Hello, my name is Tom and I have an FD problem. This is my third FD and I plan to be holding onto this one for a long time.

The car is a bone stock 2002 Type R Bathurst in 20P. She needs a bit of TLC to get her up to snuff, but all fairly minor things really.

Plans are to keep it pretty stock (Yeah, I said that last time too ) and to restore it to as new condition. Late model 17" BBS wheels, RZ brakes & seats, that kind of thing . I want to keep this one on the road to be enjoyed, not up on stands for a few years on end like my last one .

Here are some pics:

 

Love it

 

Its so clean

 

All the exterior needs is lower ride height and some spacers on the wheels. The panel fitment on that first shot is just perfect. Congrats

 

Cheers guys.

The camera is being a little kind in the pics. The front and rear bumper needs respraying due to a few small blemishes and I've got a set of new headlight covers to go on as the ones on there have a couple of broken mounts.

I'd love to drop it a bit and I could drop it a bit as the Bathurst comes with adjustable height suspension as standard. But unfortunately the roads where I live are pretty terrible, so I'm possibly stuck at this height for now .

Will definitely be putting some spacers on when the oem 17s arrive .

 

So, boring stuff. I wanted some better/non orange headlights that you can actually see with at night. I've fitted Bi-Xenons to both my previous FD's, but as I'm trying to keep this one as close to stock as possible, changing the headlight housings was not an option. I also get pretty irritable when I get blinded by people who stick high intensity discharge lights into stock reflector housings, so that was also out.
So, what that leaves me with is Philips new Luxeon HID's that preserve the standard beam pattern while chucking out gargantuan amounts of light. Sounds good? Well it is.

Pics:


Fits like a glove with zero modifications to the car.



Colour temperature comparison (They're the 6000k version).



Low beam:



Blurry phone pic of high beam:



Been driving it around a fair bit, beam pattern is ace, I haven't been flashed once.

Now, this car hasn't ran right at all since I've owned it. Its got boost quirks.

A quick inspection revealed a check valve in two pieces, amazing the car drove super smooth and occasionally worked well-ish really.



So, with that replaced the car was occasionally overboosing, time to get stuck in .



So, being a 2002 model that's relatively low mileage you might think the vacuum lines "might" just be okay and the engine loom "might" just not be crispy plastic like other FD's? Well you'd be wrong, it all needs chopping out.

Black box:



And out:

 

And apart:



Now I'd love to say getting it apart and back together was an easy job and I don't know what people are complaining about. But I'd be lying, it's a bastard and if I wasn't keeping this car stock I'd be fitting an early style rack pronto!

Anyway, managed to get the bloody thing apart, all the valves tested with the mityvac hot and cold, then back together without buggering anything up too much. Also fitted some of Dale Clarke's viton check valves while I was there. If you're doing the same, you will need to trim them a little to make them fit, then I'd recommend adding ~5mm of 4mmID pipe over each end to make the centres a similar size to the stock valves, that'll keep them snug so they cannot move.

The solenoids all checked out fine, the turbo control solenoid held 35psi happily, so that'll do me fine! Only two of the solenoids had a leak when under pressure, although this isn't an issue as they're all vacuum solenoids & they all held vacuum no problem .

All back together:



Tomorrows task is to get the car back together with new silicone hose and hopefully running super awesome .

 

Couple of shots of the interior after replacing a few bits to tidy it up.

 

tom i'm curious about the LED lights.

does anyone make a 4300k version of these LEDs? I can't find them anywhere. they are all 6000k plus. I feel that the color range is too blue and may actually hurt visibility compared to a 4300k xenon.

any thoughts?

 

Duplicate post..

 

I'm not sure, I didn't look to be honest as I was after 6000k. I used to always use 4300k lights until I owned an Audi that had 6000k lights standard. I got used to them and quite like the colour. It doesn't look as blue in person, more xenon whiteish.

The FD is back together and runs. It is still overboosting, though. Or is it? When I connect the mityvac up to the MAP sensor and pump it up to 10psi, the stock boost gauge reads 95 odd KPA (13.8psi). I have a spare cluster up for sale, so tried swapping the cluster to see if the stock gauge was out, same result. So now I'm thinking maybe the MAP sensor is out, I'll test it as per for FSM tonight. I also need to confirm the Mityvac is accurate, hoping to do that today at work.

