2013 Mazdaspeed3 - Dark Side of the Zoomzoom

[captainobvious]

Did you get your snow tires on? Curious how they'll do, I plan on getting some this fall. I'm thinking I can get some stuff done inside the car the weekend on March 22/23, you gonna be around?

Yep.

From the stock 18's to 17's with Yokohama IG20 snow and ice tires. Mounted on Effect wheels in bronze.

BEFORE:





AFTER:

[captainobvious]

My car could use a slight lowering methinks...

[captainobvious]

That would get you pulled over RIGHT NOW here... and our cops are lenient for the most part.

If they're turned ON, yes. You can probably get away with it otherwise, but RED fogs is just a horrible idea. They look like the stock units so I wonder if he simply put a coating or spray on them for the color change...?

[OSN]

If they're turned ON, yes. You can probably get away with it otherwise, but RED fogs is just a horrible idea. They look like the stock units so I wonder if he simply put a coating or spray on them for the color change...?

I looked it up, it's actually a federal law that only emergency vehicles can have red or blue lights on the front, so....I'll be keeping them turned off until I get the lenses swapped. I also see they sell films that go over the lenses but that doesn't seem to be the case here. Thanks for pointing it out, Chad...it hadn't even occurred to me, probably also not to the previous owner.

Have you driven in the snow with the new set yet? Any thoughts?

[BigAl205]

They're soul-stealing gingerlights!

[OSN]

Maybe that's why I haven't been pulled over.

[OSN]

It's about time I got some work in on this car, and it's about time the weather has cooperated with getting work done.



The goal was relatively simple: do all the work that requires me to remove the seats and carpet, as it is time consuming and a pain in the ass. I also want to limit the chances of wear and tear with scratching panels, breaking clips, etc.

I first disconnected the negative terminal of my battery to avoid any glitches with disconnecting airbag sensors and such:


Then gutted the floor of the car and the hatch completely:

[OSN]

All those black patches are stock 'deadening material' to reduce resonance in the body panels. I found the front of the car to be mostly resonance free, whereas the hatch area had a lot of resonating panels, especially at the bottom of the spare tire well. I was really surprised by how bad it was back there. I started by adding CLD tiles from Don at www.sounddeadenershowdown.com; his products are top-notch!


I didn’t intend to use this much, I kept going until knocking on the panels sounded like a solid thud. Like I said, the rest of the car was pretty solid:

[OSN]

I then started with the Closed Cell Foam (CCF) layer (1/8” thick for the cabin and 1/4” thick for the hatch, also from www.sounddeadenershowdown.com) to isolate the Mass Loaded Vinyl (MLV) layer from the any sheet metal resonance that may remain. I then followed with the MLV layer, which is Acoustical Solutions AudioSeal AB10NR-30-RL that I picked up from Glenn with what he had left over from his Scion. I added an additional MLV section at the bottom of the spare tire well, given how thin and flimsy it seemed there coupled with the hatch being the area with the most road noise to attenuate (exhaust):

[OSN]

Notice anything missing? The driver’s side rear seat belt is not shown; it was unbolted because it is attached to the rear seat back. I just had to slice and re-tape at the bolt location. As you can see, the MLV is not exactly malleable and I had to massage a few areas when putting the carpet and trim pieces back in place. The only area I struggled with by the time I finished was the front seat bolts in the rear along the center console; the plastic cover trim didn’t have space to clip back onto the feet of the rails.

I then looked to the hatch door:



I cut up some remains of the Luxury Liner Pro (CCF bonded to MLV) that I had from previous cars, and applied some of Don’s badass Velcro with adhesive on both sides:





And then filled the space with carpet padding that I no longer needed thanks for added thickness of the new materials:



I will then add layers of CCF and MLV over the whole area around the hatch window. I didn’t really need to do this step yet, since I still have the hatch area open to tackle at a later date, but it was the end of the day and I was losing daylight and didn’t want to start the next step until the next day: running wire.

I was fortunate enough to have wiring prepared by Steve that he was replacing to up his game for competing purposes, so I had virtually nothing to prepare to get the wiring in the car. Welded, techflexed 1/0 gauge welding cable right up the gut:





I just have it coiled up in the dash for now, and I will address now that my interior has been re-assembled. I ran 2 pairs of 4 channel RCAs (Knu Konceptz) along the passenger side in hopes of avoiding induced noise from other higher voltage runs in the car. A lot of the factory wires on that side are for the Bose amp which won’t be powered when the RCAs would be carrying a signal. Those are also coiled up under the dash and figure on putting the DSP in the dash somewhere. You will also see a remote wire tethered to the power cable and the black-jacketed wiring run to the underside of the front seats for powering the heated seat elements: