We've talked about this before. My car, a 93 Mazda MX-6, now with a zero mile (actually, now 2000 miles) 97 Ford Probe engine swapped into it. Below is a picture taken back in 2005 when I first purchased it and polished it up:
I recently (about two and a half months ago) put about $3000 into it and replaced the engine with a zero mile, from factory Ford Probe engine. I have had nothing but problems since doing so. It's all mechanic-related. I have done more work on this car in the last month than I have since I owned it. All done trying to sort out all these little problems, vacuum, electrical, and suspension related niggles that have been persisting ever since I got the car back from the shop.
You may remember, or maybe I didn't mention before, due to the good-natured shadow of a doubt kind of guy that I am, it took almost a month to get the car back in functional, but still not road-worthy shape from the shop. I spent $3000 on a $1500 car and got it back with knocks and pings and bad gas mileage and open vacuum ports and check engine lights and all kinds of problems. Nothing but problems, one right after the next.
I have now spent another $1000 of my hard-earned cash and probably 50 labor hours, replacing things that were not done properly and sorting out things that should have been sorted out while in the shop. A lot of this should have been warranty parts and labor, but I have gotten to the point where I don't trust the work that the shop is doing and have experienced more problems every time I have taken it back.
Important lesson: do it yourself before taking it to a shop that you haven't worked with before. Even if you don't know what you're doing and mess something up, at least you gain experience by learning from your mistakes.
Anyway...
In trying to work out a knocking, creaking, and major vibration in the front of the car that only occurred since getting it back from the shop, I have replaced the following:
- Lower Control Arm bushings (front and rear) on the front wheels
- Lower Control Arms (because the bushings didn't do the trick and needed ball joints)
- Front sway-bar end links
- Driver side CV axle (which was only a year old)
None of these resolved all of the issues that I was having.
This past weekend, I replaced the following, in search of the noise and vibrations:
- Struts (KYB GR-2)
- Springs (Max Speed eBay drop springs)
- Tie Rod Ends
- Passenger side CV axle (which was replaced by the shop two months ago and was the wrong part, half an inch shorter than stock and had completely separated at the inner joint)
I took the following pictures before work started.
Front clearance:
Rear clearance:
Along with the struts and springs, I purchased front strut mounts and boot kits from Napa, which were cheaper than Auto Zone, Advance Auto Parts, and O'Reilly. I ordered all the rubber gaskets and other parts from the local Mazda dealership. The Max Speed springs that I bought on eBay promised about a one inch drop all around (1.3 front and 1.25 rear). Once I had the stockers out of the car, pushing on each with my hands, the drop springs felt a little softer, but had more coils (one extra in the front and three extra in the rear).
Front strut/spring assemblies before and after:
Once I got the rear strut/spring assemblies removed from the car, I found the following, which was really worrying:
A nice, new, unknown Mazda design flaw. The rear mounts were rusted to powder. The picture above shows the trashed assembly fresh out of the car, with a puddle of water inside the mount. How is it the trunk is relatively dry in this car (where "relatively" is a relative term) but the strut mounts in the trunk have had standing water in them for the last 16 years?
I frantically started calling all the parts stores in town. Nobody had rear mounts in stock. Nobody had any in the warehouse. They are special order items. It would be at least Monday (this is Saturday evening) before I could get my hands on a pair.
We decided to soldier on and reuse the old mounts. My first priority when I got back to Asheville was to be finding rear strut mounts and replacing them as soon as possible. We started bolting up the new parts into the old, rusty mounts and BLAM!
Right into the trunk. The new struts and springs were just too much pressure for the old rusted mount (with the wheels off the ground!) and the mount split in two.
It was then I realized I might have found myself an extra personal day off from work. I was three hours from home at my parents' house, with no new parts in sight. I called Advance Auto Parts back and special ordered replacements. It would be Monday morning before I could pick them up.
Should be a one-piece, not a bikini:
Also, on a very interesting side-note, once the rear struts were removed and separated from the springs and mounts, they couldn't hold their own weight up. The rods sunk straight down. I have probably been riding on springs alone in the back for over four years now. This car had such a good, sporty ride before, it is absolutely amazing that there were essentially no struts at all in the back. Blown.
We removed all the broken and worn out crap from the car, took the rest of the rear apart, and waited out the night. I was holding out hope for Napa. They have everything. Not only do the little stores have everything that no other parts stores have, but there is a warehouse about 20 miles from my parents' house. A warehouse with a customer counter. They close early every day, so I wasn't able to call them Saturday. It was after 6PM when we found the problems.
With the rear of the car up on jack stands, a restless and nearly hopeless night ensued.
I was up and on the phone with the Napa warehouse at 9:05 Sunday morning. Shazbat! They had the parts I needed. Not only that, I was also informed that they were special order items and they didn't understand why they had the parts in stock at all. They would not be replaced after I purchased the ones I picked up. Lady Luck was on my side.
Everything went back together swimmingly. We took the car for an alignment at Merchant's, a necessity after all this front end work, and it "didn't take". Driving away from the place, the steering wheel was cocked to the left and the car was pulling to the right. There was still much knocking and commotion from the new suspension parts. We returned and had it looked at. A wonderful technician named Josh put the car up on the rack and gave it a thorough going over.
He found a number of things. Firstly, the car had been wrecked previously and the caster (front to back alignment) was off. One front wheel is further forward than the other. It would take a serious frame shop to remedy this issue. Secondly, the springs in the front were stuttering and jumping around as you turn the steering wheel. He sent us home to remedy the second issue before taking another whack at the alignment.
We tore the front end out of the car again and found that the strut/spring/mount/bearing assemblies that we had pulled out of the car had been assembled in the wrong order. This was done prior to the year 2000, where the receipts that I received from the previous owner begin. Having not done suspension work before, we used the original assemblies as guides to reassembling the new components. A little logic got us straightened out. The bearing was underneath the spring seat instead of on top. It was doing no work at all and therefore, the steering action was metal on metal, causing the skipping, popping, and lurching.
After getting everything installed and back on the road, the ride was much firmer than before. Much more sporting. In fast corners, it is almost completely level. Hardly any body roll at all. I know that $800 springs would be a little less bouncy, but the Max Speed springs, shipped for under $100, are really not bad at all. They certainly don't bounce like most primer black Honda Civics you see on the road with the giant, farting, "coffee can full of angry bees" mufflers. The KYB GR-2 struts (well, I guess *any* struts) made a huge difference in the responsiveness and cornering abilities of the car. This is truly a huge improvement over how it was last week, which honestly, wasn't that bad.
I finally washed the car this evening after work. I didn't want to take "after" pictures with all the dirt, bugs, and bird crap all over the place. I did the finger measurements again.
Front clearance:
Rear clearance:
You may or may not be able to tell from the pictures, but the before pics were an easy finger-fit, but the after pics are a tight finger-fit. In performing the finger measurements right after finishing the install, I had the top three fingers in the front and bottom three fingers in the rear. Heh. Three fingers in the rear... Heh. Heh... Heh. uhhh... Heh.
Now, two days in, I have lost another finger from each.
Here's the whole thing:
It's hardly noticeable from this angle, as the wheels are narrow and sunken back into the wheel wells (go early 90's styling!), but the finger test tells all. I have actually heard that the new setup can be expected to settle even more over the next month or two.
Well, there you have it. The suspension stuff cost me a total of $450. All of the rest of the front end stuff listed above cost me about $350. Shop around and you will find amazing bargains for name brand OEM and performance parts on eBay. Feel free to comment or e-mail with any questions.