Sluggish acceleration?

[kevinmcc]

Hey all. I just picked up a 2003 Mazda protege dx and it seems to have very sluggish acceleration.



What should I check? The car has sat for many years


It is all stock automatic transmission

It also only has 26,xxx miles on it

Could it be plugs? I remember driving this car back maybe 4 years ago and it seemed to have a lot more pep to it back then.

 

[lolwut]

The cars are colloquially referred to as Slotege's for good reason, lol. Just give it a good tune up. New plugs and wires, fuel treatment, clean the MAF and throttle body. Just the little things that dont cost but a few bucks. Good luck, guy.

 

[03protolx]

as lolwut says....They're slower cars. With the 2.0 they're manageable and seem to be a lot peppier... I can just say use seafoam, plugs, clean the egr, and reset the ecu. I'd try to remove as much of that old gas as possible and check the fuel pressure.

 

[tweety2300]

The 2.0 with auto trans makes 60-70 whp and weighing 2800 lbs they're pretty worthless for acceleration

 

[Berto24]

Apart that this cars are extremely slow! Make sure everything is updated spark plugs,Sensors, Air filter, oil changes, timing belts etc

 

[kevinmcc]

Should I change my spark plugs and what not at 27k miles? Will it help performance?

 

[tweety2300]

If they're really bad you might notice a slight increase. Do a manual swap and you might get a 15-20 whp difference. Your only options for performance are to turbo it or v6 swap. Or get another car

 

[kevinmcc]

Okay I don't mind the low power. Just wondering if it was normal.

Sometimes it seems to accelerate and other times it falls right on its face lol.

 

[CiviCity]

How hard is it to go from tiptronic tranny to a manual one? What would i need to do so?

 

[2003protege]

I would start by cleaning your MAF sensor. It's cheap to do, and it has been the cause of some really crappy acceleration for me in the past.

Your "falling on it's face" comment was really what made me think MAF.