What have you done to your P5 today?

[katapaltes]

Rockauto has been great for me.
Their parts always fit.
They don't sell crap that needs to be returned.
It costs them too much money.

RockAuto is great. I've bought Hitachi coils, a Sachs clutch kit, and KYB struts from them.

My only experience with Ebay car parts was my downstream O2 sensor.

The wires were too short and the connector wouldn't plug in.

Never again.

Yeah, I can sadly see that happening on eBay. When I've bought from them, the parts were always branded so I felt comfortable (DENSO O2 sensors, genuine Mazda "NOS" end links, Beck Arnley LCAs).

This brand is supposed to be solid and I may get their tie rod ends:

Proforged 104-10154 Proforged Outer Tie Rod End

Proforged applied the same technological advancements in ball joint construction to their line of Tie Rod Ends and Rack Ends, delivering a premium product to withstand the rigors of performance car and truck applications. The result is a more durable product that extends the lifespan and...

www.holley.com

 

[pcb]

This brand is supposed to be solid and I may get their tie rod ends.

I figure as long as they are greasable, you can maintain them.

Geasable ball joints have grease channels on the ball.


This is the Moog version.

 

[tj4fa2003P5]

They seem to be steel if my my fridge magnets are to be believed.

Good deal. I bought a really cheap (and inexpensive) pair of Amazon LCAs after having issues with my eBay 12 Piece Front Suspension Kit to try to get the suspension work done.

I noticed the aluminum-looking insert and tried to magnetize it and it failed. I didn't trust it and figured it would wear out quickly plus it has some other differences compared to the other sides like how they drilled 2 pair of holes in the rubber next to the aluminum insert..

So now I'm back to waiting on the LCA that it's twin has a steel insert and different halfmoon-shaped open spaces in the surrounding rubber.

Everyone has their own budget for car part purchases.

For my '98 F150 truck when it gets a flashing Check Engine Light or makes Found On Road Dead status, I throw some cheap parts in it because I drive it, have to fix it, and I'm also a cheap bastard.

For my Wife's '93 Civic, it gets some luv when she is still working.
She's my "Sugar-Mama" (the wife not the car).

For my daughter's '01 Corolla, I keep it running and haven't had to spend much money on her (the car not my daughter).

For my son's "new $750-"18 year old who knows how-many owner P5, I seem to have no budget for man-hours as he is frugal and has always been real easy on our budget growing up.

So I buy lots of cheap parts so I can do more stuff that he won't be able to get at because after all is said and done...he is still frugal and I'm still a cheap bastard.

Like father, like son...

I'm a cheap bastard overall, but I still use "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" as my metric for finding good deals. (I saw those 12-piece kits on eBay myself and the prices were a little too good to be believed.) Also, since I'm not paying a shop labor when I replace the parts myself, I can splurge a bit and get name-brand third-party or even OEM parts sometimes when it's important. I want good parts so I'm willing to pay a bit more to get them and with a well-maintained, one-owner vehicle, the car also still feels worth spending on.

 

[pcb]

I buy the cheapest parts available for my car because it's a $200 rust turd, but if you ever do front wheel bearings, get quality bearings, like I finally did.

There is so much time, work, and expense involved in replacing them, that its worth a quality component.



SKF aren't that much more expensive but well worth the extra money.
They are fully sealed.

 

[tj4fa2003P5]

Rockauto has been great for me.
Their parts always fit.
They don't sell crap that needs to be returned.
It costs them too much money.

https://www.rockauto.com/RSS/vehiclefeeds.php?carcode=1387447&m=wc&l=en&html=true

Damn...I LIKE them prices...

They happen to have a control arm bushing on sale.


View attachment 299995


It was forged at high temperatures...

"...and won't crack, harden, become brittle or discolor with age."

It sounds like I'm starting to resemble an old wore-out bushing...

Aluminum melts with a lighter. Lol

 

[pcb]

Damn...I LIKE them prices...

The price is right and they will fit.

My ebay O2 sensor was $27 but the the Rockauto one, was only a few bucks more...

The Denso is a quality sensor, but I don't have a quality car. lol

 

[pcb]

For my '98 F150 truck when it gets a flashing Check Engine Light ...

Just an FYI...

The only code that flashes the CEL on our car is the engine misfire codes.

Tell your son that if the check engine light ever flashes to pull over and shut the car off.

You can burn out the pre-cat in seconds if raw fuel hits it.

That gets really expensive to replace.
(but there is a work around for a fried pre-cat, the non-fouler trick.)

 

[Diamond_Dave]

I buy the cheapest parts available for my car because it's a $200 rust turd, but if you ever do front wheel bearings, get quality bearings, like I finally did.

