So I bought the only Open class Protege in the US, and spent the last few months getting it ready to do its first event in 8 years. Covered as many issues as we could find; new rear strut inserts, update rollcage, fresh brakes/fluids/finish building then installing engine etc etc etc, so I thought we were ready. Well, we had boost issues. Issue was we didn't have any. When we brought it to the dyno some problems showed up with boost control but we thought it was fixed ( it made 140 hp at 7psi, 170@10psi, we were making 15psi after that). The car ran beautifully, right up until the start of the rally. 4psi boost all of day 1. 15th overall, 90 horses.. Suckie. Spent all night fixing the leak between the turbo and the manfold. Saw some other issues, like one of those brand new rear strut inserts was totally destroyed, and for some damn reason the alt. belt was showing bad wear, but no time to fix. We lost boost again, on the transit stage back to the hotel. Got up at 6am to fix that, it was leaking from the elbow off the turbo this time. No time to fix the belt issue so off we go to stage 1 day 2, where the belt lasted 100 feet into the stage before coming off and taking the pwr steering with it. And the waterpump. The ECU went into some manner of limp mode and we had no power again. Got through the stage, put another alt belt on, and did stage 2 with no pwr steering. No big, cept it was wet pavement on rally tires and when the back end came out on a 4th gear downhill S combo, I couldn't catch it fast enough and we went full broadside one way, then full broadside the other, and went through 3 more occillations before gathering it up. Still got a fast time that stage though. Service after 3 stages got pwr steering back and fixed yet another boost leak (tossed off the map sensor hose this time) and for the 1st time all weekend the car held up and behaved for an entire stage. So we got 2nd fastest time on it, and only a little slower than Carl Jardevall in his brand new state of the art ultra-prepped uber-Evo 8. Let it be known that Carl is so goddamn fast that he could trade cars with pretty much anyone in the rally and still kicked everyone's ass... so I am VERY pleased with that stage result. The car was on again off again the rest of the day, no shocks left, erratic boost, but we ended up 6th overall and 4th in class for the day. When we get the bugs worked out, this car's gonna be surprisingly comptetitive. Also, the editor of Mazda Sports magazine handed me his card and wants to do a feature article on both this car and my frankenprotege, so it looks like Proteges are gonna get some press luvin 
I'll make sure clubprotege gets a mention. It's all good. Hey there were 3 (!) GTX in the rally and they all finished too, no DNF and no crashes!
I'll make sure clubprotege gets a mention. It's all good. Hey there were 3 (!) GTX in the rally and they all finished too, no DNF and no crashes!
..... can't wait to see what you do with the issues fixed 
Comment