Recent content by deagz

Check swaybar endlinks for play. Actually check the whole front end for play, but the endlinks might be the culprit.

How does motor oil improve power. (notcool)

Yea it was the plugs, it runs fine now.

I just tried seafoam, and now my idle is retarded. It idled smoothly from last year when I cleaned the EGR until yesterday when I seafoamed it. Also the car is sluggish up to 3500 rpm where there is a surge in power (similar to the feeling of vtec actuating). I would figure that the EGR just...

I assume you used 10w30 in the texas weather. This is good down to 0 F, however you would want to go to 5w30 for better startup protection in Michigan winters. If you feel like spending the extra money on synthetic, 0w30 from Mobil 1 or Castrol Syntec would be good choices.

ZFR5F-11 and 6 are stock on North American 1.6L protege's. There's no reason why any auto parts store shouldn't carry them.

The noise isn't there when sitting. Only when in motion while on throttle. One knock sound once per-second at highway speeds doesn't seem like it could be a wheel... the wheel rotates many times per second at that road speed.

There is a knocking noise (like someone knocking on a door) coming from the engine compartment of my car. It's not detonation or pinging. The rate of the knocking sound seems dependant on road speed, not engine speed. It knocks about once every 2 seconds at 40km/h, once per second at 80km/h...

You need to give it a little gas on take off. The protege doesn't have much power at low rev's, the long reach plugs help a little with that. BTW, I ran the car a few tanks on regular 87 octane. I actually get the same (~550km) on regular compared to mid 89 octane. Yet, I've been switching...

Looks great. When you got time to do the write up, I would appreciate it.

This is the longer one with Mazdaspeed written on it. It doesn't have any universal screws.

I got my MSP shift knob and it doesn't fit on my 99 protege. It seems like the plastic disc at the top of the shift boot is preventing the knob from going all the way down. I know this has been asked before but would rather not do anything permanent to the car. Does anybody have any suggestions?

interesting. How would we go about building this heat shield? I assume aluminum foil won't work too well.

I replaced the original ignition wires when I bought this car a couple years ago. The parts store gave me NGK ZE36 wires instead of the ZE52 which are the correct ones. The ZE36 are for 97-98 protege 1.8L and are a couple inches longer in length. I didn't really think too much about this...

1.1mm or .043inchces. I gapped mine at .044 because that was the closest on my ghetto plug gapper. The plugs when I got them were pre-gapped at 1.1mm but you can double check. I measured mileage for 91 octane then 89 and get roughly the same mileage (450km/tank). To be honest I don't seem to...