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Yea, those are a good option, but they didn't offer them with the Bilstein B4's that I wanted to use unfortunately.

Yea, I have a set of spring compressors in the garage too, so it's not about the tool availability. I just really don't like using them. Not only the risk of it slipping or coming off of the compressed spring, but the times I've used them they've chewed up the corrosion-prevention coating on the...

Well... If I were just removing & replacing the strut & spring assembly as a whole, I agree, I wouldn't have to. That isn't quite what I was doing though... To avoid messing around with spring compressors (those things scare me a bit), I was using a jack under the lower control arm and the...

I finally got the correct new knuckle, and it all went together nice and quickly, only a couple weeks behind schedule. I also picked up some LED interior lights and a white strip of LEDs to add to the rear ceiling trim inspired by hleboklop a few posts up. The strip I got unfortunately wasn't...

Yea, I wasn't expecting that result! I wasn't even looking at the ear since I was focusing on whether the bearing itself was moving while cranking on the screw. Oddly, once I got the knuckle off the car (even though the damage was done), some work with the sledge got the bearing moving fairly...

At least you weren't trying to replace the blower motor! I had to do that on my 2006 and it was awful. Buried really high up under the dash up against the firewall, it required laying upside-down in the drivers side footwell trying to fit my arms up to get to fasteners by feel since there was...

A few weeks ago I went around and replaced all the shocks/struts & mounts since one was definitely blown and leaking and they all felt a bit on the sloppy side - it looks like they were all still OEM parts at ~122k miles. Anyway, they all got replaced with Bilstein B4 shocks - slightly stiffer...

If you're worried about rubbing, some 2010+ 18" mazdaspeed 3 wheels have a very similar look to the later 10-spoke 18" RX-8 wheels, but are slightly narrower at 7.5" wide vs 8". I actually have a set of the MS3 wheels as the winter wheels for snow tires on my RX-8, and side-by-side they look...

Prior to a multi-state 2500 mile holiday road trip, I got a set of seat heaters for the two front seats and installed them. Sooo nice, and one thing I really miss from my previous DD. Taking the seats apart and getting the hog rings back in place was not the most fun (and I found that the...

I had a very similar issue - a hydrocarbon smell that wouldn't go away, excessive puffing out the oil cap (it should be a vacuum when the car is warmed up), all accompanied by relatively low compression. Check out my thread (link below) for more details, but changing the PCV alone didn't seem...

Its hard to tell from pictures at the front there, but I don't see any obvious holes, there's still a bit of painted surface on the subframes, and the pinch welds running along the sides are straight, so I'd suspect its mostly surface rust. This will give you an issue with all the small 6mm...

Yes to all of those. Suspension noise can be tough to track down, but I've found that if I'm going in to the front suspension on an FWD car, it's always easiest to just try to replace everything short of the springs & struts if they're in good shape. Strut top bearings, LCA's, tie rod ends, sway...

New control arms likely will mean that the car needs an alignment - this could explain the pulling and vibrations

Yes, I put 17" wheels from a contemporary Mazda6 on my 5, they're slightly wider at 7" vs 6.5 but the offset mostly accounts for this. Tires wider than 205 on the 7" wheels may rub on one of the inner wheel well plastics slightly when the steering wheel is fully turned - this happened with the...

Yes, the main purpose is for a bike hitch or rear carrying tray - I don't plan on much towing but having a hook-up for lights will be nice since bikes or cargo in the tray may block the normal taillights. With that being said, I towed a small enclosed U-haul moving trailer about 1000 miles...

I recently picked up, cleaned, painted, and got new tires onto some old 17" Mazda6 wheels, and I think they look great! Also got a roof rack and tow hitch installed, and need to get around to the trailer wiring harness one of these days.

The biggest problems with the style of bike rack that just use straps to hold on to the rear hatch are that they can dent the rear hatch around the license plate where the bottom presses, scratch or scuff the paint with the pads pressed against the hatch or the hooks, and make it...

I may go down that route at some point too - in this case I was looking for panels that would make noise if I shook or hit them, and applied foam weather-stripping or felt-tape to the back to deaden the vibrations. The main culprits were the cowl panel around the wipers, the rear part of the...

At the time of the last compression pressure test a week ago, there still was positive pressure in the crankcase trying to lift up the oil fill cap. After another week, and the oil smell does not seem to be coming back. Additionally, unscrewing the oil cap and trying to pull it out while the...

Well, after all that, some sea-foaming, interior cleaning, and repeated aggressive driving once it's warmed up, the oil smell seems to be going away and not returning. Compression seems to have increased by about 5 psi across the board when warm, so that's a start, but I haven't been able to do...