the zoom zoom boom club 
After four years (next tuesday) and 90,000 miles at 12lbs, "unmodded", my luck finally ran out. For the past two weeks there was a loud ticking noise on half throttle. Asked my brother (mechanic) and he said it was merely a valve, no worries. Last night, driving to my company holiday party, doing about 35mph, the ticking got really really loud, crunch crunch Kablooeee all to hell. I could hear parts flying underneath my seat and what sounded like out of the exhaust pipe. A quick flame and more smoke from under the hood than all of San Diego this past summer. The car immediately died. More alarms and lights on the dash panel than Apollo 13. Lost power steering... completely dead. Had to push it off of the 8 lane road. I towed it over to Lou Bachrodt (hoping and praying it was merely the tranny that I just put in back in July, since it is still under warranty). No such luck. Head is torn to hell and there's a huge hole in the bottom of the block.
They tried turning it over this morning and my car shat all over thier driveway. hehe. Parts all over the garage. lol. Suffice to say I don't think I will be purchasing the new engine from them (6k +tax). That, and they don't know if the turbo's toast until we mount it to a new engine. So, it could be 6k + turbo + tax.
Now for the fun part... what to do?
a) cut my losses and buy a new car (probably regular mazda3)
b) build a badass forged engine w/ the works and keep this car for another 4 -5 years
Here's the kicker for option a).... 13k left on the car.... do I really want a 30k mazda3?
As for option b) (which is most likely what I'm going to do), I have "sub-options", if you will.
Do I go to the junk yard and buy a used 2.0 and tear it apart, putting all the "goodies" in it myself?
Do I call up one of our kickass vendors and just get the forged engine already made? (think like TBK, Protege garage, speedcircuit)
Do I try to salvage all the parts that are "ok" from the old block? (like the water pump, oil pump etc) and buy a "new" block, adding the goodies to it, minus the parts left over?
Disco Potato while I'm at it?
This is my thought process right now... I have wayyy too much left on this car. Do I want to drop 5-10k and have everything the way it should've been from mazda to begin with? - LOL No longer options
I can rationalize that it would pretty much be a "new" car, since everything needs to be replaced, that should last another 4 to 5 years. So, numbers-wise, I'm bought a new car for 17k in Dec. 2003 and now another 10k (over estimate) to last me another 4 years. 27k total (minus finance charges, which btw won't be added to the new 10k). The "missing" 9k which is why i'm still at 13k is another long drawn out story that I'd rather not get into right now.
So anyways, 27k to have two cars over 8 years doesn't seem so bad. The first one was the '03.5 mazdaspeed protege, 167 whp. The second one will be a '03.5.2 mazdaspeed protege 250?whp.
What does everyone think? Are there other options (other than the mysterious disappearance of my car) that I haven't thought of?
After four years (next tuesday) and 90,000 miles at 12lbs, "unmodded", my luck finally ran out. For the past two weeks there was a loud ticking noise on half throttle. Asked my brother (mechanic) and he said it was merely a valve, no worries. Last night, driving to my company holiday party, doing about 35mph, the ticking got really really loud, crunch crunch Kablooeee all to hell. I could hear parts flying underneath my seat and what sounded like out of the exhaust pipe. A quick flame and more smoke from under the hood than all of San Diego this past summer. The car immediately died. More alarms and lights on the dash panel than Apollo 13. Lost power steering... completely dead. Had to push it off of the 8 lane road. I towed it over to Lou Bachrodt (hoping and praying it was merely the tranny that I just put in back in July, since it is still under warranty). No such luck. Head is torn to hell and there's a huge hole in the bottom of the block.
They tried turning it over this morning and my car shat all over thier driveway. hehe. Parts all over the garage. lol. Suffice to say I don't think I will be purchasing the new engine from them (6k +tax). That, and they don't know if the turbo's toast until we mount it to a new engine. So, it could be 6k + turbo + tax.
Now for the fun part... what to do?
a) cut my losses and buy a new car (probably regular mazda3)
b) build a badass forged engine w/ the works and keep this car for another 4 -5 years
Here's the kicker for option a).... 13k left on the car.... do I really want a 30k mazda3?
As for option b) (which is most likely what I'm going to do), I have "sub-options", if you will.
Do I go to the junk yard and buy a used 2.0 and tear it apart, putting all the "goodies" in it myself?
Do I call up one of our kickass vendors and just get the forged engine already made? (think like TBK, Protege garage, speedcircuit)
Do I try to salvage all the parts that are "ok" from the old block? (like the water pump, oil pump etc) and buy a "new" block, adding the goodies to it, minus the parts left over?
Disco Potato while I'm at it?
This is my thought process right now... I have wayyy too much left on this car. Do I want to drop 5-10k and have everything the way it should've been from mazda to begin with? - LOL No longer options
I can rationalize that it would pretty much be a "new" car, since everything needs to be replaced, that should last another 4 to 5 years. So, numbers-wise, I'm bought a new car for 17k in Dec. 2003 and now another 10k (over estimate) to last me another 4 years. 27k total (minus finance charges, which btw won't be added to the new 10k). The "missing" 9k which is why i'm still at 13k is another long drawn out story that I'd rather not get into right now.
So anyways, 27k to have two cars over 8 years doesn't seem so bad. The first one was the '03.5 mazdaspeed protege, 167 whp. The second one will be a '03.5.2 mazdaspeed protege 250?whp.
What does everyone think? Are there other options (other than the mysterious disappearance of my car) that I haven't thought of?
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