ES to MSP Status build "Betsy"

Just thought Id start this tread for interested people and for any help and suggestions and guidance along the way., hoping to get this done by summer if all goes well and funds suffice! Being doing a lot and a lot of reading before I started this tread, and I must say there is a S*it ton of info from *YOU* guys and I thank you all for it. its sad to see it kinda deing and new aftermarket parts being hard to come by, but as to all cars that get old , people move on to new projects and ones that stay group together on message boards like here and keep it alive. (cheers) , I hope not to bore anybody, or any bashing or sorts just wanted to put my build onto this great forum. thank you, hope some enjoy and mabe make some new friends.




I guess ill start with how I came about owning the 2000 ES.. Back in 2008 , my mother wanted to get rid of her 1998 Acura Integra 2d 1.8L auto of course, but still a low km good condition car, just way to low for her to get in and out of in her beautiful older age (hippy) , plus imo I'm not really fan of Honda and working on the damn thing just got me frustrated, so none the less I proceeded to fix all the little things that would make it sell for the best buck. it sold for $2200 if I remember right,. being auto killed the retail value obviously. just glad to get rid of it., at this point we hadn't looked at any new cars not knowing how much we would get for this integra.. Then it was my job to look being the car guy , and living with her at the time, I checked the usual spots., kijiji, autotrader,, . Owning a Mazda already the MX3 , the first brand I looked at was mazda cars preferably 4 door for ease , in the 2-2500 range, did not find much worth buying for a mother. so I looked at VW , the lower models golf , jetta, and there was one a 2001 or 02 I almost pulled the trigger on was 99% sure till I realized it was 5lug and she already had 2 brand new sets of tires on rims , summer/winter 4 lugs from the teg! ahh nope so axe that plus I think the 4 lug was a different pattern aswell not 100% on that.. so back to looking in general at all makes, but this time in the 3-4000$ range being that she said id rather spend more to get a good reliable car, makes sense so okay, ,. take a look and sure enuff I find a lot better cars and this gem of a car sticks out at me , $3800 ,2000 mazda protg LX !? so the ad says, and the stickers on the Fender.!!?, Down in Toronto some private dealer pictures looked amazing, . and I didn't know a thing about protg but Mazda yes, so it was an instant call right now and make and offer. So I did and made and offer of $3200 cash, and he says come down, not yes, but come down.... we know what that means, so any way I got down I think the next day and so glad I did, this car was like new to me , I was blown away by the shape. so clean ,beautiful ., I didn't even take it for a test drive I was so love struck lol, plus the city is crap. I asked ok this is for my mom whats the best you can do .? 3500$, at this point I'm well into my moms budget and have to call her on this, of course she says, "if you think its a good car?" , . So I signed at 3500$ all in, picked it up 3 days later and it became my moms new car.! I had my MX3 so I was good but still loved the protg of course. didn't even think about owning a 4 door at that time..! She took care if it really good over the years , lots of car washes frequent oil changes, all the good stuff., I did 90% of the work so I knew the car. But come late 2011 it was hard for her to keep the insurance on it, being so expensive ffs., so it started to sit for a few months,. , still didn't think about owning it all... then one day driving on the highway in the MX3 the break decides it wants to go, damn rust was getting to it, at that point I was just gunna fix and move on with it as usual, . A few weeks go by still didn't fix it, just borrowing cars, then it became Thanksgiving , and lo and behold a great gift from Mom to go home in "Betsy" (named by mom) MY now 2000 Protg ES ! yes ES not LX at it says on the Fenders,! no Idea why . .. Funny I don't know what it was but when I drove it home that day it really was coming home where it belonged.! She was happy , and so was I , A new project with a solid base ,. Thus the mods started eventually after awhile and all the mechanical stuff was replaced back to my satisfactory, like new. heres a few pictures of the mods over the years. im sure you guys can see changes:






















Then it came to owning a family vehicle :




and thus Betsy kinda got pushed to the side for about a year until I found this!!!!! a deal no passing down, Thank YOU PAUL ! cheers bro.


The START to the ES to MSP STATUS ! FUN!









Tear Down Began Immedately !! More to follow shortly.

tear down picutres.

more tear down

That MSP took a hell of an impact. I would have been tempted to repair it but seeing the extent of the damage it probably would never have driven straight

Oh yea the body and frame sure did take a hit. I wish it was fixable. that rollcage was world class spec., this car raced all over famous circuits, , How it got damaged, ..He got scrubbed on the drivers side rear door area, as you can see the rubber in one of the pictures. The hit was actually Intended, and the guy got his race license removed from that track Mosport. TWas the first lap out and everything, Speed was approx. 140-160kmh on a tight left , the guy hit the msp and sent it into the wall hard rear end first then it bounced and hit the frontend passenger side , causing a heck of a lot damage. the front rail was tweaked along with the subframe was bent and had a few welds torn, the firewall was wrinkled by the passenger footwell, surprisingly the roll cage a very minor signs of stress in two spots ,you could see the paint flaked off. , I tried to get someone to salvage and reuse the rollcage but nobody wanted it for free so the car got scraped. ,

I tore down the damaged tranny to see what was salvagable, no no my welded lsd is garbage,.. chipped a few teeth along with the output sec shaft in the trans, was a fresh rebuild too. cry






As you can see the block it came with had its mount torn rite off.!! damnit! not even 1000km on this fresh build.....




