Just picked up a 2003 DX 5 speed!
 

My brother recently got a silver Protege DX from the local Mazda dealership about 2 or 3 months ago. I've been shopping for a car to replace my '98 Contour SE (ATX) for awhile now, and had been looking at 5 spd Civic DX's and HX's (LX and EX were out of my price range). I decided to take a trip down there to look at the Protege's; I really had nothing to lose, since I had a car in decent shape already and knew what I wanted to pay.

Well, I found the kind of Protege I wanted; 4 door sedan with a stick (I got lucky, last DX with a stick they had), no power locks or windows, since I don't need them, and more HP than a Civic. Plus, after all was said and done I got the car for a little over $10,000 after my trade in and a dealer discount (They were running a $2500-3000 discount on all Mazda's until the 18th, which was seperate from your trade in value). As soon as I drove this car I could tell it rode better than the Civic, and Honda wasn't able to give me much of a deal at all; also, it handles beautifully, comparable to my Contour which had a european handling package standard on all models.

I drove it home yesterday after signing the papers, and now I need to do a few things to this car to keep it looking good. First, is there somewhere I can get some decent seat covers? The interior is a very light tan, and I don't it to get stained on the seats or the back of the seats if someone gets in with dirty shoes.

When I owned my other car, Contour.org had been a great resource with the commonly known problems by Contour/Mystique owners, and helped me add a CAI on the car which made it a much more enjoyable and powerful ride. I'd like to get one for the Protege; what would you recommend? I know I'll have to pay at least $200 or more for a good one, but I don't want to waste a bunch of money on one if I don't have to. (And yes, I know not to buy those intakes with the "whirlwind fans" on them. Biggest scam ever). Also, is it fairly easy to install an aftermarket tach? Any How-To's on this?

If there's any other good modifications you can recommend, let me know!

welcome to the forum and congrats on your new Protege

what I would suggest you to do is to simply browse around the various sections of the forum (engine/suspension/interior exterior) for 3rd gens, some of the stuff you mentioned are very popular topics and have been discussed thoroughly.

also, if you can't find a particular thing just by browsing, try the search button on the upper right corner. It should help a lot as well.

take your time, and enjoy your stay here :)

welcome!

Welcome the the club and congradualations on your purchase. The Protege is an excellent car in its price range and I'm sure you will enjoy it over it's competitors.

To answer your question, there are alot of intakes for the Protege. I assume you have the 2.0L engine, and the most popular choices are the Injen Cold Air, and AEM Short Ram and the much cheaper Ractive Short Ram. I once had the Ractive intake, but I took it off since it was too loud for my liking.

A short shifter is also a cheap and popular mod.

Welcome to the club Rynn, glad to see you makig the jump from the 'tour to the protege, being a former owner of one myself (GL 2.5 ATX), you'll find that there seem to be a lot less of the normal problems that our tour's were plagued with (ie, wp, CD4E issues etc.) Not that the protege's have any issues but most seem to be with the car being the way it is, (ie lack of power, small armrest, the wonderful lock mechanism hitting the old funny bone, etc.) not technical problems.
As for your questions reviewing the faq can be a really good resource for various mods (nod to THE MAN), otherwise for CAI the only claimed true one (that I know of) is made by injen. However there are other various intakes that do work ok. (searching would give you all the numerous and informative discussions on whihc is better) For Seat Covers, I'm not so sure of any that are made specifically for the protege. Looking at Jpro, corksport, or advanced imports (see above advertisement:) ) could be worthwhile. For tachs, I thought at all MTX came with a tach (obviously wrong) Picking up a junkyard gauge cluster maybe a worthwhile purchase (ES and Protege 5 gauges are white faced btw). For sheer perfomance mods turbo, Jspec pistons and headers, or NAAAAWWWS:rolleyes: are going to give you the best hp gains. Intake and exhaust will make you sound better and help with future mods but as stand alones, they won't do too much (except seat of the pants) Now that I've ranted to long I'll leave you to the rest of the board.

Welcome, and EXCELLENT choice of car! :D

Sorry for being such a n00b :) I'll definitely have to do some browsing and lurk a little. I don't want to do any engine mods until get about 1000 miles on the clock to break it in, and I don't think I can switch the clusters (It's a digital OD), but I did see a thread where they mentioned which wires are for the tach.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys!

welcome to the club!!:D !!! Its about time more people representing the DX!!:D I thought there were only a few us out there wit this model. :cool: Hope u love the car!!

Welcome. Im glad to hear the dx go the 2.0 not the 1.6 :)

that's right! DX's are not equipped with a tachometer! *smacks forehead*

an aftermarket tach would be a nice mod if you don't mind the extra clutter.

Thanks guys! The DX can definitely get noticed, if you put some work into it :)

This is going to be my first mod, when I take my vacation on the 1st of July:

http://www.mazdamp3.com/vbb225/showt...?threadid=5931

I think I'm going to paint the valve cover to match the exterior as close as I can. I also don't mind the little bit of clutter, so I'm going to shop around for a decent aftermarket tach; doesn't look like it'll be too hard to install.

This morning though, I noticed the engine idled kind of high. The car sat in my garage for more than 12 hours, but I didn't experience this with my Contour; anyone had this issue before? Does the throttle cable stick a little, or do I need to let the car idle for a minute or two before driving it normally?

