapped rx7
And of course my s2k. This is a more recent pic, you can all imagine what a stock ap1 s2k looked like.
Right around now is when things started going bad on the speed. Broke some engine mounts and upgraded to jbr mounts all around, tossed some cheapo k sport coils on the car, my throw out bearing started to sound a little rough so I put in an act 6 puck with the prolite flywheel. This was kinda the beginning of the end of driving the car as my daily. The act clutch did the thing where it engaged super high at the top of the pedal which I found very annoying to drive every day so I started looking into selling the car and getting a real daily. I work at a Toyota dealership now, so I ended up getting a good deal on a 2020 86 that had been sitting in another dealers showroom for 6 months. Instantly threw on an unequal length header and an exhaust and thought I was happy with my garage finally. In the back of my mind I had started out planning a resurrection for my rx7, and I had my s2k as my fun summer car.
Speed right before she went into storage with different and some may say even ricier stickers lol.
There’s always been a block in my mind when it comes to selling the speed, and again I just couldn’t bring myself to sell it. At this point suspension bushings are pretty worn out, and the paint on the roof and wing is starting to fade. It had just under 200k km on it and didn’t leave me stranded a single time. I found a storage place and tossed it in storage to forget about for a while. This brings us to almost present times, I get a call in 2021 that my car needs to move because they want to get out a car behind mine. I have gotten into powdercoating, and some basic fabrication at this point so I figured it was time to throw my tube chassis rx7 on the back burner again and get the speed back on the road. I missed the car a ton and wanted to see her again.
I head out to the storage spot, luckily no mouses made homes in my car, and everything seemed ok. All the components corroded pretty good sitting for so long, but that was ok because it was time for a full refresh. I hooked a battery up and primed the oil system, and fired it up. Started up first crank like it hadn’t sat for years. I had the biggest grin until I got out to look in the engine bay and saw that my alternator was seized and the belt was just doing a burnout over the pulley. So instead of driving it home, we hooked it up to the back of my parents truck and flat towed it an hour home. This is how she sits in the garage.
I don’t want to spoil the entire build plans but just know that there’s not going to be a single bolt that’s not been touched by me. Next post will be more actual work and probably some more pictures as I pull the car apart to start the rebuild. Still nothing actually wrong with my engine, just want something different now that it’s not my daily driver, and I have the chance to go a little crazy with it without having to worry if it’s going to start every day. Usage is going to be a fun “street” car that excels in curvy backroad ripping and maybe a couple trips up to the track. My style as you can probably see from old pictures of my original rx7 build and how it sits now, is pretty racecar inspired so I’m sure that will translate over to the speed as well. I’m going to try and post somewhat frequently, and I look forward to reading comments and criticism from the people who know way more than I.
I bought my 2010 mazdaspeed3 in 2015 as my very first car. I bought it up in Trenton, which was approximately an 8 hour drive one way from where I lived back then. Why a speed3? Well I needed something practical as a first car, it needed to have enough room for my bmx bike and my snowboards. I remember the day I went out with my parents to look at cars, and after checking out a few mazda3s, I saw a second gen speed in the back of the lot. I instantly fell in love with the looks of the car. I knew absolutely nothing about cars, I just knew it was something special. After going for a test ride (I didn’t know how to drive stick) I was hooked and knew I needed one. So the saving began. The car I ended up with had around 80k km on it when I bought it, which is like 50k for the non Canadians. Lots of highway use, as the previous owner used it to travel between Trenton and Quebec where his family lived. He was the original owner of the car and kept it in very nice shape. The car was essentially stock, with just a corksport intake on it for those turbo noises. To 16 year old me that was the coolest thing ever. I don’t have many pictures of when I bought it, like I said not really big into cars quite yet, and honestly it wasn’t driven too much. The car was way to nice and stressed me out driving it, with it costing so much and knowing if something happened I wouldn’t be able to replace it. Over the next like year I maybe put 3k on it in total. Then I moved and things changed a bit.
