My BG hatch V6 swap, rear brake upgrade, etc

[323v6pr]

damn it look great,mine looks like krap(engine),are u gonna dyno it before going to the track for some 1/4 times?

[Dan [Sac]]

Yeah, if i have a chance to, I'll take it to the strip next wednesday or the week after that. Rain washed out the races today.

[323v6pr]

r u gonna run slicks or dot street tires?i use 22x8 13' slicks

[Dan [Sac]]

Street tires.

[Dan [Sac]]

Well I was indeed right about the cooling fan and the extra relays. Today I got a full chassis/dash harness from a GS MX-3 as well as the full steering column/wheel. This way I'll get a working tach, working electric speedo, tilt wheel, and the improved MX3 wiper controls. This way I'm also set up electrically for cruise control if I ever choose to go that route.

I'll swap the wiring next week - wish I would have known about it while I was doing it the first time, would have been easier to tear down the dash while the whole car was apart. Oh well, live and learn :D

[Turpro]

Can you do me a favor and give a detailed run down of every little thing you used. I'm thinking about attempting this swap but dont want to have to use a bunch of aftermarket gauges and ****. Thanks.


BTW any plans on boosting?

[Dan [Sac]]

Oh heck no - no boost on something so traction limited already. The ZE has a healthy amount of torque anyway for a small displacement V6.

I'm sure I'll write something up when the car's to a level that I like.

[bandman659]

That looks awesome! I'd love to see some videos of it finalized, tuned, and blasting down the road.

I have to ask, what kind of wheels are those? They really look good on the 323.

[323v6pr]

went to the track yesterday with my 323v6 stock engine,ran 13.0 @ 101mph

[Dan [Sac]]

Good stuff. Did you use the stock 1.6L 323 fuel pump? I think mine is going out...

[323v6pr]

Good stuff. Did you use the stock 1.6L 323 fuel pump? I think mine is going out...

yeap

[Dan [Sac]]

Well I'm almost done with the harness swap, I'll post a bunch of pics tonight. Fairly straight forward, but as always some kinks.

The rear part of the harness (fuel pump & tail lights) has a different plug on the 323 and MX3 (where it connects to the in-cabin fuse block), so I'll have to swap that as well. I'll take care of that tomorrow and swap my fuel pump & sender at the same time to take care of the wacky fuel level signal.

Almost everything plugs right in, except the front parking lights. On the 323 the female side is the light housing, and on the MX3 the female side is the harness - so I'll have to do a bit of splicing on those 2. No biggie, simple color coordination. This will give me a chance to wire the side markers as well.

In the cabin, there are a couple of functions that will need splicing or replacing - the emergency flashers and the gauge brightness adjuster will have to be spliced in. Since I swapped the steering column as well, there is no need for splicing as all turn signal, headlight and wiper controls came over from the MX3.

So after tomorrow when I'll be doing the rear part of the harness, the car will have a 100%, bumper to bumper MX3 harness. If I were to start over, that's the first thing I'd do. It's not that hard, just time consuming, but it gives you a chance to do everything right the first time, plus the car will get a thorough cleaning in the process.

The other bonus is now I am 100% wired for power windows, cruise control, and all the MX3 creature comforts if I choose to install them later.

[Dan [Sac]]

Here are pics:

Pass. side beginning of harness removal:




MX3 tilt wheel column:




New monster waiting to go in:




Car prep for dash removal:














Dash out, 323 harness visible:





A good time to clean the heater motor, as well as the vent supplying 'fresh' air to the motor - 17 years of leaves...








To remove the wiring snaked behind the heater core, you don't need to remove the core. I just unbolted the 2 nuts holding it up and let it lay down a few inches so I could get the loom out. A word of caution - if your heater core inlet/outlet on the engine side still has the swivel plastic extensions, those could easily break during this maneuver, so I would recommend disconnecting the hoses from the engine side prior to doing this. On my car I removed the plastic swivels and clamped the rubber hoses directly on the metal inlet/outlet of the heater core since I needed the extra clearance to the V6.





Old stuff out:





MX3 gauge cluster, fitting in snugly. It sits fine behind the 323 bezel, with small gaps on the left/right side that you can fill easily with a little plastic sheet contoured to fit the gauge. The vertical fit is perfect but it did require the removal of the mx3 upper brackets, which means I'll make a couple of small tabs to keep the cluster secure.





Old wiring gone - the job was made a ton easier after I decided to remove the pedals - the brake/clutch pedals come out as a single assembly. The clutch rod (going to clutch master cyl) comes out with the pedals. The brake rod is unclipped from the pedal assembly and stays in the car.







MX3 harness in:







The white plug that sits on the frame rail between the fuse box and overflow tank is the one that gets the extra cooling fan relay that the 323 is missing. That's the reason my cooling fan wasn't coming on at 207*F as it was supposed to.






One more note - the MX3 steering colums does not bolt in directly to the 323 pedal set (at the bottom). To compensate, the pedal sets could be swapped as well. I will just make a small metal plate to bridge the gap between the 323 and MX3 mounting points for the two 10-mm bolts that hold the bottom of the column in place. The main load bearing fasteners are the 4 12mm bolts up top, and those match up with no problem.

[almighty4wd]

that's looking sweet! great job on the harness swap. I know how much it's a pain to pull it all.

[Mazda_Powered]

wow lol. thats quite the amount of work to get your fans and speedometer working. awesome work though!

JACK.