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Mazda 323 BG hatchback is best hatchback. It's really good with a 130hp BP, but I guess a V6 is going to make it even happier. Our racecar:  (Since that race though, it has a very bent hood and missing the left side headlight and the grille)
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Dec 12, 2017 23:45
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| # ¿ Apr 23, 2024 12:26 |
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Seat Safety Switch posted:Probably all NAs are cable speedo: my '97 Miata was definitely a cable-driven speedometer, but the speedometer also fed the ECU vehicle speed for some reason I will never understand. Yep, NA have a cable (and sometimes a reed switch behind the speedo to make an electric signal), NB have an electric one. It's probably just used for cruise control and maybe automatic transmission. Engine should give no fucks, but you could still have the ECU be upset about it and throw the code. We once had to remove and disassemble the gearbox on our 323 racer because the speedo thing came loose, the wheel broke off and fell down, and blocked the stick from moving anywhere except between 4th and neutral. Fun times.
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Mar 16, 2018 09:48
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Sgt Fox posted:For some reason, my 323 had no swaybars whatsoever. According to the parts diagrams, all should of had at least a front bar. The 323 BG most definitely came with swaybars both front and rear. Sgt Fox posted:Using the MX-3 spindles meant that I also needed to use the MX-3 brakes. Just like the pedal box, the calipers look near identical, but are slightly different, to accommodate the 1" larger brake discs. I had to replace a front caliper on a 1.8 323 and by mistake got one for a 1.6. It looked similar enough and fit nicely so I didn't think much of it, until I was driving and had an awful grinding noise from that corner. Since the caliper was just slightly smaller, the rotor was touching the wheel, but just a tiny bit. So I just took a grinder to the discussion to reduce the diameter a couple millimeters until I got the right caliper. Edit: ^The rotor wasn't touching the goddamn wheel, but obviously the inside of the caliper. I don't know how to think and write. Also the 323 1.8 has discs in the rear while 1.6 has drums, so it sounds likely the MX3 uses the exact same lego parts as the 1.8 323. (This is the 130 hp 1.8 DOHC 323 BG, no idea about which side of the fence the 100hp 1.8 SOHC is) ionn fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Mar 29, 2018 |
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Mar 28, 2018 16:02
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Applebees Appetizer posted:You live in Europe right? Must be a North American thing because mine didn't have a rear bar. Not having a front bar is strange tho. Much Europe. But weren't they all made in Japan? Why would some regions/versions have rear away bars and some not? 
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Mar 28, 2018 23:39
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Sgt Fox posted:Yeah, even the casting numbers were the same, which was very confusing. Comparing the two, the MX-3 has 1/8" more clearance. The rest of the size difference is made up for in the spindle. That sounds about the same. The rotor (which was old and a bit rusty along the outer edge already) was just making a pair of grooves in the caliper, and it didn't take very much grinding to get rid of the problem for the moment. I can see how it would still work pretty fine without the rear sway bar, but not having one up front amazes me. I drove one of ours a short bit with the front sway bar disconnected, and goddamn was there swaying going on. Baffles me that anyone would take it out. Our current 323 racer (which is doing it's final appearance in a 24h race in October, but we may not do anything with it before then) just has about 1.5-2 turns of spring cut off on all four corners, and the front sway bar seriously stiffened up (by welding angle iron along it for a bit). Handles like a gokart, problems are the rear wheels rub under compression, and it gets a bit twitchy or oversteers under braking. Last stint I drove in the last race (an 8h one) I completely ran out of rear pads, and I found the much reduced braking force just made it better. We probably just took a bit too much spring out, so another pair of less-molested springs could fix both issues. That stint was basically the most fun I've ever had on track though. Too bad we had a crash early in the race, our pace during the rest of it was as good as the winners.
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Mar 29, 2018 08:54
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I have had more than one Mazda 323 junk racecar that never got the rear calipers bled because the bleed screws snapped. For some reason the fronts never rusted as badly, and I only recall one of those ever breaking off. And then for once, using a bolt extractor actually worked (locally known as "grispitt", which loosely translates to "pig penis").