There is so much time, work, and expense involved in replacing them, that its worth a quality component.



SKF aren't that much more expensive but well worth the extra money.
They are fully sealed.

SKF, ***, and Timken - can't go wrong with those options.



I bought my P5 with a P0455 CEL (seller disclosed and he admitted he'd been throwing parts at a solution) a few years back and it turned out to be the Evap Solenoid at the rear. Replaced the solenoid and that cleared the code. As soon as Covid started, I popped another code. Finally got my lazy butt around to researching it. Someone on here mentioned the Purge Valve Solenoid under the hood, so I figured for $12, I'd just replace it. Sure enough, checked the valve with a jumper and no clicky. All thanks to the really informative reply from 2016 by @flatlander937



In other news, I'm chasing an intermittent no start/no power issue on my MSP - wondering if anyone has insight. 2003.5 MSP, stock alarm, Greddy Turbo Timer, brand new battery with a battery disconnect terminal. Sometimes when I start the car it kills the power and clears the tripometer and all my radio presets and the car will not start; dead - no click, no turnover. I have to open the hood and wiggle the ground wire to the battery. Now the car will start and run perfectly.

Could this be a ground wire issue or an ignition switch issue?

 

[tj4fa2003P5]

First Question - Which post of your battery is your battery-disconnect device connected to?
From what I seen researching this, it should only be hooked up to your negative terminal.

2nd Question - When you use the disconnect, doesn't that power down your computer and drain your PCM or whatever they call the computer in the car to where it loses it's memory therefore losing things like radio presets and possibly where your car has to be driven for awhile to re-learn?

3rd Question - Did all this start after you hooked up the Battery Disconnect device or was it doing this before the installation?

4th Question - Do you suppose there's a ground wire to body issue where a possible second ground wire from the battery terminal is not making a good connection in the terminal or onto the body?

And yes it also could be an ignition switch issue.
When you start the car see if you can jiggle or turn the key back to see if the car cuts out before you go jiggle your ground wire "fix".

I had to change out my daughter's ignition switch in her '01 Corolla one time a while back. I think it was the key or cylinder that was wore out and the chip in the key wouldn't recognize - something along those lines...

 

[tj4fa2003P5]

I buy the cheapest parts available for my car because it's a $200 rust turd, but if you ever do front wheel bearings, get quality bearings, like I finally did.

There is so much time, work, and expense involved in replacing them, that its worth a quality component.



SKF aren't that much more expensive but well worth the extra money.
They are fully sealed.


View attachment 300032

View attachment 300033

Just an FYI...

The only code that flashes the CEL on our car is the engine misfire codes.

Tell your son that if the check engine light ever flashes to pull over and shut the car off.

You can burn out the pre-cat in seconds if raw fuel hits it.

That gets really expensive to replace.
(but there is a work around for a fried pre-cat, the non-fouler trick.

Will do PCB thanks!!

Hmm...will that make my 4.6 F150 misfire often when driving?
Installing a new coil pack cleared the flashing check engine light initially but I still get a normal CEL and misfiring as I drive.
I'll have to check the code I keep getting (and erasing) again to see what that points to.

 

[pcb]

On our car the CEL flashes when there is misfiring detected.
Then the ECU goes into limp mode to try to stop the misfiring.

It floods the engine with extra fuel to help protect it and reduces the timing advance as well as other things.

Once the misfiring has stopped, the CEL turns solid and you're stuck in limp mode, where your car has no power and sucks gas.

 

[pcb]

Onother thing to note.

Our temperature gage is a dummy gage.

It starts at Cold and climbs to just below the halfway mark and stays there until overheating starts.

Then it climbs higher after it's almost too late, and you warp your head.

I almost never look at the gage because it has nothing new to tell me.

I would rather have an idiot light to tell me that my engine is too hot.
Then I'd notice it...


PS...
If your sons cars temperature gage ever reads above the halfway point, tell him to pull over and shut it off, or at least turn the heat on full blast and turn on the AC.

Turning on the AC turns on both fans continuously.

 

[BenjiHoggi]

Anyone have any experience replacing P5 window glass? It doesn't look particularly easy to me. Protege5 got broken into today and I'm looking to see if I can replace the rear passenger door glass with a used sheet from the junkyard.

 

[pcb]

It's easy,...
6 simple steps. Lol

 

[BenjiHoggi]

It's easy,...
6 simple steps. Lol

View attachment 300073




View attachment 300075

PCB coming to the rescue as always. Thanks for posting that, it looks pretty straight forward like you said. I already took the inner door panel off to clean all the glass out. My main concern was getting the new window into the sliding tracks on the sides. I'll investigate further, as it looks pretty simple.

 

[pcb]

Thanks for posting that, it looks pretty straight forward like you said.

