Mazda2 Thread

emodspitfire wrote: So... Drove a deuce today. Liked everything but the Autotragic. Gonna drive a manual car on Monday. Dealer knocked off 2% from the MSRP with no struggle. Anybody got any idea what they will do just before I walk out the door? TIA, Rog

I got my Touring for 14,500, which is WAY below MSRP. I can't say whether that's just because they knew they'd make money on my trade, but they were advertising similar cars for similar prices, so I think there's a pretty good amount of room to work with price on these cars.

ptmeyer84 wrote: I'll chime in here. Just purchased a green 5-speed sport model. Will post pics soon. Love how this little thing drives! The green color is pretty cool and gets alot of attention. Also, 37 mpg is not bad.

Nice! I think that makes eight now, maybe nine soon? GRM really does need to add a subforum for this car, haha. Soon we're gonna beat E30s as the most popular car here.

Have any of you guys lowered your cars?

Just wondering how that turned out. Between the roll centers and crazy bump stops it sounds like that would be a real adventure!

DaewooOfDeath wrote: Have any of you guys lowered your cars? Just wondering how that turned out. Between the roll centers and crazy bump stops it sounds like that would be a real adventure!

I'm doing mine on Sunday. Putting Racing Beat's springs on, which drop by just under an inch and are designed to work well with stock shocks. I trust Racing Beat's ability to engineer a really usable road car suspension setup, but it remains to be seen how it does. I'll obviously be back with impressions on it.

All the serious AutoX guys have theirs substantially lowered and the cars are doing great, but anything lower than what I'm going with will require a shock swap anyway, so that takes the bump stops out of the equation.

OK, springs are on.

It's a little early to say anything conclusive and I'm gonna need to get it somewhere twisty before I can review them, but so far they look and feel pretty good.

Car doesn't look slammed but has a much more sporty "stance" to it. Right now, I feel like the nose sits a little high compared to the tail, but that could easily be down to the stiffer front springs taking longer to settle.

Ride is barely changed. I notice more feedback in my hands and feet but very little difference in the seats or the overall motion of the car, and what difference there is is just something to get used to, not something bad. I went over some pretty crappy pavement on my way home and they were totally fine.

The real handling changes seem to be in feedback and "directness" or "sharpness". I can feel much more through the wheel. Body roll is reduced somewhat but not a huge amount. It definitely feels like it can pull more "Gs", but the most noticeable thing right now is how much flex I can now feel through the tires. An upgrade to a stiffer tire is an absolute must now. I need to really get the car somewhere better than an onramp before I can make any conclusions but it definitely feels like a car that will be great in the corners.

I wonder if that flex you are feeling is positive camber gain under roll.

Get your alignment checked too. My car reacted very very well to toe changes. Before you attribute steering feel changes to the springs, see what happened to your alignment.

mazdeuce wrote: Get your alignment checked too. My car reacted very very well to toe changes. Before you attribute steering feel changes to the springs, see what happened to your alignment.

I'm actually going in this week for one. My car has had a crooked steering wheel since I bought it and the dealer won't do anything about it even though there's a TSB, so the combination of that and the changes that might've happened while lowering mean I'll go in as soon as I can.

Anyway, I drove the car to San Jose and back, about 120mi each way, after posting earlier. It's definitely stiffer but not any more than many stock performance cars. Still haven't had the chance to do any real driving through.

pics needed

In reply to Max_Archer:

dealer's usually only bother to get the car "within spec", not necessarily a good alignment with matching numbers side to side. in my experience.

Autocrossed the 2 again yesterday. I moved from 4.5 seconds behind the driver I'm in friendly competition with to .8 seconds behind. Part new tires, part me driving better. I'm still 2.9 seconds off the STF leader in a Protege 5, so I have quite a way to go. I am comforted by the fact that he PAXed 11th out of the 87 drivers, so he's quite good at this autocross thing. When I'm driving well I'm equal with the driver that beat my by .8, so in theory I'm still back 2 full seconds on a good day. Damn.
I also bought some more magnetic sheet so I could make new class numbers and some extra 0's for when I run with the BMWCCA. With the extra I took inspiration from the 1971 Porsche 908/3 and made myself a go fast arrow. My 8 year old loves it.

Nice, I need to get my Two out to an autocross sometime. However, the nearest is 2 hours away and if I go through all the trouble to drive there I may end up taking the spyder (mr2) instead. The mazda is fun but it is really night and day on those two.

People at autocrosses ask me about the 2, commenting that it should do really well because it's so light. I have to remind them that it's classed in the two slowest classes possible, HS and STF. Even when it's doing really well, it's still slow. Combine that with my car being completely stock except for camber bolts and Star Specs, and it's just not going to light the course on fire. It's fun, it's competent, I drove my four kids to school in it this morning, but it's just not a sports car.
I still love it for what it is.

mazdeuce wrote: People at autocrosses ask me about the 2, commenting that it should do really well because it's so light. I have to remind them that it's classed in the two slowest classes possible, HS and STF. Even when it's doing really well, it's still slow. Combine that with my car being completely stock except for camber bolts and Star Specs, and it's just not going to light the course on fire. It's fun, it's competent, I drove my four kids to school in it this morning, but it's just not a sports car. I still love it for what it is.

The other thing is that, compared to a lot of the front-runners in Autocross, it's not particularly light anyway. 2275 is nothing by modern standards but when you're up agains CRXes and early Golfs and the like, it doesn't look all that light.

the mazda2 is my favorite car that isn't a mitsu

Max_Archer wrote: The other thing is that, compared to a lot of the front-runners in Autocross, it's not particularly light anyway. 2275 is nothing by modern standards but when you're up agains CRXes and early Golfs and the like, it doesn't look all that light.

