JoshP5

Ah, Speed 6, I missed that. Right, RB's stuff is for the decaf 6. Sounds like you'll have a pretty nice setup there!

J-Protege

Yay my thread is back! Haha, here's an update to those who are interested (so... Josh mainly )

Ordering Tokico strut+spring setup as the price is right, and a great review from Nik!

Once they get here, just need the bumpstops and endlinks, and brackets/bushings, then lots of work to do!

Those 2 sway bars are just begging me to install them!

I went and tossed the car around on the twisties tonite at 4am, no one on the road. I can't imagine how it will handle after all this fun stuff.

And on a sad note, my P5 strut brace I bought seems to be officially lost in the mail. Starting up the 'lost package' insurance process.

_Kansei_

i.e. someone in customs with a Protege decided to 'lose' the package onto their car :P

J-Protege

I wouldn't doubt it. How do you lose such a big bar? It should be painfully obvious to them where it is when they look.

_Kansei_

nah.. the box might be 3ft long, but only like 8 inches wide and an inch deep. Plus it's really lightweight.. it could be hiding anywhere

J-Protege

Yeh true. Well, it's insured, so I would assume they'll try to find it before just forking over the 'we lost it' insurance money.

JoshP5

Jealous. I want MSP sways sooooooo badly. But that front install just puts me right off. =( It would cost more than 1K for parts and labor. But I'm eagerly waiting for your review--vicarious living ftw!

I think you can get a new upper strut tie bar at onlinemazdaparts.com for like $135. Or keep an eye on the for sale subforums. There are always jokers who start thinking their oem bar is somehow not good enough, replace it with some crappy hinged aftermarket unit, and put the oem bar up for sale.

_Kansei_

or like me you get some omg wow this is shitty aftermarket bar, put your stocker back on, and sell the hinged one (gtspec piece of garbage) on the forums :P

but that wouldn't help you much because then you'd have a crap hinged one

JoshP5

That's ok, you could hit a deer with it and then sell it for $450.

_Kansei_

omg no wai! *runs outside*

KrayzieFox

Well I guess it's about time I contributed to this thread as well. Lots of good info in here, so might as well do my best to add to it. Here's a list of a lot of different springs offered for the 3rd gen Protege platform with the corresponding spring rates, etc.

Might come in handy when deciding on which springs to get, so hope it helps someone..

_Kansei_

There's some inaccurate data in there but I don't remember exactly what and don't have time to research it right now. Just as a word of caution, use that as a rough guide and then research the stuff with the company before buying the springs.

KrayzieFox

Yea it is pretty old now and some new stuff has been found out (MSP vs. RB springs and such) but should be pretty good for the most part. But anyway, thanks for stealing my fire Kansei .. you're awesome

J-Protege

What I'm doing for the sways is getting a shop to give me a 'one price' quote. I asked a shop for a set price for installing front and rear sways, plus springs and struts.

Since they didn't want to keep the car for overnight, they quoted me a full day, which is 9.5 hours. That may be my best bet, as the swap install would run close to that alone. It's almost like free shock/spring install, haha.

Also, thanks Fox for the spring guide. Good refference, even if some of it is dated. Curious that the Tokico Springs aren't on it. I guess it's because no one really knows their exact rates.

JoshP5

And Tokico won't give it up.

I think it's most important to know where you're starting from. From what I could gather in my research:

DX: 121/97.5
LX/ES/P5: 134/106
MP3: 147/117
MSP: 158/117

Good to have baseline data.