Mazda2 Thread

I was aware of Andy's car, and he's posted about it a bit on the Mazdas247 Mazda2 board, but hadn't seen his FB.

Interesting that our monster of a stock battery seems to weigh 65lb! I think even in a daily driven car like mine, a lighter model would be worth the swap. Anybody have any good ideas for a lighter one that won't compromise anything?

The battery is more like 26-28 lbs. I think Andy was saying that there was 65 lbs to lose between seats and the battery. A cheap option for a light battery is the Deka EXT12 with some screw on terminals at about 8 lbs. this rumored to be exactly the same battery as the 8 lb Braile battery and both are said to work fine in miatas. Going a little closer to the edge is the Deka EXT9 at 6 lbs and less reserve capacity. After that you're in to lithium ion packs like Andy runs and you've jumped from the $60 price of the Dekas to the $200 and up range but you're down to about 2 lbs total weight. I've been thinking about this a LOT. I've mostly decided to go lithium but I haven't figured out how to explain to my wife that I really need a $200 2 lb battery.

ooooh. Thanks for the battery info. Hyundai Accents (at least my generation) are sort of notorious for the oem battery being crappy. I am almost at 3 years on mine so I think I am on borrowed time, maybe I should go lightweight. Because racecar.

In reply to mazdeuce:

Yeah I misread his post, the 65lb was as compared to officially stated weight, not actual, and was after removing the spare tire and jack. He says it's more like 35lb which is more in line with what I expect an average car battery of this size to weigh.

MA$$hole wrote: FREE PLUG I've got 4, 2 on the 2 & 2 on the Starion. I believe Silverfleet has a handful too. I'm not a fan of decals so the frames were a great solution.

I have the frames on my 3.

Max, You mentioned on the Mazda247 forum you paid $14.2k for your Touring. Was that the all inclusive price, except for state tax/tags? Or did you have to add "freight" and other fees like that to the price? Most dealers here are asking $13.5k + freight/destination for a base Sport model.

I just had one of these in base-auto format as a rental. Man, I was very impressed. If I was in the market for a new car, I'd be all over a 5 speed model. It was a hoot, even with the slush box, and the seats were great. at 6'1" tall I had to put the drv seat all the way back, but i could still sit in the back seat on the drv side with reasonable comfort. and the handling was superb for a cheap car!

I'm hearing $12,700 to $12,900 for a sport from good negotiators (plus tax tag and dealer BS. of course.)

Is Mazda still offering "friends and family" S-plan pricing to MazdaSpeed members and their friends, families?
What is S-price for a Mazda2?

I like the seats in the 2 quite a lot, but they're not perfect. Ideally I'd swap them out for something lighter and with more support and call it done. I'm not entirely certain that I want to give up the side airbag and all that goes along with it though so they're staying for the time being. How to make the stock seats better? Well, the biggest issue is that they don't have a lot of side bolstering and what's there doesn't really fit me. At 5'10" and 150lbs I live in the flat no mans land between the bolsters, sliding back and forth pinballing off one and then the other when I autocross. Time to break out this:
I knew I needed to take up the space between my ribs and the bolsters but it took me a while to figure out how. I ended up with a piece of webbing that I used to tie kayaks down with and a few hand towels. I looped the webbing around the seat base and up over the headrest and tightened it up. Then I experimented with different towels and ended up stealing two hand towels from the bathroom and wrapping them around the webbing. It worked pretty good. I got out some old fleece and the sewing machine and sewed up a cover to make things soft and cozy and hold everything in place.

I'm quite happy with it. I now have firm contact between my ribs and the seat. I dont' have to slide to get where I'm going. It's not perfect. I'd like a fabric grippier than fleece. I also think I could shape the pads better than a couple of rolled towels to get more comfort. I'll autocross with it this weekend and see how it goes.

Thinking a lot about suspension and decided I should actually to measure things instead of just read about them. I pulled the shock boot up on the front strut to get an idea for how much up travel there is before hitting the bump stop. Not a whole lot. It's not easy to shove a tape measure in there but I'm seeing about 1 3/8 of shock movement before you start to run into stuff.

I pulled the bump stop down as much as I could but I couldn't get a good measurement of it's length, but it's longer than the bare shaft. Reading a bit about Miatas I get the impression that Mazda designed them to hit the bumpstops on cornering. Fat Cat Motorsports has a lot about this on their site and seems to be doing ok selling better bumpstops and the idea that they're necessary. I'm wondering if that's how the 2 works, that it's supposed to go to the bumps in hard cornering and then the bumps progressively increase spring rate. Either way, with less than two inches of up travel, I don't think I'm going to be getting any 1.5" lowering springs. In the name of science I pulled out the jack and measured down travel too. This was easier because I could just measure gap at the wheel at ride height and with the wheel off the ground. 3.5 inches if you're curious.
I put a zip tie on the drivers front strut and I'm going to watch it at the autocross this weekend to see if I'm on the stops during cornering.

