Something completely different…

I am taking a slight detour here from my usual stuff to talk about something a bit different. I am going to return to Texecom and electronics but just lately I have been preoccupied with other things so I thought I’d write about them as well.

I am not really a petrolhead as such, but I do like interesting or unusual cars and I do (as you have no doubt gathered) like tinkering around fixing things where I can. Some cars I’ve had have been interesting (Saab 9-5 Aero, Saab 900, Rover 800 Vitesse) and some… less so (Rover Metro, VW Polo, Ford Focus). I have had some success over the years with various car related jobs although they have generally been electrical rather than mechanical, such as retrofitting factory Bluetooth / USB interfaces (Ford S-Max) and similar job for adding remote central locking (VW Polo).

I found myself in need of a new project, and this time I fancied something a bit sportier, and also wanted a low initial cost. Breaking all the rules, and rather impulsively, I came home with this:

…or rather when I say I came home with it, I bought it as a non-runner with very little knowledge of what was actually wrong with it. I can’t exactly recommend this approach, very risky, although so long as you don’t spend too much it’s OK. I have seen quite a few other cars older than this sold as non-runners for more than I paid so I think I’m ok for now. Still you have to consider the possibility of it turning out badly.

In case you don’t recognise it (I wouldn’t have) it is a Mazda 3 MPS Mk2 from 2009. These are relatively rare and little known cars (less than 1000 of them left now) in a similar class to Golf GTIs and Focus STs. It has a 260BHP 2.3l turbo engine, and a fair amount of attitude as you can see from the picture.

I bought it very much as a project – in the full knowledge that it will need money and effort spending on it. However I didn’t pay much for it and I reckon that even with a fair amount of money spent I won’t have lost any money. When I first saw it it was in a sorry state, mouldy inside with a lot of water, completely dead and according to the previous owner wouldn’t start after running out of fuel. I’m not sure this was the whole story though.The local garage had a mess with it, and after draining out a lot of oil and replacing plugs and filters it started and ran, albeit with a lot of blue smoke and misfire errors from the on board diagnostics.

So first job is to get the mechanicals sorted out. It is currently with a local turbo specialist as I think the turbo needs replacing (drinking oil and producing a lot of smoke) and I understand that the K04 turbo in these cars is prone to failure. My analysis is that the previous owner found it was drinking oil and kept pouring more in, overdid it and then gunged up the plugs leading to it not starting at all.

I am hoping that doing something about the turbo will address the major issues, and then I can turn to the smaller ones.

So far these are:

i) Lots of water in the boot

ii) Some damaged loose / trim inside

iii) GPS / sat nav not working

iv) Bluetooth not working properly either (only pairs with phone and not media audio)

So I will write some updates as we go and hopefully as I tick things off.

I might have bitten off more than I can chew here… but it’s a bit of an adventure too. Also I hope I can keep one more of these on the road, you don’t see many around and I think they have real character.