New ! ^_^
#5
Hi Steph and Welcome!!
But I have to agree. If you wanted an MS3 you should have bought an MS3. Converting is simply not worth it in time, money, frustration or reliability.
Sorry 'bout that.
#8
The best advice is to A) leave your car unmodified and drive it for a couple of years and then trade it in on something more to your liking, or B) take a bath on it by trading it in now and buy a MazdaSpeed3.
#9
With the NA Mz3 your best modding money would be spent on:
1) A HyperTech, or equivalent tuner.
2) Suspension
3) Brakes.
Since gaining a significant amount of hp/tq from the engine is very costly and liable to be disappointing, a simple and relatively cheap hand-held tuner is you best option. It'll still set you back a few hundred $$$ and you will only gain +/-10hp though.
Buying into the current hype that a CAI and exhaust, or some $10-$70 eBay "chip" is going to give you gains of up to 60hp is only going to separate you from your money.
I've been driving "underpowered" cars for years and have made some significant gains in power... back in the day when re-jetting a carburetor, adding a mild cam, bumping up the timing or modifying the entire curve of the distributor were relatively easy things to accomplish.
Mostly, I got familiar with suspension and wheels/tire design and satisfied myself that I could out handle most other cars that had more power than I did by not having to slow down as they did on the twisty roads.
Understand that these days the computer controls these cars, and they are designed in such a way that its very hard and/or expensive to crack the code and gain access to those settings. Many, the Mazda's included, do not react well to piggyback style tuning. To do it right you really need a complete PCM change to one that can be tuned to your liking... and that gets expensive, even if you can find someone willing to take on the challenge.