To replace the 2012 Mazdaspeed3 that I totaled, I bought this 2007 Mazdaspeed3 which was original owned by Scott aka SilverDemon on MSF, then owned by @HawkeyeGeoff:
The car as received was stock, other than the following:
-Built motor with Wiseco OTS 88 mm pistons, Pauter rods, Clevite rod bearings, OEM main bearings, BSD, oil pan baffle, L19 head studs, Corksport injector seals (buildsheet forthcoming)
-South Bend Stage 3 Endurance clutch
-Bilstein B8 OTS shocks with Cobb springs
-17x9+45 Enkei RPF1's with 255/40/17 NT05's
-Greddy CBE
-A bunch of weird custom shit Scott installed here and there.
The car came with both Versatune and Cobb Accesstuner Race. I initially used Versatune, but it turned out that the cooling fans don't turn on on my car with Versatune, so I overheated. Decided to switch back to good old Cobb for tuning after that:
My cooling problems didn't end there because I ended up having a bad thermostat. The car would sit at 217-219 degrees even cruising down the highway at 70 MPH. Going WOT would send temps into the 220's. I swapped in a new OEM tstat fixing the problem...bitch of a job, by the way.
Then after the lawnmower-sized battery Scott installed shorted to the custom battery box Scott made, which included plenty of smoke and general freaking out, my first mod was to install a hacked up stock battery box with a stock battery...
Then it was time for some real fun. I swapped the following parts over from my 2012 Mazdaspeed3 (I stocked it out):
-Damond Trilogy Mounts
-JBR 3.5" Intake
-CP-E catless downpipe
-BNR S3
-Autotechs
-CP-E TMIC (I traded my Gen2 for a Gen1 via a friend)
In addition to one of these (XS Power V3):
Then this happened (fixed):
Then this happened, four times:
Finally I got a friend of mine to mill the flange. Problem solved:
Then I realized I was losing exhaust manifold nuts, for a reason I should have identified when I installed the manifold:
Problem solved. Once again, thank you Scott...
I also had to add crankcase ventilation. The reason I did this is that the car came with a stock PCV system plus the CFM oil breather cap. As soon as I turned up the boost on the BNR, I started getting appreciable amounts of oil thrown out the CFM cap. You figure with the Gen1 valve cover, every time that check valve pops open, the timing chain and blowby gases throw oil out the cap. It's a compact cap with only one baffle and can only do so much. So what I did was I bought a Kozmic VTA can with lines from a buddy in the community, and drilled and tapped the valve cover in the area underneath the baffle. Here are the parts you'll need:
2 x -10AN to 1/2" NPT fittings 1 x 1/2" NPT drill and tap kit Kozmic can (mine is I think the Focus ST one but I found a way to mount it no problem): http://edgeautosport.com/kozmic-motorsports-oil-catch-can-kit-mazdaspeed-3-2007-2009/
I used red loctite where the bungs go through the valve cover. The location of my bungs is kind of non-traditional being on the back of the VC close to the manifold as opposed to the top, but I have a TMIC and had to accomodate that. I opted to wrap the lines in fiberglass.
I then deleted the CFM cap. So far this breather system works perfectly. Crankcase pressure is being relieved (I can see oil vapor deposits in the lines and so forth) but very little if any liquid oil is being pushed into the lines (checked the can after ~1k miles and it was still empty) thanks to locating the bungs under the baffle.
So my current experiment is one that isn't going well. First let me show the baseline I started with. So again this is on all the bolt-on's I mentioned above, sans the CP-E TMIC. I used the stock TMIC for a while because my car was missing the rear IC bracket.
So the car was making 400 ft-lbs and about 350 hp at the wheels. Keep in mind the exhaust manifold was still leaking at the time, hence the delayed spool. I only got one good log where the manifold to turbo connection wasn't leaking like a sieve and yes, that's 21 psi at 2977 RPM's logged and 400 ft-lbs at 3000 RPM's! I use 35 degrees of VVT, 100%WGDC, and I think 3.5 degrees spark advance at 3000RPM's to accomplish this.
Then I decided to change things up, since I had the turbo out to check the hotside for flatness. I bought a MAC 46A-AA1-JDBA-1BA 4-port solenoid and a turbonetics 30326 2-port wastegate actuator. This is the type of actuator where the second port goes to the rear of the wastegate diaphragm, so when the solenoid is energized you can send boost to the backside of the wastegate diaphragm to help keep the wastegate closed. This was all done for experimental purposes, with the goal of improving spool.
