Look what $600 can get you

[madcow]

Me and a friend picked this up for $600 CAD, and the seller also threw in a bin full of random engine parts and a pretty sweet new in box keyless entry/alarm system.

Now the real beauty is what's under the hood, a 200hp J-Spec 2.5L V6 KLZE motor:


Now obviously for this price it needs some work, specifically, the motor idles like crap and stutters alot, I'm thinking bad distributor rotor and cap, the contacts were all corroded when I took a look. The handbrake is disconnected and the rear calipers need some work. Power windows - barely working It really needs a new paint job, it's coming off in a few places and the clearcoat is pretty much gone. Only 2 of the 4 speakers actually work, and only 1 actually works half-decently. The trunk can only be opened from the inside because the key doesn't fit. :-/ And the stereo is the worse piece of **** I've ever seen, to put it nicely.

We already put in a new ECU and many random parts, it's about a week from being safely drivable, although it is drivable, it made the 40 minute highway drive to my house no problem.

Interior is a mess because we're painting everything we can black, seems like a ricer had it at one point and painted everything he could blue and white, which just looks plain horrible. And of course, the interior is where I keep all my tools.



What do you people think of it?

 

[yamarider]

Not bad for $600, that little thing must be a real animal with a klze in it, even the stock 1.8 v6 (weird size for a v6) moves them pretty well.

I have a 97 Probe GTS with the original KLDE in it. I can't do the KLZE swap in mine because the 96 and 97 have the OBDII wiring harness in them so the ECU can't be swapped. I've still had thoughts of building it up pretty wicked with a turbo and all that happy crap, dropping it a couple inches, and all that fun stuff but i've talked myself into keeping it mostly original since the GTS was a limited production model, and is somewhat collectible.

Sounds like yours has all the typical probems that plague these cars. Mine had most of the issues you speak of, as did my buddy's 93 that he's dumped close to $15,000 into. When i got it the sound system was absolutely shot at 80,000 miles, It didn't idle right, constantly searching for an idle but just going up and down (2 years later i'm still battling it out with mazda's fucked up idle circuit). Also had one bad 02 sensor, a catalytic converter that had a catastrophic failure, (which was replaced with a magnaflow high-flow, which i think melted down again), and of course the power windows worked at the blazing speed of turtles stampeding through peanut butter. The paint was even re-done on mine when the previous owner had it, the clearcoat was bad from the factory, especially on the candy red like mine.

I replaced the window motors which made them work like new, and i think i might finally have the idle beat. I replaced the TPS which helped, but it's still not right, which i am blaming on the IACV. I was avoiding that for a while because they're 250-ish new, but snagged one that looked like brand new for 35 on good ol' ebay, i just have to get up the motivation to tear the throttle body apart to get to it.

I can't count how many times other probe owners have tried to buy my car or trade me heavily modified ones because of how mint mine looks, and i bet less than 1% of all probes made ever had an all-black leather interior like mine. All the probe and mx6 guys go nuts over it.

On the sound system thing - don't go too nuts. I went gung-ho with it, and no amont of dynomat in the world can keep my car from still rattling. I've done most of the passenger area, all of the trunk, behind the lights, plate, and center piece, and all it does is make the rattles move farther forward in the car. My god damn fog lights rattle now! So take it easy on the sound system if you don't want to deal with that problem.

Here's a few pics of mine. I paid about $5000 for this a couple years ago, with remanufactured heads and and a completely replaced cooling system, and a bunch of other new parts because the kid that had it kept running it with a bad water pump and warped the heads and cracked the radiator. Kid wanted to just junk it, but his pops dumped a bunch of money into it for him... and then the kid sells it.

Magnaflow SS catback, AEM intake, Panasonic deck and infinity kappa's all around, Visonik 1000rms class D amp, 2 kicker comp vr's in a ported kicker box, Kuhmo Ecsta SPT's all around, and probably some other stuff. Still want a CS lip and clear signals on the front, at least.

I didn't mean to steal your thread there, i just get all excited when somebody starts talking about these things.

 

[madcow]

Wow that's a clean Probe.