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Apr 20, 2018 22:11
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This thread just keeps getting better and better and it's not even up and running yet.
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Jul 12, 2018 22:30
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Sgt Fox posted:I suspect that the voltage may not be high enough to drive the tach. You can see from the bottom trace that the TachMatch outputs a nice square 12V signal. The top trace is the stock tach signal, which has a high voltage inductive spike. This spike is required to drive the stock Mazda tach. Aha. This may be the reason (or one of them, I may have done more things wrong) the tach in my old Nissan D21 truck won't react to a plain 12V square signal. Formerly connected to the ignition coil, now just connected to the ECU after an engine swap. Had no idea before reading this, but sense is being made. Though as I'm too cheap to pay $40 for something I can build myself, I'm probably going to try and build a signal booster from parts found on the ground and only if&when that doesn't work, pay for one...
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Aug 17, 2018 20:45
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Sgt Fox posted:This would allow the ECU to see the valve move, but not actually have any exhaust gasses pass. I was worried that a lack of exhaust pressure would affect how the valve moved, but it seems to have worked. Won't that mess with the fuelling though? I mean, when there is exhaust gas passed to the intake, there's less air/oxygen and the ECU would believe it's supposed to have less fuel. Or will it just work anyway since there actually won't be less air going through the MAF?
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Aug 28, 2018 07:51
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Sgt Fox posted:"Well, mine is still really torquey." There are plenty of things that can be said about the Mazda B8/BP engines, but noone in their right mind would ever call it "torquey". A couple weekends ago, we did the final 24hr race in our Mazda 323 (with the lovely BP in it). It went rather well but with a lot of short stops. Black flags for violating rules we didn't know about, electric issues, brake failures, flat tires, and one case of having to repair collision damage. The last few hours was just babying it to the finish, as we were low on brake pads and tires and the left driveshaft was making noises suggesting it was trying to disembark. But we finished, in 11th place out of 60 starting. 582 laps. 
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Nov 2, 2018 15:09
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Sgt Fox posted:They are on many cars, so the loops do work. They certainly do work and serve a purpose, but it's kind of a "worst case scenario / just to be safe" deal, for whatever conditions the car is designed to handle (doing a 49-point turn in a parking lot on a hot summer day in Arizona or whatever). While many cars don't have them, most car manufacturers seem to have come out on the side of it being worth the cost of having them there despite most people probably never really having any use for them. On our last Mazda 323 junk racer we had very good use of that loop though , to zip-tie the front license plate to after slightly crashing it during the race (though we still finished) and having to drive it home 230km on public roads afterwards.  The left headlight is from some kind of Opel, and did leave a bit of a panel gap.
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Feb 15, 2019 08:05
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It of course wasn't perfectly straight, but it was at least some kind of light and at least an attempt at being slightly more road legal. This is what the very same car looked like a year later for it's final outing at a 24h race (October last year): We got a radiator and headlight from a junkyard, banged the hood into an approximation of it's original shape, liberally applied zip-ties and steel straps to hold the front together, put on new hood pins, and just sent it. Apart from worn out brakes and tires it did awesomely well and got us to 11th place. Mazda 323 BG just is an awesome car.
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Feb 15, 2019 23:42
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| # ¿ Apr 23, 2024 12:26 |
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Applebees Appetizer posted:I had a BG EGT as well. Loved that car, loved the motor (BP). I've owned six cars with the BP I do miss having one. We raced a bunch of hatchbacks, all of them red, none anywhere near as nice as this one though. It was a lot of fun having one periodically as a daily driver. This weekend, we went with a trailer to the barn where we had our spare parts 323F parked. It hasn't driven for four years, it's stripped of a bunch of parts, and it's pretty rusted out. Will take out a few good parts and keep for MX5 spares, sell some others, and scrap the remains.
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Sep 13, 2020 20:42
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