There is a fast guy who runs a tuning shop and has an EvoX that I've talked to at the last three events. Every time he tells me he should have just bought a light car like mine. The weight and the power of his car eats tires and cubic dollars. Yesterday the heat in his engine bay melted a block off plug on his engine that was part of a catch can kit that was supposed to add 12 hp at high rpm's somehow. He got one run, broke, and was berkeleying pissed at the end of the day. He left the event saying he should just buy a cheap small car. There is something to be said about light weight coupled with the reliability of a truly modern car.

Where did you get the magnetic sheets big enough to do a go-fast arrow? Inquiring minds want to know!

I'm still trolling for a Green Mazda2 5 speed in the area.

Brett_Murphy wrote: Where did you get the magnetic sheets big enough to do a go-fast arrow? Inquiring minds want to know! I'm still trolling for a Green Mazda2 5 speed in the area.

I got it from Dick Blick which is an art supply place. I bought these http://www.dickblick.com/products/promag-magnetic-sheets/ which are 12x24 for $8 each. It wasn't as good as the stuff that I bought a decade ago but will work just fine. I probably should have bought http://www.dickblick.com/products/flexible-magnetic-sheet/ and just paid by the foot. I buy white and cut it out with scissors and spray paint it whatever color I'm in the mood for.

Slammed!

Mazda2 on Racing Beat springs. by maximstensel, on Flickr

OK, not really, haha. Much more "purposeful" in terms of the stance, though. I like it, it looks sporty but not ricey. I'll do better pics when I can.

In reply to mazdeuce:

Oh, I totally agree. I love the fact that I have a simple, fun car, but every cent I put into it can be into performance (and occasional appearance) upgrades and not into constantly fixing things, tracking down hard to find trim pieces and mechanical parts, and trying to modernize stuff. Doing my springs was especially amazing, I've never dealt with suspension hardware that wasn't totally rusted together before!

I found a place that sells printable vinyl sheets, and I have a 13x19 professional photo printer that should do a nice job on them. I'm thinking of printing some really cool graphics and sticking the vinyl to the magnetic sheet so that I can put 'em on and take 'em off whenever I want.

One thing that would look awesome with your red "go fast" arrow is red door mirrors, by the way. One of the guys on 24/7 posted a bunch of pics of modded 2s in Thailand and there was some pretty cool stuff.

Edit - I actually already had photoshop open so I shopped the mirrors on yours. I think it looks pretty cool haha.

So......

Interesting experience at the local Mazda dealer today.

Drove a manual trans Touring model.

Nice car. Bright red. Handled nice, tranny and clutch worked smooth.

When I wanted to discuss price, I got stonewalled.

Here's the details. MSRP: $1680. Knocked down to $16578 for Mazda S plan. (Whatever that is). They decided they needed an additional $500 for dealer prep/handling/etc/whatever. So the net price would have been 2% over invoice....

Doing 'net research via Trucar and USAA, the average selling price for the car in CO is $15300.

Anyway the Sales Manager got all huffy and stated that his cost was $16578.....(?) and walked away. And then I walked away.

WTF?

Rog

emodspitfire wrote: Anyway the Sales Manager got all huffy and stated that his cost was $16578.....(?) and walked away. And then I walked away. WTF? Rog

Leave your contact info, get his. If you can wait until the end of the month, and he hasn't already contacted you, call him and say "hey, I'm willing to pay this much and NOT a cent more, no dealer add-ons, extra this or that or surcharges, are you willing to deal?" If not, then he really doesn't want your money. They can always build new cars, but they can't build new customers.

I went to 3 dealers. One wanted to sell me a car. One didn't even care to discuss it with me, the third was an ass that could only make any sort of deal after I shook his hand and walked out and was buckling my kids back in the car. All three dealers has 2's sitting on their lots, all had what I wanted and all of them knew that I was going to buy one. Only one had any interest in actually selling a car. It was a very weird experience. I'd shop other dealers if you can get to them.

So I got the car aligned. Finally goes straight with the wheel straight.

Handling is still a little floaty on the springs, especially around center. I'm positive it's the tires now. I'll have to pump 'em up to run AutoX until I can get better rubber. It corners pretty well. I took it through an interchange that's pretty twisty today, and it's planted at speeds that were pretty iffy before. There's still a lot of body roll, and I can definitely feel a need for sways, including one up front. We're talking 60-70MPH cornering here, though, top of fourth gear, though. I'm really looking forward to trying it on a more technical road, after how good the stock one was.

In reply to Max_Archer:

What were your final alignment numbers?
I like your vinyl on magnet idea by the way, let us know how that goes. I'm contemplating plasti dip for a more permanent, yet removable, arrow.

mazdeuce wrote: In reply to Max_Archer: What were your final alignment numbers? I like your vinyl on magnet idea by the way, let us know how that goes. I'm contemplating plasti dip for a more permanent, yet removable, arrow.

You know, I actually didn't look. The guy who runs the shop is a performance/road racing guy who I got in touch with through the Mazda Owner's Club of CA forums, and it was clear that it was a shop that would actually do the alignment right and not just make sure it was "in spec", so I wasn't too worried about whether they'd do it right or not. Consequently I didn't even read the alignment report.

The fact that they actually straightened out my steering wheel, which is something I've had to fight over with alignment shops in the past, goes to show that they weren't half-arsing it, too.

I went and test drove a 2. Nice little car and it was fun in a sparkly sort of way. Did feel awfully soft though.