To get the turbonetics actuator to fit, I had to cut and bend the extremely thick rod (pain in the ass) and shorten the arm a little bit. I also had to slot my BNR S3 WGA bracket and drill out the center section a little bit because the second port was making contact with the compressor housing and I needed to rotate it out of the way. I was not optimistic about this setup going into it because the turbonetics actuator spring is super weak. I think Turbonetics advertises this actuator as being a 7-12 psi actuator. I found when testing it, no matter how much preload I put on it, it wouldn't crack at any more than 10 psi. Sure enough, even with 100% WGDC, the spring tension + boost pressure on the backside is not enough to keep the wastegate flapper closed, and although there are brief moments where I can make 18 psi/2.45 calculated load or so, most of the time it blows open and I'm making 14/2.20 or so.
Fortunately for me, I was up at Justin's shop in New Hampshire where my buddy was getting tuned and while we were troubleshooting a problem that ended up being a clogged cat, I scooped up a fully functional BNR S4 actuator. That's going on the car probably today. Now, I think there's a lot of potential for this thing to overboost with the S4 actuator because if I'm not mistaken, the S4 hotside's wastegate flapper is a little larger than the S3's, so the extra surface area on that flapper is going to assist with balancing the extra spring pressure. We'll see. It really would not bother me if it overboosted a little bit.
The S4 actuator cracks at about 20 and is fully open at about 40 psi. The S3 actuator cracks at about 12-14 psi and is fully open at about 30 psi.
I also installed "Version 2.5-ish" of my custom Bilstein (B6)-Ground Control suspension on the car. This suspension is the best MS3 suspension I've ever driven on! Revalving was done by Delta Vee motorsports in Michigan. Springs are Eibach 600 lb/in front, 750 lb/in rear:
Very much looking forward to getting an alignment dialed in, some RE71R's mounted, and seeing what this setup can really do!
By the way, the "Final" plots are Rob at Delta Vee's work. The other dynos are Bilstein's screwups! They assembled one of my fronts wrong, and the rears were totally fubar'd! Try to work with Bilstein was one of the worst experiences in motorsports of my life. The rears alone were revalved or rebuilt by them a total of 4 times I think, with screwups every single time, and my shocks were held up for 5-6 months at a time.
edit: @Raider I can't get the Amazon links to display. Can you look into it?
The car as received was stock, other than the following:
-Built motor with Wiseco OTS 88 mm pistons, Pauter rods, Clevite rod bearings, OEM main bearings, BSD, oil pan baffle, L19 head studs, Corksport injector seals (buildsheet forthcoming)
-South Bend Stage 3 Endurance clutch
-Bilstein B8 OTS shocks with Cobb springs
-17x9+45 Enkei RPF1's with 255/40/17 NT05's
-Greddy CBE
-A bunch of weird custom shit Scott installed here and there.
The car came with both Versatune and Cobb Accesstuner Race. I initially used Versatune, but it turned out that the cooling fans don't turn on on my car with Versatune, so I overheated. Decided to switch back to good old Cobb for tuning after that:
My cooling problems didn't end there because I ended up having a bad thermostat. The car would sit at 217-219 degrees even cruising down the highway at 70 MPH. Going WOT would send temps into the 220's. I swapped in a new OEM tstat fixing the problem...bitch of a job, by the way.
Then after the lawnmower-sized battery Scott installed shorted to the custom battery box Scott made, which included plenty of smoke and general freaking out, my first mod was to install a hacked up stock battery box with a stock battery...
Then it was time for some real fun. I swapped the following parts over from my 2012 Mazdaspeed3 (I stocked it out):
-Damond Trilogy Mounts
-JBR 3.5" Intake
-CP-E catless downpipe
-BNR S3
-Autotechs
-CP-E TMIC (I traded my Gen2 for a Gen1 via a friend)
In addition to one of these (XS Power V3):
Then this happened (fixed):
Then this happened, four times:
Finally I got a friend of mine to mill the flange. Problem solved:
Then I realized I was losing exhaust manifold nuts, for a reason I should have identified when I installed the manifold:
Problem solved. Once again, thank you Scott...
