What have you done to your Mazda5 today?

Installed AST suspension last night. The mazda3/5 suspension is shockingly (pun intended) easy to work on. Time from pulling it into the garage, to completing the test drive, was 5 hours - including 30 minute for pizza.

I do need to re-adjust the ride height from my initial guess setting, the front needs to come up 0.5" and rear needs to go down 1.0". Initial ride quality impressions are very good. Stiff, but good.

Needs more rear bar, but I knew that, I wanted to get this suspension on before deciding between the MS3 RSB or stiffer aftermarket options. I'm leaning towards aftermarket.
 
Nice. Do you have any pictures from the install? After spring settling? Go big on the rear bar! You can handle it. :D
 
No, no pics from the install or of the vehicle yet, sorry. I was working against the clock, as I got home late from work and didn't didn't pull the car into the garage until 6:30pm. I was trying to skip out of work early and be started by 4:30 but failed. As I mentioned, I finished with car on the ground and completed test drive by 11:30, including dinner and some "custom" work on the rear, so not too bad. With one repetition under my belt, and no "custom" work needed in the future, this would be a 3 or 3.5 hour job from car-up to car-down.

I'll probably start a thread in the suspension sub forum with some more info and pics in the coming days, as I don't want to hijack this catch-all thread with my stuff.

Regarding the "custom" comment:
1. I had to do some grinding on the big lower control arm hole, as it was out of round (elliptical) by a mm or two. The lower spring perch adapter was made on a lathe and obviously very round, but didn't fit the smaller minor axis of the "elliptical" control arm hole, so I spent about 10min per side making the lower control arm hole nice and round round and a good tight fit for the lower spring perch.
2. I had to figure something out for the upper spring perch, I tried modifying the stock upper perch/spring pad at first, but it turned out using the lower pad as-is worked quite well. It took about 15 minutes to figure this out.
3. I had to make some spacers for the lower shock mount, as the AST lower mounting eye was 10mm narrower than the stock mz5 unit. I made some spacers out of scrap aluminum I had laying around. 15-20 minutes?

Considering that this kit was a prototype for an older ms3 (not production-level parts), and I was installing it in a new mz5, I don't consider having to make a couple spacers and fiddle with spring perches unreasonable at all, and would definitely not hold it against AST. AST was great to work with (as has been my experience). They provided excellent service, quick email response, always willing to work with me and answer questions, dyno the shocks and provide the data/graphs, etc...
 
Removed the old splitter I had and installed a smaller gentler one.I'm still on the fence about painting this one but I will see how it grows on me.

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Well, not so much today but this week ordered a few things for my 2012 5.

Installed a k&n intake (which I regret)
Odered some rims and tires from the tire rack (will get here monday)
Received my h&r sport springs (still sitting in the garage)
Received the upper rear camber links (sitting next to the springs)
Ordered a cork sport m3 rear sway bar (should show up on the 26th.

I have 7 days off after Christmas so I should have some time to get everything installed assuming I'm not dead as my wife has yet to find out.
 
I didn't recall having that radius on the lower half of the shield that would cover the lower edge of the stock rotor like yours. Likely was a change on 09 or later. The shield on mine is pretty much flat. I never tried the stock rims but am running a 17 inch wheel now. It is a 17x7.5 w/ 42mm offset. Seems to have plenty or clearance. I've heard of some MS3 guys running 16" wheels for track days also. What wheels are you using? I Am thinking they'll clear the stockers.
I was going through phunky's BC how-to and saw he too has the lip! Since he is '09, I'm going to say this is a MT vs. Auto factor. Like how MT have a niffy button to release the ignition key (dumb).
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Also, unless Phunky has an aftermarket wheel liner, it seems '09s lost the air diffusers (cooling?) in the liner!?.. Undocumented changes FTL.
My former '08 MT
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Hit a pothole and had to put on the bright yellow spare (gah) in the sleet! The tire is ruined as it popped the side. Replacement comes on Friday. Ever since they started plowing snow this season, there's big holes in the street near Aurora on rt.59. Glad I didn't have my RX8 wheels on.
 
^^I think we need that. So do you think that its the filter or the setup itself? I would think that if you kept the original airbox and dropped in a K&N filter, the torque wouldn't be affected. I'm just guessing.
 
I'm not sure why we end up loosing low end torque. But it seems like the best thing for us is a drop-in filter (K&N or AEM) for no negative effects.
 
I'm not sure why we end up loosing low end torque. But it seems like the best thing for us is a drop-in filter (K&N or AEM) for no negative effects.

That's what I was referring to. But it also has a lot to do with design of the tubing and placement of the filter. I had a TurnOne intake on my fresh-off-the-boat-from-Japan 1998 Subaru. No loss in torque and screamed on top. It had a pretty cool whistling sound too. But it was very non intrusive, only removing the airbox and adding a shield and a cone K&N filter over a billet horn
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So I still got the original piping bring the fresh air up from under the car and I still have the stock tubing from the MAF sensor to the throttle body. It worked out very well for 167,000 miles. I sold the car in 2008 on ebay.
 
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