The Transition - My MX3 story.
Posted: June 2nd, 2014, 11:13 am
It all started off in 2005 when my Ford Probe decided that it wanted to become a boat... It had always wanted to be a boat, and one day while driving home through a torrential downpour, at the corner of Warden & 14th avenue, where a water-main also broke, the car sucked it's 1.25L of incompressible fluid and seized solid... then started floating along until it rested gently against a curb... with the passing of each truck, the wake making my probe bob up and down in the water... I ended up swimming out my window into a passing truck. The car was a write off, obviously, and I was glad to be off that boat.
I went a year of school in Peterborough without a car... well, more like a fall and a winter, and when summer came along I found this guy in London On. selling his KLZE swapped MX3, which had a nice little skirt kit on it too.
That MX3 lasted me almost 2 years, until while driving from Hamilton to Toronto, I lost my waterpump/power-steering belt and the engine COOKED itself until the head gasket blew, and well... it died.
But I wouldn't let it go... So I had it towed from Hamilton to Markham, where I could store it at my dad's place until I could get a new engine to drop in... I never did, and it stayed in the garage being unloved for many years... my dad died last year (2013). So we cleaned out his place, and I had the car towed to my new house in Guelph. Engine, now seized solid.
Having a small inheritance, I thought I would fix the old girl up... but when I started looking for KLZE engines, I came across another KLZE swapped MX3 out in the Cambridge area. The body was in horrible shape, and the car was covered in stickers and stuff that made it look horrible... but the engine was good...
Hey! Maybe I can grab that for a song and a dance and be on my merry way! So I waited until the last possible second and grabbed the car before it was going to hit the scrappers. (Owner was moving to Alberta and was taking his VW, the Mazda wasn't going with.)
So then it was just a matter of picking which car to swap what with. His was a 1995, mine was a 1992... mine needed electrical and engine work... his needed body and suspension work... and his had less rust. BINGO!
I went a year of school in Peterborough without a car... well, more like a fall and a winter, and when summer came along I found this guy in London On. selling his KLZE swapped MX3, which had a nice little skirt kit on it too.
That MX3 lasted me almost 2 years, until while driving from Hamilton to Toronto, I lost my waterpump/power-steering belt and the engine COOKED itself until the head gasket blew, and well... it died.
But I wouldn't let it go... So I had it towed from Hamilton to Markham, where I could store it at my dad's place until I could get a new engine to drop in... I never did, and it stayed in the garage being unloved for many years... my dad died last year (2013). So we cleaned out his place, and I had the car towed to my new house in Guelph. Engine, now seized solid.
Having a small inheritance, I thought I would fix the old girl up... but when I started looking for KLZE engines, I came across another KLZE swapped MX3 out in the Cambridge area. The body was in horrible shape, and the car was covered in stickers and stuff that made it look horrible... but the engine was good...
Hey! Maybe I can grab that for a song and a dance and be on my merry way! So I waited until the last possible second and grabbed the car before it was going to hit the scrappers. (Owner was moving to Alberta and was taking his VW, the Mazda wasn't going with.)
So then it was just a matter of picking which car to swap what with. His was a 1995, mine was a 1992... mine needed electrical and engine work... his needed body and suspension work... and his had less rust. BINGO!