I also had to add crankcase ventilation. The reason I did this is that the car came with a stock PCV system plus the CFM oil breather cap. As soon as I turned up the boost on the BNR, I started getting appreciable amounts of oil thrown out the CFM cap. You figure with the Gen1 valve cover, every time that check valve pops open, the timing chain and blowby gases throw oil out the cap. It's a compact cap with only one baffle and can only do so much. So what I did was I bought a Kozmic VTA can with lines from a buddy in the community, and drilled and tapped the valve cover in the area underneath the baffle. Here are the parts you'll need:
2 x -10AN to 1/2" NPT fittings 1 x 1/2" NPT drill and tap kit Kozmic can (mine is I think the Focus ST one but I found a way to mount it no problem): http://edgeautosport.com/kozmic-motorsports-oil-catch-can-kit-mazdaspeed-3-2007-2009/
I used red loctite where the bungs go through the valve cover. The location of my bungs is kind of non-traditional being on the back of the VC close to the manifold as opposed to the top, but I have a TMIC and had to accomodate that. I opted to wrap the lines in fiberglass.
I then deleted the CFM cap. So far this breather system works perfectly. Crankcase pressure is being relieved (I can see oil vapor deposits in the lines and so forth) but very little if any liquid oil is being pushed into the lines (checked the can after ~1k miles and it was still empty) thanks to locating the bungs under the baffle.
So my current experiment is one that isn't going well. First let me show the baseline I started with. So again this is on all the bolt-on's I mentioned above, sans the CP-E TMIC. I used the stock TMIC for a while because my car was missing the rear IC bracket.
So the car was making 400 ft-lbs and about 350 hp at the wheels. Keep in mind the exhaust manifold was still leaking at the time, hence the delayed spool. I only got one good log where the manifold to turbo connection wasn't leaking like a sieve and yes, that's 21 psi at 2977 RPM's logged and 400 ft-lbs at 3000 RPM's! I use 35 degrees of VVT, 100%WGDC, and I think 3.5 degrees spark advance at 3000RPM's to accomplish this.
Then I decided to change things up, since I had the turbo out to check the hotside for flatness. I bought a MAC 46A-AA1-JDBA-1BA 4-port solenoid and a turbonetics 30326 2-port wastegate actuator. This is the type of actuator where the second port goes to the rear of the wastegate diaphragm, so when the solenoid is energized you can send boost to the backside of the wastegate diaphragm to help keep the wastegate closed. This was all done for experimental purposes, with the goal of improving spool.
To get the turbonetics actuator to fit, I had to cut and bend the extremely thick rod (pain in the ass) and shorten the arm a little bit. I also had to slot my BNR S3 WGA bracket and drill out the center section a little bit because the second port was making contact with the compressor housing and I needed to rotate it out of the way. I was not optimistic about this setup going into it because the turbonetics actuator spring is super weak. I think Turbonetics advertises this actuator as being a 7-12 psi actuator. I found when testing it, no matter how much preload I put on it, it wouldn't crack at any more than 10 psi. Sure enough, even with 100% WGDC, the spring tension + boost pressure on the backside is not enough to keep the wastegate flapper closed, and although there are brief moments where I can make 18 psi/2.45 calculated load or so, most of the time it blows open and I'm making 14/2.20 or so.
Fortunately for me, I was up at Justin's shop in New Hampshire where my buddy was getting tuned and while we were troubleshooting a problem that ended up being a clogged cat, I scooped up a fully functional BNR S4 actuator. That's going on the car probably today. Now, I think there's a lot of potential for this thing to overboost with the S4 actuator because if I'm not mistaken, the S4 hotside's wastegate flapper is a little larger than the S3's, so the extra surface area on that flapper is going to assist with balancing the extra spring pressure. We'll see. It really would not bother me if it overboosted a little bit.
The S4 actuator cracks at about 20 and is fully open at about 40 psi. The S3 actuator cracks at about 12-14 psi and is fully open at about 30 psi.
I also installed "Version 2.5-ish" of my custom Bilstein (B6)-Ground Control suspension on the car. This suspension is the best MS3 suspension I've ever driven on! Revalving was done by Delta Vee motorsports in Michigan. Springs are Eibach 600 lb/in front, 750 lb/in rear:
Very much looking forward to getting an alignment dialed in, some RE71R's mounted, and seeing what this setup can really do!
By the way, the "Final" plots are Rob at Delta Vee's work. The other dynos are Bilstein's screwups! They assembled one of my fronts wrong, and the rears were totally fubar'd! Try to work with Bilstein was one of the worst experiences in motorsports of my life. The rears alone were revalved or rebuilt by them a total of 4 times I think, with screwups every single time, and my shocks were held up for 5-6 months at a time.
edit: @Raider I can't get the Amazon links to display. Can you look into it?
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