This will disable the VICS system. Say bye-bye to most of your top-end power. :(

This is very true! I have a civic and they REALLY RIP YOU OFF at the dealership on regular maintanence checks....Also I had to lease beacause of their retarded financing rates.....8.6% or something, what a joke.
By the way, does this cold start engine noise thing happen on 2003 P5's as well??? because I have a brand new P5 and have not noticed any excessive noise in the first minute of driving.

I drove around for a while with the VTCS disconnected. Surely there was no noise but I noticed a slight loss in power, and also my gas mileage worsened by about 3-5 mpg. I decided I didn't really mind the noise for the first 5 minutes so I connected the green plug again.

If you disconnected the vacuum hose, there really shouldnt be any reason I can think of for a drop in gas mileage or loss of power, at least not after it warms up to 149 degrees when the VTCS shuts off. At that point the car runs with the VTCS disengaged, whether the vacuum hose is disconnected or not.

It might be a different story if you mistakenly disconnected the electrical connector on the solenoid, as you computer would read this as a malfunction, and who knows what the computer would do to compensate.

Might As Well Give Up
 

The cold engine noise issue has been with us for a long time now, and Mazda knows about it.

As annoying as this issue is, we're going to have to come to the realization that Mazda is never, ever, going to do anything about it. Ever.

Our current generation Protege's days are numbered. The engine we're driving is old and outdated, it has no valve timing, and is of an old fashioned cast iron block design that's the door mat of all mainstream Japanese auto makers. Nissan, Honda, and Toyota are ALL building aluminum engines these days. The FS-DE? Iron.

Because of the dated nature of this engine and the realization that Mazda will relatively soon replace the current Protege, they're not going to waste their time or energy trying to fix a problem that:

A. Doesn't seem to effect reliability.
B. Doesn't seem to effect safety.
C. Is massively widespread and would cost millions to correct; even if they had a solution that would indeed fix this issue.

That being true, I still maintain that:

A. This is a seriously annoying problem.
B. Mazda screwed up by designing a cheesy engine that does this in the first place.
C. Mazda should have just been truthful and said "We're not going to do anything about it" instead of waffling around going, "We're aware of this problem and our engineers are working on a fix as we speak". That's a lie-- They're not actively working on a fix and they'll never give us one because it's not serious enough and it's too expensive to address.

I honestly belive Mazda would like to fix the issue, but the bottom line is this is a built in design flaw that they can't really do anything about. It's just poor design.

What?
 

Hmm, but TheMAN, the VTCS is part of the motor. So what are we supposed to blame, otherwise?

It seems to me that Mazda put this in in order to squeeze as much efficiency as they could out of an otherwise dated, comparatively poor, engine design, that's all I'm saying. Well and true, the FS-DE IS outclassed in terms of smooth operation, emission control, valve timing, metal construction (as in, it's not aluminum) etc.. Toyota, Nissan, and Honda (for now) are all building better engines than the FS-DE. That's obviously why Mazda is dropping its ass in the next generation Protege (or M3; whatever they're going to call it).

I think Mazda really dropped the soap in terms of this annoying problem, in any event.

Awesome article regarding why this happens, though! I hadn't seen that-- Thanks for your work in putting that out!

God dang it... finish your freakin posts... you guys first talk about some topic and then go off on a tangent about something else. So basically what TheMan is saying is that the dealers can't fix this cold engine rattle problem? Is that the final message???

Yes or no will suffice... not some "do it yourself solution"... I want to know if the f***ing dealer can do it. because I don't want to mess up my car or crap like that. So do the dealers know the solution to this cold engine rattle?????

man... i don't know about you. but like me and half of the other people who actually use this discussion board aren't freakin' auto mechanics or inclined to be any.... otherwise WHY THE HELL WOULD WE USE THE FREAKIN INTERNET IF WE COULD FIX CARS?? MAYBE BECAUSE WE DON"T KNOW HOW??? She my freakin' logic there?? Telling us... just do this with the blah blah and disconnect the doo dad... i don't know wtf you're talking about and I'm not about to go study on it when i have 20 credits of sester finals to worry about.

~peace

God dang it... finish your freakin posts... you guys first talk about some topic and then go off on a tangent about something else. So basically what TheMan is saying is that the dealers can't fix this cold engine rattle problem? Is that the final message???

Yes or no will suffice... not some "do it yourself solution"... I want to know if the f***ing dealer can do it. because I don't want to mess up my car or crap like that. So do the dealers know the solution to this cold engine rattle?????

man... i don't know about you. but like me and half of the other people who actually use this discussion board aren't freakin' auto mechanics or inclined to be any.... otherwise WHY THE HELL WOULD WE USE THE FREAKIN INTERNET IF WE COULD FIX CARS?? MAYBE BECAUSE WE DON"T KNOW HOW??? See my freakin' logic there?? Telling us... just do this with the blah blah and disconnect the doo dad... i don't know wtf you're talking about and I'm not about to go study on it when i have 20 credits of sester finals to worry about.

~peace