Another issue I have is the car doesn't always make full secondary boost. For instance I can pull through 2nd making full primary and secondary boost, shift to 3rd and make maybe 6psi secondary boost. Primary always works correctly. So maybe a CCA or CRV fault?

Obviously the above values may be out as there is something odd going on with my instrumentation. I'll get the pressures reading correctly before I do too much more fault finding. Hopefully it's just the MAP sensor...

 

kudos on trying to get the seq system back to working correctly. The newer rats nest looks less complex.

 

Hi, where did you get those philips light? those are plug and play?

 

I've tested my MAP sensor, it checks out okay according to the FSM test. I also tested the pre-control and wastegate control solenoids again just to make sure, they're perfect. Next step is to check the wastegate actuator is actually moving with pressure, but I'm unlikely to have the evening light to get on to that until the weekend. I'm quite keen to ensure it's all working before I do another road test as according to the stock gauge I was making a bar of boost (14.4psi) which is waaay too much, don't want to pop the motor just yet .

Cheers, hopefully it'll be running properly soon . It does look simpler at a glance, and sure is easier for Mazda to fix as they'll just replace the whole black box to diagnose a fault. But in truth it is more complex and is more costly and troublesome to fix when it does go wrong. I much prefer the earlier system.

Yeah, they're plug and play. I got them from horizonleds.

 

Haven't updated this for a while as I've mainly been working on the house. When I've had a little spare time I've been ironing out the issues with the car, collecting spares for the future & doing some serious cleaning, the bay was pretty grimy! The ally still needs a good scrub, but the rest is nearly there .





Going to replace a few bits this weekend with new genuine Mazda parts:
OMP, OMP injectors and lines.
Injector seals.
FPD.
FPR.
Fuel hoses.
Fuel filter.
Black box.
Intake gaskets.
AST.

Also picked up a bunch of spares, two low mileage black boxes and one new. Three sets of RZ calipers, Bathurst adjustable coilovers, very low mileage '99 twins and a bunch of other stuff I cant remember .





Hopefully will have some time spare to start on stripping and polishing the wheels this weekend .

 

Wow! Looking really good!

That pile of parts you picked up made me drool a little bit

Dale

 

Makes me wish we got these across the pond.

 

Need all those parts! Pretty car.

 

I love the color. I really like how tidy the engine bay is too.

 

Cheers Dale .

You will get them, eventually .

I had the same feeling when I owned my last single turbo FD, this one will be staying stock or close enough to stock that it can be reverted (All parts removed will be kept). I'm looking at buying another FD to get a bit more creative on .

Cheers guys .

I've been away visiting the Mrs's family in Massachusetts, so haven't got all the bits I planned to do done yet. The car is pretty close to running right now.

Gave the car a good service and the AST was swapped out for a new unit while changing the coolant. I managed to snap the radiator drain plug when removing it, putting the car off the road for a few days until the Mazda dealer could get one, just my luck! All sorted now, though.




The RZ front brakes have been cleaned, stripped and sprayed, just waiting on Mazda for the new caliper pins, rebuild kits, spring kits and bleed nipples to arrive so they can go back together.



The rears are all done, quite pleased with them. I swapped the pistons out for aftermarket stainless versions as they always seem to rust pretty good.






Hoping all my new bits will arrive soon so I can get to work in the engine bay.

 

We might get them eventually but I am used to the steering wheel on the left. Now I'm getting old and refuse to learn new things. That's what happens when you get older.
Get off my Lawn!

 

Haha, could always swap the dash, steering rack etc . I was surprised how quickly driving on the right hand side of the road felt normal when I was over there. I think you'd be ok in an RHD as all of your roads are at least double the size of ours .

 

What a gorgeous car! Innocent blue is one of my favorite Mazda colors. Looking forward to keeping up with your build thread.

 

Managed to get a few bits done on the FD this weekend. New OMP lines and OMP injectors. New injector seals and diffusers. New FPD & some general tidying and cleaning of the engine bay.

Quite glad I decided to swap out the OMP lines, the old set fell apart at the slightest touch when I removed the primary rail!








Also picked up a battery box lid from Mazda, makes a big difference to the bay I think .

 

Picked up a new left hand brake duct from Mazda as the car was missing it when I bought it. Swapped out all the undertray mounting hardware for aluminium rivnuts, stainless bolts and stainless penny washers while I was there as this area is a hot spot for corrosion.

Rivnuts in:




Also attached the arch liners using rivnuts, should be better than the standard plastic fixings.




Really should have painted that splitter while it was off, maybe next weekend .