Mine actually idles pretty evenly after I replaced the TPS, it's just incredibly rough because the distributor rotor and cap are pretty much shot. Which brings me to a rant: why the hell did mazda make the KLZE distributor rotor different from the KLDE? The cap's the exact same thing, and the rotor has the exact same dimensions, but the mounting system is just a tiny bit different, but different enough for it to not fit. And of course, not a single auto parts store has what I need.

The weird thing about the sound system is that it has nothing stock, the guy put a small 2 channel amp right behind the head unit and wired all 4 speakers himself, but the speakers barely work.

EDIT: Never mind, turns out that there are 2 types of KLDE distributors, and the rotors for them are different. :

 

[madcow]

I took it for a quick spin around the block today, and even with a screwed distributor and a few other problems I managed to get a bit of wheelspin in 1st while already going around 10 km/h.

But wow, the shifter bushings are completely gone, it took me 5 tries to get it into reverse and 3 tries to get it onto 2nd. It wasn't even close to this bad when I test drove it.

 

[yamarider]

I imagine the wheelspin would be a real problem with that little beast. I have 225-50R16 Kuhmo Ecsta SPT's on my probe, which are rated as an ultra high performance summer tire, and it's just barely enough traction to keep it under control when i'm accelerating hard. It kinda gets crappy when it gets cold out, because the summer tires don't hook up for crap, but mine stays in the garage most of the winter anyways, and never sees the rain. I bet with those narrow tires and the extra power yours will have trouble getting a good start in a drag race without blowing all the power into smoke. Does yours have the VRIS? (variable resonance induction system). That intake manifold doesn't look like it would. Mine does, and when that 3rd stage kicks in around 5,500 rpm it really starts to let loose.

Looking at that engine, i'm kinda questioning whether yours is a true KLZE, and not just a DE. I never saw a ZE that had the throttle body curve around to the front like that, all that i've seen came straight out the side and had the beefier looking intake manifold. Unless they put the stock mx-3 manifold on the ZE, so they wouldn't have to relocate the battery to run the intake.

 

[madcow]

Yes it have VRIS, the actuators are on the left side of the IM, you can see them in front of the blue and white connectors at the back.

There are 2 types of ZE: straight neck (popular for you probe/mx6 guys) and curved neck (popular for mx3 guys). It's not the K8 IM, my friend has a K8 mx3 and it looks nothing alike, the ZE has square runners, is a bit different in dimensions and is just beefier.

By the way, do you know where I can buy some quality shifter bushings? I think that the probe/mx6 might have a different shifter setup than the mx3 though.

Oh and I got a set of practically brand new NGK spark plugs wires for $10 from a junkyard.

 

[yamarider]

I'm not sure about the shifter bushings. I haven't replaced mine yet, but they are just a little bit loose so if you find any good ones for cheap, let me know.

10 bucks for ngk wires is a steal. I found out the hard way that the obdII cars get all tempermental if they don't have oem-spec wires on them. I had some good accel wires on it and it started throwing all kinds of misfire codes on all the cylinders, so i ended up giving those to my buddy and forking over $150 for a set of motorcraft wires and another 20 bucks for motorcraft plugs. That kinda pissed me off but it fixed the problem. Sometime soon i gotta tear mine apart and put in the new IACV and hope it finally fixes my idle problem i've fought since day one. Once that is done i still gotta do something about the catalytic converter, and it needs rear brake pads before the inspection in feb too.

 

[madcow]

I found a set of bronzoil bushings in the mx3 forums so I'm pretty good for that, all I need is the shifter stabilizer bushings now. That sucks about your car though, did it run badly though? Or was it just throwing codes?

And about the idle problem, did you adjust your TPS? Mine had that too before I adjusted it.

 

[yamarider]

For the spark plug wires, it was running great with the accels, but it was just throwing codes because the different wire resistance confused the computer.

And i adjusted my tps about 45 times, i bet i have about 5 hours logged fiddling around with that little piece of crap, even replaced it once and nothing changed. I don't understand how the TPS for this car is $70 at the cheapest auto parts store, but yet the tps that looks almost exactly the same for my GMC is $25. BULLSHIT!

 

[madcow]

Well mazda parts are expensive, it sucks I know. A disty cap costs almost $40 here, with a rotor being $20.

