small things to customize our P5's - any ideas?

A

adragonfly

Member
:
Protege 5
I wanted to know if anyone else had ideas of the little things we can do to our P5'. I'm not talking expensive modifications like bolt-ons, body kits, etc. I'm talking minor little things like painting calipers and tinting the orange bumper side-lights. The antenna was a good one from an earlier thread. Any ideas, tips?
 
Changing the bulbs on your P5 is a relatively inexpensive mod considering you dont do the hid converision. Or Pick up a couple pair of the mazdaspeed or powered by mazda shoulder pads. My favorite little budget mod has to be the VW antenna though;)
 
You can change the domelights to a different colour like blue or purple or something. I wanted purple or orange, couldn't find it at any local stores and didn't feel like buying it off the net. I saw some blue and super white bulbs for only $9.99 CDN tho so that's pretty cheap. My friends say the blue light is ricey, but blue's my favourite colour so I try to get everything in blue :)
 
What's "ricey" supposed to mean? I love blue as well, and my P5 is blue. I wouldn't change the light inside, though, because I use it pretty often, and changing the color makes it less bright. It's sort of a safety thing, too. I'm a woman, so I don't want it to be too dark when I'm walking to my car at night. (Not that that little thing will save me, but it's a bit of peace of mind.) :) Thanks for the tip anyway! Any other ideas?
 
Ricey, well, it's usually a term people use to refer to those that drive cars with 3 ft high spoilers, excessive use of neon-coloured lights, and other extremely exaggerated, aesthetics-only mods with no performance to back it up. Generally, that sucks .. :)

Well, super white dome lights won't really make the light any dimmer, it'll probably make it too bright ;) But I guess you dont' want to go that route so scratch that ...

Well, my friend (hopefully to-be gf) folded me 18 paper cranes for my birthday and hung them on a thread, so I have that hanging on my rearview mirror. Makes my car look girly, but then again, it's actually pretty nice :)

I also saw some red tailight tints. Well, you might be wondering why you'd want to tint your tailights red when they're red already, but the thing is, I absolutely HATE the two white circles on the Protege5 tailights. It looks like an inversed altezza-style tailight which is waaay overused now. I want to tint them red, but I never got around to it.
 
watch out, those super whites tend to heat up in the dome light and start melting the lens
 
I agree about those super whites. If you don't use them exactly as they are supposed to be used, they tend to melt on you! If I wasn't clear on the tinting issue before, I meant you could tint the back lights with a special paint that's translucent. You can see the red through it when the lights are on, but when they're off, they appear dark grey like window tint.
 
you can replace the cover which covers an opening in the back of the center console with an ashtray from a millenia, color does not match though. or you can buy plexiglass at home depot for a buck, install it there instead of a cover and have a light for the rear passengers so they can see where they are stepping. or put a neon or strobe kit in there. thats what i might do.
 
That sounds like a good idea... I don't like how big the Mazda emblem is on the front. Reminds me of those really big Mercedes Benz S classes like my dad has. That's not the look I like for my zoom zoom! I plan to get a new grille later, but for now I think I'll try that! Thanks.
 
I was thinkig about switching that dome light to match the color of the dash and radio lights. I would still have the reading lights when I would need that sort of thing. What do you all think? I don't know how to do this stuff (I'm the IDEA MAN!) so does anyone have any suggestions?
 
quick two cents before I fall asleep

Well I did a few minor things that may have been mentioned. I have a red P5, so I got red underbodies. As for the interior lights, I found AIC or APC or something like that, little red bulbs for the two little lights that are next to the actual dome light. Yeah it's around midnight and I'm tired so I'm probably not making sense. :o I also put a 15" red neon light under each of the front seats. It's not visible from outside the car, but when you're inside, it makes the floor glow red, pretty nifty. I found some red Racing-X floor mats that are rubber, so not only do they look nice, but their easy to clean. You can find any number of pedal covers for you gas/brake pedal. And ya might be able to find some cheap seat covers that match your car, I borrowed some from a friend while his car got worked on, just to see if I liked them, and obviously for me they were black/red. Looked good. I guess it's all a matter of opinion, but that's just some things I could think about. I'm gonna quit rambling now and go to bed.......ZZZzzzz
 
Well for right now, I am replaceing the fogs, hi and low beams with xenon hyper whites. I am also replaceing the front and rear turn signels with xenon hyper whites. I want to find clear front side turning lights so I can then, of course, have hyper white turn lights. As for the VW antena switch, I have seemed to miss this discustion, what does it involve?
 
here's what I posted in an earlier string on the VW Jetta anttena switch


..."Yeah I got this antenna on my car, bought it from electrodyne.com straight from the Volkswagen section. It's a nice little antenna but I had to fabricate my own screw base because this one doesn't have a screw sticking out the bottom, when our antenna does. It's pretty easy to do tho, get a 10/32 STEEL screw and screw it in, and cut off the head, make sure to cut it short enough tho (compare it to your stock screw length). THey look pretty sleek, and the whole thing unscrews into 3 parts. The silver top part, the steel black pole, and the base. I've gotten compliments, on those who notices it - and people that don't know much about cars say it looks like a celluar phone antenna and wonder where my real antenna is.

ALSO: this thing is short... about 1/4 the stock antenna size."...
 
Here's my inexpensive seat cover idea:

I figured if I was gonna go cheaper (custom-made leather would be wonderful, but expensive), I may as well get the ones I did. $36 + postage for the set on Ebay (product: Matrix Seat Covers, seller: sticker4u@yahoo.com). They are vinyl, but soft - not sticky plastic.

The backs fit perfectly, the fronts are a bit "poochy" on the seat backs. Once again, though, for the price they protected the original seats well enough. Oh, yeah - I added the MP5 labels myself.
mp5_11.jpg

mp5_14.jpg
 
The links work, Lamb. If you see my ride at the bottom of this post, the server is up. The files are 43 K and 38 K. Hopefully, the seat covers will get relisted.
 
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