lowlevel's Proteg 5 Rescue

lowlevel

Member
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2002 Mazda Proteg 5
lowlevel's Proteg 5 Rescue

I've really been enjoying all your build threads and kind of wanted to do one... but I'm not really building so much as rescuing.

The car belonged to my good friend Paulo, who bought it new in 2002. The last time he tried to start it (over two years ago), the alternator seized and the belt shredded and flew off... then it sat... and sat. I'm hoping to do a lot of work on the car myself as a learning experience, and at the same time use it to commute to work and save some gas over using our other vehicle for hopefully a couple of years but we'll see. So far I've just been farting around town in it with my dog Fergus... he whines whenever he's in this car though. (lol)

Paulo was pretty good about changing the oil.. used Amsoil most of its life except for the first couple years of dealer service...
He's had repeat issues with wheel bearings, and brake calipers... he's done some mods... some I know about, some I have yet to discover.
There is a lot of rust. Typical rear fender area.. door sills.. rockers... floor boards... hoping to clean it up a bit and stop the rust from killing the car.

To transfer the ownership and get the car on the road I had to have some work done... a re-built alternator, belt, new oil pain, patched up floors and a safety certificate. $1300 so far... not terrible I guess considering my friend gave me the car for free...

Car still has lots of issues.. seems to have very bad bearings, EGR's still getting stuck open(new egr purchased), lots of suspension noises and metal on metal sounds! Clutch slips a little bit.. well, quite a bit actually.. radio isn't picking up any stations(replaced)... rear wiper seems broken.. car is pretty dirty too... should be lots of fun ;)


Here are some pics:

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Fergus.jpeg
 
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After driving around the car a bit.. I decided I didn't like how it felt and decided to replace some parts... want to change out the front control arm bushings, ball joints and the wheel bearings.. From what you guys were saying, cleaning the EGR was only a temporary fix so I figured I better get a new one ahead of time.. I only got 200km out of cleaning it, and it's stuck again (lol). I'm going to have some help from a mechanic friend for the bushings and bearings at least since I don't have a press.

Mazda parts counter: $400 taxes in.
2 x Front wheel bearing
2 x bearing retaining ring (incase I break mine.)
2 x control arm bushing, front-most
2 x control arm bushing, rear-most
1 x updated EGR assembly/kit
2 x EGR bolts (mine are gross)

Amazon.com: $160 taxes/shipping/duty in. (seems I got a good deal here)
Exedy OEM Clutch replacement kit
Came with some go-fast stickers!

My friend's picking up the balljoints at Napa for me since he gets a discount...
I think we picked the 'spensive ones.. about $60 a peice instead of the cheap $12 ones. ($12 scared me.)

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I pulled out the center console to clean it up. It was caked in dried up coffee and who knows what...

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Decided to pull radio to see if the antenna wire was out... Factory deck didn't want to come out... I asked my mechanic friend to try and he smirks and laughs at me... then he can't get it out either. (ha ha!) Retention clips look like there were bent outward past the removal tool holes in an extreme way to hold the radio in. Blaming it on Paulo. Antenna was plugged in all along.. so I assume the tuner just no longer works ... I figured I'de try the 'free aux-mod' people were doing on the newer radios since my radio seemed similar... but yeah, didn't work.

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It started raining so I wasted even more time strapping the jack it to the space in the bottom... and adding a ground loop isolator.
(This gets rid of that annoying clicking/rpm connected drone noise that shows up when you have the line in + power adapter to cig lighter plugged in.)

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Ripped it all apart and ordered an aftermarket deck, dash kit and wireing harness... installed it all as soon as I got everything.

Alpine CD-SXM145BT, Metra 99-7505, E2 Mazda wireharness adapter (EMA023F) .. about $184 total taxes in... IIRC

I didn't take any pics of this process... but I used heat shrink tubing on every solder connection...

I thought the harness I bought at crappy tire came with 2 units, one for older Mazda's and one for the newer ones.. but it turned out to be one harness with both style plugs on it. I was going to cut off the old style connectors but decided to leave them intact just in case I ever want to move the radio to an older Mazda :)

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Really impressed with the unit so far.. made some calls, streamed some music from my iphone5... seems to work much better than "My Ford Touch."
 
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As I mentioned before there were some noises in the car that I had thought to be caused by bad bearings and torn control arm bushings... Found a bad driver side bearing (where I heard the griding on the passenger side..) and a couple of torn control arm bushings. We had some trouble finding things to mate up with the parts we wanted to press out... what we couldn't press out we ended up cutting/air hammering out.

Maybe next saturday we'll get back to it and manage to get the parts pressed in... in the meantime I may try to clean up the control arms and steering knuckles (spindles?) a little bit. They look worse they are...

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Discoveries:
Wheels were on with 'spline drive' lug nuts... there was some cursing until we found the special socket/tool in the glove box..
Snow tires are directional.. I guess they're performance oriented. (Left/Right labels moulded right in.)
Car has ABS.. for some reason I didn't think it did.
 
