Hello everyone! My name is Jared. I just bought my 2011 Mazda 3. I am here to figure out what I can do to soup it up a little bit.

 

I never owned a three but I would suggest starting small untill you build the budget for better parts. Like hotter plugs and high voltage wires, depending on if its a daily driver or not you could remove rear seat, spare tire and interior trim for weight reduction. An air intake may give you a few more hp and make your car sound faster than it really is. I hope ive ben of some help to you

 

what do you mean by soup it up a little bit? make it faster or louder?

 

I am looking to a little faster and with some sound. Some ideas I had was to lower it 1" and get rims for it. Anti-sway bars. Spoiler. Exhaust. Cold air intake.

 

Hotter plugs and high voltage wires won't make one iota of difference in the performance of the car, just the performance (or lack thereof) of the wallet.

 

You don't say whether you have an i (2.0L) or S (2.5L) model, or whether the car is auto or stick?

I can tell you for sure that you don't want to go messing around with the spark plugs. These cars are sensitive to the type and brand of plugs used. Don't believe me? Ask one member here (Lev) who tried several. You'll likely do more harm than good. I have 65k miles on my OE plugs and while I have taken them out to inspect them from time to time, they are still working just fine.
And higher voltage wires are not even an option. Like all cars these days, there is no distributor, so there are no spark plug wires. These are direct coil-on-plug cars, as most/all are these days.

Unless you are planning to go full bore with a bottom end rebuild, and do a turbo install and tune you won't get very far in the hp/tq increases.

For smaller budgets, stick with handling and brakes. First would be to sell the crap tires that most manufacturer's install on new cars. This is a biggie, and you would be surprised just how much better the car can feel and drive. Do the research and find a set that other Mazda3 owners rate well.

Sway bars are an excellent idea too, especially the rear bar. But be sure to upgrade the rear links as well.
Dropping the center of gravity on Eibach's. If you stay w/a ProKit(1"-1.2") keep the OE shocks/struts. If going Sportline (1.6"-2",) upgrade to Koni's or Bilstein's... or simply get the Koni FSD kit which is complete!! It ain't cheap (+/-$700) but offers the best in ride and handling w/self-adjusting shocks and an Eibach ProKit. If they don't offer one now for the 2010+ cars, they will.

Then move on to the brakes. For a street car, don't go too aggressive. I am running the EBC Greeen Stuff's which I find a good compromise and are not dusty pads. Some prefer the Hawk Performance/Street pads. I had some problems w/squealing at first but after a full break-in, no more squeal.

Avoid the hype surrounding intakes. On a naturally aspirated engine they will do little to nothing. Boosted engines (turbo or supercharged) are a different story.
Also avoid giant exhaust tubing. you will kill the bottom end torque you now enjoy.

 

hey there welcome to the mazda forum.

Virgin1 pretty pretty much nailed it on the head on our cars the best mods you can do will be to the suspension and getting rid of the stock tires lol.

there are still a few inexpensive performance mods you can do to make your car feel more peppy and sound a little aggressive the actual gains on paper will be minimal if any though.

I agree w Virgin that the CAI on a NA car doesn't do much especially in the low end but it does open it up a little on the top end and at WOT it has a nice little growl. I didn't notice any loss on the lowend torque and never did a dyno stock, but I have heard from several people there is some loss. Was it worth the money performance wise not really but it looks and sounds good which is okay with me lol.

Also you can ground your throttle body and do the advanced timing mod which won't add any power but you will get a better throttle response and in turn will make you feel like there is more pep.

That is pretty much all I recommend it is cheap and easy. Everything else starts getting pretty expensive it is hard to justify that kind of money for 10-20 horse power but that doesn't stop most people from doing it me included.


I also have a 2nd gen 3 if you have any questions feel free to ask chances are I have either researched your question or tried it myself lol.

 

The throttle body ground mod is worthless; don't waste your time.

 

First I would like to thank all of you for your replys. I really appreciate it. I have a 2.0 L I. And I was reading online that when you get an exhaust for some sound that it actually sounds better with a cold air intake. Is that true? Really I know the car is not going to get to much more pep. But I would like a little growl to it. And suggestions on exhaust? I heard magna flow and Borla. And have any of you lowered your car an inch? Does that improve handling or anything at all?

 

Top two things to improve the handling of your car (notice lowering isn't one of them?):

1. Performance driving lessons.
2. Better wheels and tires (no larger than 17" in diameter).