Klayfish wrote: Max, You mentioned on the Mazda247 forum you paid $14.2k for your Touring. Was that the all inclusive price, except for state tax/tags? Or did you have to add "freight" and other fees like that to the price? Most dealers here are asking $13.5k + freight/destination for a base Sport model.

The sale price of the car was actually 14.5k, and my total out the door price was $16,000.01 IIRC. (Gotta laugh at the one cent.) I'm not sure if the 14.5 included destination and freight or not.

There seems to be a lot of wiggle room in the pricing of these cars somehow. I think my friend said he paid 11.something for his Sport last year.

In reply to mazdeuce:

fwiw, some lowering spring kits advise you to trim your bump stops. some other cars (original mini I think) were designed to ride on them. just a thought. They are there so the suspension hits them instead of you bottoming out the strut with metal to metal contact. FCM offers a lot of different ones, and I am probably in over my head here, but I think they are supposed to be not as harsh as you hit them, compared to stock ones, so as to not upset the handling of the car.

In reply to failboat:

I was indeed hasty in my initial statements and I have a lot of reading to do about bumpstops and the potential for using them as a tuning tool on a street car. Some thoughts floating around in my head that may or may not work.

I'd like to think its as easy as figuring out the specs of your stock ones, then seeing if FCM has one with the same inner diameter and same height, and what you get would be a vast improvement over stock bumpstops...... I think theres a lot more math involved than that though, if you are srs about your suspension.

Keep in mind I think in terms of "What X from Y car would fit on my Hyundai....."

I need to do some more researching but I'm considering lowering spring as well. I've looked at the Racing Beat & H&R kits so far. Ultimately I'd like a 15x7 wheel (eyeing some TRMotorsports) with a 205/45 or 205/50. My main concerns are 1) I don't want the rear wheel tucked in but I don't want hellaflush 2) I don't want rubbing or bottoming out with 4 people in the car.

The MS3 killed me when I put on the RX8 wheels with some 225/45/18s. I think that after 30k those stock springs were a big saggy anyhow.

Oh, & less than 24 hours of ownership I ordered a set of yellow Lamin-X film protectors for the fogs. Loved the look they gave the MS3 figured I'd do them on this as well. Pics as soon as they go on.

In reply to MA$$hole:

195/55 actually looks like the sweet spot for this car. On good rubber there's more than enough traction with them thanks to the car's light weight and low power, with 205s you're just adding extra weight for no real gain. I've been thinking about those TRMotorsport wheels as well, I think they'll be a great fit for the car. I'm basically just waiting until I move to a bigger place later this year so I have somewhere to store the OE wheels and tires for when I need all-seasons.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with the Racing Beat springs. The H&Rs are low enough that the car really looks lowered, while the RBs look like they could've come from the factory. With the H&Rs you have to get camber bolts as well, and they really don't work well with the stock shocks either.

Bugger, reading about tuning with bump stops has led me to spring rubbers and now I'm really thinking about things. You see, I don't mind the car riding high. I know that conventional wisdom is to lower everything, but looking at the stock suspension geometry you don't have to get much lower at all before your roll centers drop really really low. I kind of like the stock height to be honest. There's lots of room for experimenting here for not much money.
I think the RB springs look like a good option. You may want to look into camber bolts either way, it's a very cost effective way to get the camber where it's happy. Made a huge difference on my otherwise stock car.

I have been leaning towards the Racing Beat springs, used some of their products on my Miata & was pleased. The H&Rs look like they lower the car too much.

Auto-X events will be rare if at all any with the 2, it'll be mainly just for the occasional DD duties so I'm not looking at getting all crazy with suspension mods, mainly the appearance with a few upgrades.

Max or Mazdeuce,

Either of you know the stock weight of the Touring wheel/tires?

I found 30lbs somewhere, couldn't verify if they were the steel wheels or the alloys though.

They look good with 6ul wheels.

wow. that's HAWT.

EvanB wrote: They look good with 6ul wheels.

SOLD!!! Holy berkeley. That's the first one I've seen that I liked the looks of. Contemplating Fit trade-in....

MA$$hole wrote: Max or Mazdeuce, Either of you know the stock weight of the Touring wheel/tires? I found 30lbs somewhere, couldn't verify if they were the steel wheels or the alloys though.

31.4 according to Andy Hollis in a reply to another post that specified Alloy.

EvanB wrote: They look good with 6ul wheels.

Yeah, they're not bad. The 6uls are cheaper than I thought they were, too, $129 for the 15x7s isn't bad.

I still really like the TRMotorsports though, and it's really hard to beat $89 a pop for them. They look pretty good according to TireRack's fitment thingy too.

I like how they almost look like they could be OE. My whole thing with this car is I want to subtly improve it without making it obviously modded to anybody not familiar with the model so these would work nicely. The 6uls would be a nice option but it sounds like they're never in stock, and I wish they had a model in a similar color to these, or at least a silver one that was fully painted instead of a machined rim.