Welcome! I have had 'Zipper' (my protege) for 4 years, and I love it, a lot. Now you gotta give your baby a name.

I have the same thing every now and then. Mine goes up to approx 2k on the tach, seeing as how you don't have one... I let it go sometimes unless I am in a hurry. It comes down on its own, and I just rev the engine and it quits, too. Not sure what causes it.

hold up?! The 2003 DX models havea tachometer now??????!!:mad: :eek:

oh shit. lol ignore my last post. I ain't read the sentence properly. LOL:p :rolleyes:

welcome. I donated my 91 DX 10 months ago and bought an 02 ES. 188k miles on it, driven every day for 8 years, and never kept in a garage. No rust, original shocks and clutch. Great car. The one thing I would do is upgrade the wheels. The difference in handling on my ES is sooooo much better. My old DX had crappy 13" steel wheels, the new ES has 16" alloys with great tires. My .02.

Current DX's have 15" steelies with 195/55 Potenzas, and actually handle pretty well, except in the snow.

BTW, Rynn, I've been looking into the tach problem myself, and it looks to me like the best place for it is on the left side of the gauge hump, above the vent. I'm shopping around for one now; when I find something that fits well, I'll let you know. Someone already posted the wiring; do a search & you'll turn it up. I can't remember where it is.

I'm also going to find out if those chrome rings will fit the DX cluster...I think they will...

Hey, thanks man! Anything you find out, let me know ASAP. I'd say you're right about the positioning of an aftermarket tach, as it'll be easier to see as well and not take up so much space. Let me know about the chrome rings too, I think it'd look http://www.motivegrounds.com/images/krad.gif in my car.

I just realized I don't have rear door speakers. Looks like this'll be the next thing I get after the seat covers :)

Emerald green DXs represent.... :D I'm still in need of a tach for my car too :( . I've done a couple of mods to my car nothing serious. But like they say once you start you can't stop... :p

This is normal. The slightly higher idle is used to help warm the engine up quicker. Once the engine is at normal operating temp the idle should be pretty low. It's a feature that doesn't help much during this season, but helps a lot in the winter mornings.

I'm kinda surprised your contour didn't do this. :dunno:

Yeah, I'm pretty surprised I never noticed it either. Although, I had a CAI on the Contour so that may have drowned out the vibration or sound a little. Plus, I never had a tach on the Contour so I couldn't tell what RPM range it was in.

Another reason I need to install a tach on my Green Machine!

hey Ryan and Welcome to our happy little corner of the net, and to our Club. There are TWO BIG fridge'S in the corner with anything you can think of in them...help yourself...of course only take what you can LEGALLY have.

make yourself at home on one of the big fluffy couches, kick your shoes off, put your feet up on one of the tables, yes we are allowed to do that, mom don't care....and take it easy.

oh...btw....every once in a while a food fight breaks out...so you may not want to wear nice clothes here.

Welcome!!

I am in the process of painting the valve cover white following that priviously posted link's instructions. Thanks alot for posting it, I'll have pics up soon of the finnal product

If i remmeber correctly, about the digital odo, u can unplug it, cuz the miles isn't saved in the actual cluster..... well i can't remember properly, doing a search will help u find alotta threads about it

but i think someone said that it saved into the ecu, so you can unplug ur gauge cluster, and intall an LX or ES gauge cluster (include tachs), and ur mileage and stuff will still be the same.

don't take my word for it tho, search for the threads, and make sure what i say is valid, b4 attempting anything :p, but ur smart enought o know that :p hehe :D

and welcome to the club, and have fun

Don't bother. It won't make any difference. Well, besides adding unnecessary weight to your vehicle :)

Back to the unplugging the cluster statement. I wish someone could tell for sure, because I like many of you here long for a tach. I don't want a stand alone tach because I think it is just too big. I would love some of the ES gauges that are white with red lights.

I am pretty sure the chrome rings will fit on the DXs. The rings are the same size it is just gas, speed, and temp.
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Sammanntta cam

Your rear speakers should be in the deck lid! Although by leaving the rear door spots emtpy, Mazda sure does offer a nice place to put a small set of woofers.

Well, the big thing for me would be if I threw in another cluster, I may void the factory warranty. Not a good thing to do if something comes up broken and they notice that a DX shouldn't have a tach. I'd need to be absolutely sure I could do this, and also, that it would keep the same mileage.

It shouldn't void the warranty, but they seem to get more agitated when you "replace stuff" than when you "add stuff." I think I'm going to just add an aftermarket tach.

I have an old Autometer one, but it's kinda 70s looking and I don't think it will work properly with the newer ignition systems. I'll just save it for another car down the road. But it's the perfect size - 2 1/2 inch face. I don't want one of those giant 5" deals with the bright orange shift light in them.

You should definitely get the 5" ones. They add 8-10 hp to your car.

8-10 hp no way more like 13-15..The shift light adds a extra 5!!

So what happens if I get a V-Tec badge for the trunk lid, how much does that add? :)

(I got this idea from an obviously "gifted" Mercury Mystique owner, image below)

http://www.motivegrounds.com/images/ricey/h4.jpg

Or maybe I should just paint it bright yellow, that'll get me 30 hp EASILY!

Back on track. Does anyone know for sure if the cluster would keep the correct mileage for a fact. I would do this swap in a heartbeat.
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SexyBosom