Your welcome.

The service manual does tend to make things look simple and easy though.

The transmission comes out in 10 easy steps. Lol
It looks like a 20 minute job.

I always find myself getting hung up on something, but my car is a rusty turd, so that creates lots of setbacks.

 

[tj4fa2003P5]

Onother thing to note.

Our temperature gage is a dummy gage.

It starts at Cold and climbs to just below the halfway mark and stays there until overheating starts.

Then it climbs higher after it's almost too late, and you warp your head.

I almost never look at the gage because it has nothing new to tell me.

I would rather have an idiot light to tell me that my engine is too hot.
Then I'd notice it...


PS...
If your sons cars temperature gage ever reads above the halfway point, tell him to pull over and shut it off, or at least turn the heat on full blast and turn on the AC.

Turning on the AC turns on both fans continuously.

Will do to reinforce that with him - Thanks.
The first time I knew about his "new" car was to help him resolve an overheating issue (air in the system).

I did the best I could do to burp the air out and park the nose on an incline and also found one of his fans was messing up (non-AC fan).

I told him to run the AC to see if the fan came on. It didn't.
HE HAD TO TELL ME that I also had to turn the blower fan on inside the car to make it work.

After that we traded cars and he drove to Orlando and I drove his P5 home 2 hours away with the AC and the blower fan on and kept an eye on that gauge.

 

[katapaltes]

Protege5 got broken into today and I'm looking to see if I can replace the rear passenger door glass with a used sheet from the junkyard.

My passenger window was smashed in when my P5 was just a year or two old and they stole my gym bag fully of sweaty clothing. Safelite came out to replace my glass and as part of that, the "technician" slammed my door really hard repeatedly to shake out any remaining glass until I asked him to stop. Later, I found that a piece of glass managed to get between the side-impact beam inside the door and the outer sheet metal of the door. His slamming gave me a what you could call a reverse door ding, where the dent could have only come from inside the door, and Safelite paid for PDR to fix that.

I put in a MP3 ECU this morning. I had the battery unplugged and the ECU will now need to relearn. At this point, I can't tell any difference with the new ECU installed. I haven't done any supporting mods for the intake/exhaust/VTCS, but I am at least running 91+ octane as my JDM FS-DE wants it.

 

[tj4fa2003P5]

I put in a MP3 ECU this morning. I had the battery unplugged and the ECU will now need to relearn. At this point, I can't tell any difference with the new ECU installed. I haven't done any supporting mods for the intake/exhaust/VTCS, but I am running 91+ octane as my JDM FS-DE wants it.

View attachment 300142

Advice - Plastic Bag up the unused ECU as a future Spare and keep it and the few tools to swap it out in the car.

My wife's '93 Civic ECU Arced out to the cover due to old leaking electrolytic capacitors on the main-board that failed due to age/high humidity conditions. She was on the side of the road coming home from work one night (she being the wife AND the car).

When the ECU blows nothing goes...and everything else seems to get looked at/changed out first.

This was/and still is a common thing with at least older Hondas.

I ended up having two additional spares and have them labeled and triple-bagged-in plastic in the trunk as spares.

As recent as last week, I pulled her main one out and plugged in a spare as a last resort to see if something in the ECU was causing the car to go into a limp mode with engine rpms surging and dying off (red-lining) at an ECM induced 3200 rpms.

Turned out to be needing a new PCV valve to get over that after chasing other MAP, EGR and bad fuel system symptoms for a week...

 

[BenjiHoggi]

My passenger window was smashed in when my P5 was just a year or two old and they stole my gym bag fully of sweaty clothing. Safelite came out to replace my glass and as part of that, the "technician" slammed my door really hard repeatedly to shake out any remaining glass until I asked him to stop. Later, I found that a piece of glass managed to get between the side-impact beam inside the door and the outer sheet metal of the door. His slamming gave me a what you could call a reverse door ding, where the dent could have only come from inside the door, and Safelite paid for PDR to fix that.

I put in a MP3 ECU this morning. I had the battery unplugged and the ECU will now need to relearn. At this point, I can't tell any difference with the new ECU installed. I haven't done any supporting mods for the intake/exhaust/VTCS, but I am at least running 91+ octane as my JDM FS-DE wants it.

View attachment 300142

I got pretty lucky too. They stole my bag of wet swimming gear and a towel, which I honestly could care less about. Just glad I didn't have my computer or drone back there which I often do.

I see exactly what you're talking about with the reverse door dent. I pulled my door panel and plastic off to vacuum the glass and had to scrape a bunch of it out of that gap.

Got a new window now from the local pickapart. Going to attempt the Walmart cheapo-tint since it's just one window and I can do it before installing it.