Middle East spec battery cooling duct installed!

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2001 BJFP MT
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2016 BMYFS AT
I installed my long waited EDM turbo diesel driver side motor mount a few days ago and while I was at it, I went ahead and installed the battery cooling duct I got back in August. One of the things Mazda cheaped out on for the 3rd gen Protege was battery cooling because the 1st and 2nd gens had it worldwide. For the 3rd gen, this was restricted only to the Middle East versions. I'm sure all of you here know how hot Texas gets in summer and in an effort to prolong battery life, which saves me money towards better things, I went through the trouble of getting this battery duct from Europe.

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If you all ever wonder why there's a funny looking scoop on the "useless" battery box, you will about to see what it's for!



The battery duct runs along the left side frame of the car towards the front. Mazda already has cut a hole in the sheet metal to feed air to the duct rather than getting hot air from the A/C condenser or radiator
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the battery box fits perfectly into the duct
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there was only one problem that's pretty much unique to me and just a handful of others (MSP or not)... the battery cooling duct interfered with the autoexe ram air intake support stay, so I bent it out of the way and installed it at a different location from where it's supposed to be... this is no surprise considering that JDM Sport20 had no uprated cooling parts for hot climates

I had to use the factory bolt to mount the coolant reservoir bracket again, and then find a shorter bolt to mount the intake support stay as the autoexe supplied one was too long
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so everything fits good and the car is ready for summer again lol
battery duct should work better if I have a bigger battery as air will be forced to go inside the box and out the back instead of out the front of the box now... I can always slide the battery up of course but the battery strap might hit one of the filler caps... I cbf bothering with it right now
 
Cool stuff but AGM batteries such as the Optima Red Top are highly resilient to high heat conditions so you could have just purchased one of those and called it a day...
 
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