That's a really weird problem though, and if I learned anything from this car, it's the mazda motors are just too damn fiddly and complicated.

AHA! Figured out why the motor's running so shitty, the VAF is stuck. The damn thing doesn't move at all.

 

[madcow]

Woo! Installed the new VAF and it finally runs properly! It idles beautifully, but stutters at high RPM, I'm guessing it's the distributor. I already bought a replacement but still haven't installed it.

Also, it spits out light, white smoke, hope it's water vapour though because it's been sitting, not running for a good week now, and it's rained more than a few times.

Stripped the interior even more, pretty much everything plastic has been removed for stripping and painting.

 

[dswwarrior350]

I just bought a probe tonight for a work car.... its a 97 with the 4 cylinder. I only paid 900 bucks and its pretty clean just high miles. Hopefully it will be a good little beater to get me to work for a couple years.

 

[yamarider]

The 4 cylinder should be a decent beater. The 2.5's are a hell of a lot faster, but they're tempermental because mazda was a bunch of over-achievers and it has 3 times as many sensors and control valves as it would really need.

 

[dswwarrior350]

I mean its pretty peppy for a 4 cylinder, i mean its not fast by any means but its not that slow either.

The only thing that sucks is that some young kid (im guessing anyway) owned it before me and had a pretty big obsession with neon lights and stereo's. i was Amazed it didnt have a fart can on it ( thank god it doesnt) Actually the motor compartment is untouched phew!Anyway they decided to replace all the factory speaker wires with aftermarket stuff and leave a junk radioshack stereo in it that doesnt work at all. I can fix all of that with little effort. But they didnt hack up all the wires which is good. Also someone put a cheap set of fog lights on it but im yet to find a way to turn them on, this probe didnt come with factory fogs. Its a very good running car though and so far for 900 bucks im beyond happy with it. Motor doesnt make a sound and runs like a dream.

Are these 4 cylinders pretty reliable? Anything i should watch for?

 

[yamarider]

When putting a decent sound system in a newer ford, running new wiring to the speakers is a must. I ran 16 gauge monster cable to all 4 of the drivers in mine. They have a factory amp, and factory amps don't get along well with aftermarket systems.

As far as I know the 2.0 engines are pretty solid, everybody I ever knew that had a probe had a v6 like mine though, so I don't know much about the 4 bangers. Check out probetalk.com if you need info about them, huge friggin site.

 

[madcow]

If you hear a ticking sound coming from your valve cover don't worry about it, it's a perfectly normal noise for these motors.

Also, if anyone still cares, this damn thing still isn't on the road. I towed it over to my cottage to fix the timing belt because there's a garage there, swapped it and that when all hell broke loose. It ran like crap, especially when the motor warmed up. I pulled and fixed the wiring harness and replace more than a few sensors, I only have the original knock sensor, a coolant temp. sensor and the O2 sensors left, and it still runs like ****. I re-timed the belt, which took a good hour of fiddling just to get the belt on properly without moving the cam sprockets. Started it up and it came to life in 1 turn (seriously, I was surprised because not even brand news cars started that quickly), idled high and even like it's supposed to, then suddenly choked and died after about a minute, pulled the plugs and they were soaked in gas. Seems like it wants to run wayyyy too rich when it warms up, and I'm getting really pissed off about the whole thing. I'm replacing that last coolant sensor and the O2 sensors this weekend hopefully.

 

[yamarider]

Did you check the fuel regulator? My buddy's turbo II rx7 was running super rich like that, not to the point it would shut off, but you could smell it and see black smoke sometimes. It turned out that a screw inside the regulator had worked itself loose and was just rattling around the bottom of it. We put the screw back in with some loctite and that fixed the problem. I'm not sure if these cars use the same type of regulator or not, I actually don't remember seeing one on my probe, probably because it's hidden under the intake manifold.

 

[madcow]

The regulator is on the airbox side of the front fuel rail, I actually replaced both fuel rails and the regulator with known working ones, that allowed me to actually start it when it warmed up, before it just flooded.

 

[laxattack99]

Is it true that doing up ur car is cheaper than doing up ur quad. I've heard ppl say this but i've always wondered if it was true.

 

[DeadLastRacing]

It can be, Its weird how that works. But its all about value and demand.