Enough about me... Onto what I drive: 2000 Mazda 626 5 speed manual.
My twin brother and I share it and have owned it since August 2012. During the 2 year journey we have tried to look after it as best as we can. There is going to be a lot of info and pictures; it’s taken me ages to get all the pictures and videos together, as well as to work out a timeline of things that have happened to the car. Enjoy! There's a lot for you guys to catch up on!!
Turning 16 in 2012 meant that it was time to find a first car. It had to be manual, cheap to buy, good on fuel, cheap to insure, and relatively practical. We missed out on some great deals, such as an SR20 S13 Silvia for $2.5k or an R33 GTS for $5k. Although looking back now, I’m glad that we didn’t buy either of them, we would have wasted so much money modifying only to get into trouble with the police (they don’t really like modified cars in AUS). After trawling through carsales and gumtree ads every day I finally landed on the car I now drive:
^ That image in the top right is unfortunately the oldest picture I have of the car, due to our home backup system/NAS failing (thanks Seagate!). Data recovery company took almost a year and no dice. This is the reason why I don’t have pictures of some of the work/mods that we’ve done over the time we’ve owned it.
The car is a rare-ish variant, being the 2000 Olympic edition, and in manual. Also the pre-facelift series 2 with the chrome-housing headlights, different interior, some different electronics, and proper silver paint (the facelift had no silver colour, only champagne). The car also has the nice multi-spoke alloy wheels, fog lights, colour coded bumpers, digital climate control, boot spoiler, headlamp protectors (which were broken so we removed them), factory Pioneer speakers all round (sound great!), a 6 stack CD player in the boot, and a few more little extras that most series 2 non-facelift models don’t have.
When going to inspect the car, we realised it had a few more scratches and dents than the photos showed, but the interior was in excellent condition (the back seats seemed like they had never been used), and the motor was relatively healthy. The test drive went well and we decided we wanted to buy the car, and ended up negotiating the price down by $1100.
We had the car looked over by a mechanic friend who realised that the timing belt needed to be changed (car had done 212,000km at this stage, meaning the belt change was overdue by 12,000km) as well as the passenger side CV axle needed replacing. This was all paid for by the previous owner!
After all the paperwork was taken care of and the car was finally ours it was used to teach my brother and me how to drive for a fair while until we decided to start personalising it a bit. Again, I had photos of it when we first got it but they are long gone…
Current list of small mods/work that has been done to the car as of 30th September 2014:
· Timing belt done
· Passenger CV replaced with re-conditioned unit
· Pirelli P7 Tyres
· De-badged rear
· Clear side indicators
· Drivers-side main window switch replaced
· Air Conditioning leak tested and re-gassed
· Window tinting: 35% sides 20% rear
· OEM Ariel mast fitted
· Grille re-blackened
· Chrome front and rear indicator bulbs
· Boot rust fixed
· Parkers, number-plate lights, interior map and main lights, glove box light, boot light, reverse lights replaced with LED’s
· Osram Cool Blue Hyper bulbs in Low beams, high beams, and fogs
· Cabin filter changed
· Air filter replaced with K&N panel
· Clean MAF (used contact cleaner, worked great)
· Reset ECU (battery terminal disconnect and turn on headlights)
· Clean IAT (again using contact cleaner)
· Cleaned IACV, idles much better in traffic/hot days/stable (used carb cleaner and soaked the valve, then scraped crap off)
· Diagnosed faulty PCV and replaced with OEM part
· New ignition leads
· Engine oil flush using Liqui-Moly Engine Detox, Purolator oil filters used along with liquid-moly mos2
· Change spark plugs, NGK iridium IX
· Flush and replace coolant
· Flush and replace power steering fluid (with ATF)
· Fuel filter changed
· Cleaned throttle body
· Fuel system additive/cleaner that I won for free (Liqui-moly cleaner/conditioner 2772)
· Wiper blades changed to ‘aero’ models (looks better and actually cleans the windscreen)
· Gearbox rebuilt (all bearings and seals)
· Gearbox oil changed + Nulon g70
· White number plates to replace ugly yellow,
· Repainted bailey channels (actually got used spares and repainted them as ours were bent).
· Repainted all the mud flaps as they were all faded badly.
· Repaint faded cowl
· Repaint wiper arms
· Replace cracked tail lights
· Replace spoiler 3rd brake light (most of the bulbs were out)
· OEM 626 owner’s manual
· OEM Mazda floor mats (with 626 logo). These replaced the crappy aftermarket ones that would always rip.
· OEM toolkit (old one was rusty)
· Bought a new front reo bar since the old one was dented badly (the one in the bulb pictures)
· Various bolts/nuts/fasteners
· Clean wheels on the inside/properly
· New Exedy clutch and machined flywheel
· New OEM Rear Main Seal
· New DBA rotors and Bendix General CT pads all around with serviced calipers, new fluid, and bled.
· Professionally repainted boot spoiler (paint was almost down to primer)
· Professionally repainted mirrors (one was down to primer and the other was damaged)
· Tighten Handbrake
· New OEM Axle Nuts
· New tie-rod split pins
· New GSP drivers-side CV axle
· New front control arms with all bushings and ball joints replaced
· New front sway bar links
· New inner and outer tie rods + steering rack boots
· New exhaust hangers
· All new OEM engine mounts and transmission mounts (pass, driver, front, rear)
· Front struts completely rebuilt with all OEM parts (every gasket, nut, bolt, seal, bearing was brand new) and KYB shocks.
· Nulon foaming air intake cleaner
More posts from me about the 626 are coming soon, as you can see a lot has been done to it and I have taken hundreds of photos of the progress, as well as a few videos.
- Nathan.
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