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Took an angle grinder with a diablo wire brush to the control arms.. Most of the rust just came off with little effort. The rust build up inside the sleeves where the forward most bushing goes seems to be really bad. Looks like some grinding will have to be done in there before my new bushings have any hope of going in there without getting damaged.

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Sprayed them down with half a can of 'rust converter' .. I'll hit them with some rustoleum black enamel when they dry.
 
Great to see a local car on the forum (and in blue)
Looking forward to your future posts!
 
My new neighbor took posession of her house a couple of weeks after I brought the protege 5 home... guess what kind of car she has? (hahaha)

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Looks like a 2003 to me (I see turn signal indicator lamps on the front fenders which mine doesn't have...) but her rear wheel arch herpies is considerably worse than mine...
 
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We got the wheel hubs back in the knuckles with new bearings... the retaining rings the mazda guy gave me were too big. The mazda 626 ball joints are in... oddly one had a retaining ring and the other didnt... same napa part number...

Bushings are also in but might have goofed... the rear ones have a slotted hole... I'm not sure if they had to go in a certain way and or if having them oriented incorrectly would cause an issue... pics online seem to show the slot kind of in line with the bolt hole on the front most one... we have them angled slightly.
 
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Dropped the control arms off at the local Mazda dealer... the rearmost bushing needs to be positioned in a specific way ... there is a Mazda special tool to do this, but the mechanics there have apparently never seen or used it. (lol) They have always just replaced entire control arms. As far as I know thats a critical point in the suspension so decided to have them try to fix the issue rather than putting them on and hoping its ok. This bushing being worn on one of my previous cars caused a steering wheel shimmy above 80km/hr... so not sure what having them positioned wrong would do... pretty sure I won't be saving any money vs just buying the control arms now ;) oh well live and learn.
 
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Mazda called me saying they couldn't replace the bushings, they don't have the specific tools shown in the factory service manual. Tried another dealer, same story... their parts guy says he wouldn't have even sold me the bushings without strongly suggesting I go with the control arms since he's seen this problem before.

At this point I have a few choices...
-Slap them back in knowing the bushing isn't positioned quite right and see what happens. (Leaning towards this.)
-Buy two new bushings and press them in as best as I can tell they go from pictures I've found online.
-Buy two new bushings and find a control arm to compare it to, to see how the bushings go in...
-Just give up and buy the control arms.
 
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As mentioned ... The rear most bushing is turned about 15 to 20 degrees from where the factory ones look to be.. in other words the slotted bolt hole part in the middle isn't lined up as the factory install tool would have positioned them... I was worried about what problems this would cause... but no one seems to be able to say with authority how critical the orientation of this bushing is... let alone why its slotted. I'm starting to think its just slotted to make it easier to install the arm. I don't think its going to move or pivot or anything once its torqued down... there are no signs of sliding or movement on the bottom of the crossmember or in the mounting bracket so I decided to just try them as is. Planning to put some thread lock on the bolts before I put the knuckles back on and button it up... ordering a few bolts and two new axle nuts in the morning.
 
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This is taking me a while since it's cold out and snowing... lol, but I got the passenger side back together and torqued to spec .. (well, most of it... axle nut will be done with wheels on ground.) Hopefully I can get the driver side done tonight, and get the car off the jack stands... here are a few more pics!

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Car is back on all fours!

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I drove it around a bit to see how things have changed...

The grinding bearing noise while rolling that I had, is of course gone.
The 'tap' noise I'de hear from the front end whenever the weight of the vehicle would shift slightly, is gone.

Remaining issues:

-When getting into the car, I sometimes hear kind of a clunk noise... (upper strut mounts perhaps?) When going over bumpy road surfaces, or rippled parking lots I also hear this same clunk.

-When engaging power to the wheels, I hear metal-on-metal.. I'm guessing the motor rocks around a bit and the noise is the exhaust...

-Still some vibration in the front end over 85-90km/h... seems to be a little better than before... thinking it could be flat spots so planning to try the summer tires to see if it goes away.

-EGR stuck open still... I have the new one, just haven't put it in yet. This causes the idle to be all over the place and the car to almost stall... it's kind of a b**** to drive it like this, so I'm planning to do this one as soon as possible. (Edit: it actually will stall if I try to let it just idle... I have to club foot the brake and gas to keep it running.)

-Belt squeel sometimes... I think my new alternator belt just stretched a bit and needs to be tightened...
 
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Pulled the car into the garage yesterday to get that EGR changed... I accidently got my ratchet and 12mm socket stuck between the egr bolt and the motor mount, so spent most of my time just trying to get that free. (lol) Old EGR is out... I tried to put the new one in a couple times, but the cold was getting to me and I kept dropping the bolts/tools/etc. Gave up for the night...

Can anyone identify this header just from this pic? It looks like there was a 'name plate' or branding plate or something welded on there originally, and seems to have been cut off for some reason...

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