Buying a 03- have some questions????
 

Ok there is a 2003.5 protege (orange) forsale in a dealership near by. There are a few things that kinda worry me about it. First, it has a aftermarket exhaust, intake(a cone filter on the stock airbox attachment) and a manuel boost controller. Oh and a cheap ebay blowoff valve that leaks under boost(I think thats what the deal ). That or its a turbo that won't build boost. Here are the questions

How strong are these motors??? In my turbo days(rx7's) when you flow more air(ie intake and exhaust) and turn the boost up you need more fuel. I don't think the KID(I say this b/c of the ebay exhaust and blowoff valve and painted orange interior pieces) upgraded the injectors or controlled the fuel in any way.

The rest of the car looks spotless, I mean it was taken care of but just the performance points kinda worry me.

The other good thing is the price of the car---12,200 which actually kinda makes me think about buying it (to good to be true)

Should I buy this car??????

Orange huh? You sure it's not yellow, cuz as far as I know orange wasn't one of the factory color options for any Protege5. If it truly is orange, take a close look at the paint job and see how well it was done, cuz maybe that was a half-ass job as well. Also, you mentioned it was 03.5 right? Make sure it doesn't have a sunroof and has a small subwoofer in the spare tire compartment, otherwise it's not a true 03.5 but rather just an 03.

As far as the engine goes, do you know anything about the internals? Judging by your description of the sloppy turbo kit, I would say the previous owner didn't bother upgrading them, in which case I sure do hope the boost was kept down below 7 psi, cuz our engines do tend to boom boom pretty easy under boost. They're not very strong if you're hard on them ...

Now one thing I might need you to clarify is the intake, you said it was just a cone filter at the end of the stock airbox ... what do you mean by that? If it has a turbo on it, I suspect he shouldn't have been able to use the stock airbox at all .. so I'm kinda confused by that. Any way you can stop by the dealer and take a pic of the car from outside, under the hood, interior, etc. and post them on here? We tend to have a general idea of what a well modded P5 should look like, but judging from what you're telling us I would probably stay away from that to be perfectly honest with you, especially if the turbo doesn't have any fuel managment or built internals to go with it.

Also, go to www.msprotege.com and post in the Protege5 area. I'm betting the guy was a member of the forum and someone on there will know him. If you can find out his username, you should be able to read his posts/comments and see how the car was treated, modified, etc.

Oh sorry for the misunderstanding, its a mazdaspeed protege. It is turbo but on the turbo intake there is a intake that leads to the stock airbox. Instead of the airbox there is just a cone filter.

Ahhh .. MazdaSpeed, now it makes sense. Can't believe I didn't think of that.

How many miles are on the car? If they're not too high then as long as the car drives fine you should be able to still save it from blowin up and hopefully modify it the right way.

it has 33k miles. It drives but while accelerating the power kinda cuts in and out. i think it from the blowoff valve leaking boost but am not to sure.

33K is still relatively low, and the car's only 3 years old so I guess it can't be in THAT bad of shape. Tell ya what though, since it's at a dealership you should definately try to use that as an excuse to get more money taken off the price of the car.

They are asking 12,300 how much lower do you think they should go for me to buy?????

Whatever you can get man, the price isn't bad as it is .. but if the car isn't running right then either request they fix it (which they probably wouldn't do right anyway) or knock off some money off the price. Start with $600 off, so offer $11,700 and see where it leads. You'll prolly end up in the $11,900 - $12,100 region if you haggle enough .. and hell that's $200 - $300 you can spend on a new BOV and such!