Got another FS block ready to be bored for the Wiseco'




Oil squirters removed, super easy todo. Still on the fence about blocking them , not needed on wiseco, but longevity?



Pistons all bagged and numberd on Oliver rods




got my msp ecu from Thuzil Thankyou

looks like fun.

Cool stuff, too bad about the block, diff, and lateral links. Are the jic's usable? And what about that rear swaybar?

Is the diff welded? You could pretty easily drill out the rivets and swap the final drive from another Protege. Even the open diff final drive gear will work, and all 3rd gens with the G series had a 4.10 ratio.

Oh yea it is really fun , well so far any way. , I really do enjoy working on cars, has to be one of my favorite hobbies todo,,, well almost anything with an engine.... Yes thankfully the JIC are usable they are only a few yrs old if that., just one of the lower shackels got a bit tweaked but nothing that cant be fixed., as for the lateral links , I'm going to try and get them professionaly straightened , and thankfully the rear sway bar was unscaved, I guess being such a springy metal it was able to take the hit, it broke one of the mounting bolts too!

heres a few better pictures of the diff damage.






thanks for the info HF , yes as you can see it was welded, not the best but ah., that cant stop me from taking it apart, welder/fab by trade, hehe. I already started to drill pilot holes thru the rivets, just to see how hard it was, quite soft. ill take that diff gear off and save the lsd for a spare.

got the ring gear off the welded diff, longest part was drilling out the rivets, drilled a pilot hole then used a 3/8" to drill part way ,chisel off the head and pound out the rivet., cutting the welds took less then 5 mins.

small update:

Just waiting for the block to be machined , I decided to block the oil squirters only because setting them up correctly with the wisecos would require either notching the piston or using a custom oil squirter , witch I was going todo, here and example of what I wanted to use


I wanted to use a threaded one for ease of install and adjustment, but trying to source ones that would of worked correctly seemed tobe cumbersome, I looked at the VW 2.0 aba squirters but they were on the opposite side of the piston and curved the other way ,so no dice there.. Then I seen the BP has bolt in oil squirters thought that be and option that had the best chance !?, but they seemed to be shaped in a way where I would have to grind down one of the corners to clear properly and even then if getting to that point its still undetermined if the tube would clear . So after fumbling over this for atleast a week or two reading and looking at parts , I came to a final decision to just block them and be done with it and move onto other stuff.

so in the meantime some parts have come in.



king bearings main ,rod, thrust

fel-pro head gasket

Some FS1E maf's . thanks Thuzil

threw the wing on for fun one night few weeks ago

Got my new radius rods! woohoo

some psssh stustustu

box full of gaskets from rockauto

starting to tear out that sloppy stockness and swap over to 5 lug disc

rear sub waiting to be bolted in!

Good stuff man!

The oil squirters are a huge pain. I used m12x1.75 socket cap bolts and a dab of jb weld to block mine.

And I've never had an issue with the fel pro head gaskets. And I've had pretty bad deck surfaces.



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THanks Jackie! (2thumbs)

Oh they are i was getting so flusterd over them damn squirters, until i finally gave up.! Yep Thats what i went with as well m12x1.75 , was thinking about a copper washer aswell as locktite but i dunno, thats good to hear about the fel-pro, i read mainly good reviews about it so i went with that, i know cometic is suppose to be tip top notch, but the price i couldnt justify atm.

I got the rear sub frame out, gas tank, exhaust from the j pipe back, rear struts ,bumper cover, bunch of evap crap thats tucked up in there. scraped off a bunch of surface rust under the body , have to prime the rust and roll/brush some bedliner on there to stop and hide that sadness., i guess 16 years of winters i assume, just horrible, from now on she will never see winter agian, i even debated about finding another shell to build with next to no rust, but haha that will be a needle in a hay stack here in the GTA!

check out the rust on that subframe!!!





Look at that bushing, damn thats performance right there!



now have to finish pulling the gas/brake/evap lines outta there , still good minor rusted spots, but im goint to swap them with the other set i have 100% mint. more pictures to follow in that journey.

The copper washers would worry me a bit. With all the heat and different expansion rates of the metals involved, it seems like the copper would get squeezed a bit over time.

All I know is that if one of the plugs ever backs out, it's an instant 0 oil pressure and possibly trashed motor if not paying attention. That's why I used jb weld rather than loc tie also.

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that does make total sence to me, i did not think of the heat expansion rates, just from a sealing stand point , thanks for that tid bit, , i will not use the washers, i do have and plan on using a Oil pressure gauge., did you put jb weld on the threads ? aswell as the top?

some shots of the rear undercarage , cringe , these are pictures after a few good hours laying on a creeper, i chipped scraped and wire brushed off about a plastic shopping bag full of crap! just insane the amount of sand and surface rust that came off., just packed up into every crevis possible, also found a few holes to fill in the lower corners of the rockers... yay time to get some metal and the welder out , witch i knew was going to happen somewhere., nothing a few hours of fun in the garage cant fix!!(lol) ,, then to hide and stop that non sense got some rust primer and some brush on undercoating to put on after i clean it.














check this out, two sets of different injectors, no idea if this was done by the dealer or what. they have different ohms. this is on the stock 1.8 FP still in the engine bay.

I can't see the pics but I know the FS from the factory has two different color injectors, they are the same size and flow rate though.

well thats just akward!? not sure if you seen the pictures now. but blue and brown?, blue is 731 imp and brn is 730 or vise virsa, not sure if that would make any difference to the ecu?