My commute to school and then work became an hour one way and I really started getting comfortable with the car. Still haven’t done anything to it, just oil changes and washing the car obsessively. I was slowly getting more into cars, and started looking into modifications. I didn’t really have money so I just mostly dreamed and saved just in case. One day, I’m pretty sure it was the dead of winter I think almost 2 years into driving the car? It had 90ishkm on it, on my way home from school I heard a terrible metal on metal noise. Limped the car home which looking back not knowing what was wrong at the time, I probably shouldn’t have driven it that long in case it was a motor issue. This was my fist ever forray into working on a car for real. My dad luckily knows lots about fixing cars so we dug in and found that the stock turbo let go. The compressor wheel was scraping the housing and was wearing away the blades. I called up my local Mazda dealer and got a price on a new oem turbo, and then ended up buying a bnr s2 turbo for it. That swap took a hot minute as I’d never been that deep into a car before ever. But got it done, threw in a set of autotech hpfp internals, and a jbr 3 port boost controller along with my corksport intake and finally an accessport, and got an e tune from Justin at freektune. Car ran amazing, made 18 psi and was quick enough to smoke all my friends cars so I was on cloud 9. No idea what the car actually made, probably like 270 or something but to me it was the fastest car I’d ever been in.
Couple pictures of said car with my ricer stickers on it.
That’s pretty much how the car sat for years. I just kept stacking on the km, it was my daily driver, put brakes on it, stop tech pads, rotors and stainless lines, obviously maintenance, and did the 2 front wheel bearings. I got my first real job where I started making a tiny bit of money so I instantly went out and bought a first gen rx7. After a couple of those I ended up with a properly built 13b rew swapped first gen with all the cool parts, big single and all the hp. I’ll toss in a picture or two of the rx7s I’ve owned for those who care at all. I did a ton of work on that car and learned so much. This upped my confidence a lot, but the speed still stayed untouched as it was just reliable. After a string of bad luck involving splitting an rew down the centre iron I sold my clean shell and tucked the grey car into the back of the garage to sit while I pondered what I wanted in life. This is when I bought my dream car, my black on black ap1 s2k.
My first ever rx7. Should have kept this one, it was insanely clean for a Canadian rx7 from 1982
My 13b swapped rx7
And of course my s2k. This is a more recent pic, you can all imagine what a stock ap1 s2k looked like.
Right around now is when things started going bad on the speed. Broke some engine mounts and upgraded to jbr mounts all around, tossed some cheapo k sport coils on the car, my throw out bearing started to sound a little rough so I put in an act 6 puck with the prolite flywheel. This was kinda the beginning of the end of driving the car as my daily. The act clutch did the thing where it engaged super high at the top of the pedal which I found very annoying to drive every day so I started looking into selling the car and getting a real daily. I work at a Toyota dealership now, so I ended up getting a good deal on a 2020 86 that had been sitting in another dealers showroom for 6 months. Instantly threw on an unequal length header and an exhaust and thought I was happy with my garage finally. In the back of my mind I had started out planning a resurrection for my rx7, and I had my s2k as my fun summer car.
Speed right before she went into storage with different and some may say even ricier stickers lol.
There’s always been a block in my mind when it comes to selling the speed, and again I just couldn’t bring myself to sell it. At this point suspension bushings are pretty worn out, and the paint on the roof and wing is starting to fade. It had just under 200k km on it and didn’t leave me stranded a single time. I found a storage place and tossed it in storage to forget about for a while. This brings us to almost present times, I get a call in 2021 that my car needs to move because they want to get out a car behind mine. I have gotten into powdercoating, and some basic fabrication at this point so I figured it was time to throw my tube chassis rx7 on the back burner again and get the speed back on the road. I missed the car a ton and wanted to see her again.
I head out to the storage spot, luckily no mouses made homes in my car, and everything seemed ok. All the components corroded pretty good sitting for so long, but that was ok because it was time for a full refresh. I hooked a battery up and primed the oil system, and fired it up. Started up first crank like it hadn’t sat for years. I had the biggest grin until I got out to look in the engine bay and saw that my alternator was seized and the belt was just doing a burnout over the pulley. So instead of driving it home, we hooked it up to the back of my parents truck and flat towed it an hour home. This is how she sits in the garage.
I don’t want to spoil the entire build plans but just know that there’s not going to be a single bolt that’s not been touched by me. Next post will be more actual work and probably some more pictures as I pull the car apart to start the rebuild. Still nothing actually wrong with my engine, just want something different now that it’s not my daily driver, and I have the chance to go a little crazy with it without having to worry if it’s going to start every day. Usage is going to be a fun “street” car that excels in curvy backroad ripping and maybe a couple trips up to the track. My style as you can probably see from old pictures of my original rx7 build and how it sits now, is pretty racecar inspired so I’m sure that will translate over to the speed as well. I’m going to try and post somewhat frequently, and I look forward to reading comments and criticism from the people who know way more than I.
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