Shiney tires after I painted my calipers. I went with black so that they'd blend in, and so the wheels would pop a little more. Also of course to make them easier to clean and to help prevent rusting over time. I only ended up doing one coat on them so I'll go back at some point and put another couple on so they really look good. I used the duplicolor brush on kit.
When I went back to do some extra layers of paint I also painted around the hub where the lug bolts are to give it a cleaner look.
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In August '06 I ended up buying a few new tires. I made the unfortunate aquaintence with a large construction staple in one of my stock Goodyear RSA tires, and they weren't able to patch the holes as they were too close together. The RSAs are pretty expensive, and aren't that great of an all around tire so I decided to upgrade. Incidentally I had about 20k on the OEM tires, and there's maybe 6 months left on the other two.
I bought two Yokohama YK520 tires. They cost much less than the RSAs, have better wet/dry traction, are quieter, and came with a 60k mile warranty.
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In November '05 I received my new custom deadpedal by Sok07 . I went with black so I could have just a touch of class that wouldn't stick out too much.
I painted the heads of the included screws black with gloss black rust-oleum touch up paint. I put on a good 3 coats so they wouldn't chip when I was screwing them in.
And here are some installed pics.
In the summer of '08 and after having lots of problems with wet shoes slipping off the stock rubber pedal covers I managed to get sok07 so make some custom aluminum pedals for the clutch/brake/gas. These are drilled out and then dipped in an acid bath to give it an emery board like texture, then the rims of the holes were poloshed to shine again. At the same time I installed a newer aluminum dead pedal to replace the original steel one from sok07 . This one is basically the same except in a satin finish isntead of gloss.
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In the summer of '08 I finally managed to get my car's windows tinted. We didn't go super dark with it as we didn't want any problems passing our state inspection. We did however go with a ceramic tint over a metalized one. Ceramic tints tend to be about twice as expensive as the more common metal tints, however they also do a much better job of rejecting heat which was our main goal. Our 40% tint has ~80% heat rejection vs. about 50% on a 20% metalized tint.
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Starting January '08 I finally got around to beginning my LED accent light and courtesy light installs. For the accent lights I used 3 5mm prewired blue LEDs I picked up from Auto Zone. The two front LEDs were placed facing the sides of the car in the metal structural braces for the center console where there were some conveniently placed holes already. The third LED was placed in the back of the center console below the armrest. I painted the top of that LED black so that you only see the light and not the LED while you're in the car. If you're standing outside you can just barely see a glint of blue, but from inside it's completely invisible. The intensity matches perfectly with the OE blue light above the shifter so it blends quite well.
For my courtesy light install I'm using white 4-chip superflux prewired LEDs from oznium.com . I installed two of the superfluxes in the bottom of the side mirrors. Both LEDs are wired to come on when: you unlock the doors with the remote, open a door, or turn off the ignition. They won't be on all the time though.
Along with the courtesy lights I installed two of the superfluxes in the cargo area (one on each side) to supplement the woefully dim light that's there already. They're wired to come on with the hatch door open, and controlled by the same on/off switch on the existing light. They easily put out 2-3 times as much light as the stock incandescent fixture.
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While installing the LEDs in the side mirrors I installed OEM heated glass at the same time. Mazda 3's in the US are prewired for heated mirrors, however they lack wiring from the mirror-side of the harness plug to the mirror itself. I ran new wiring from the plug in the car and once everything was reassembled it all worked perfectly. Check out my walkthrough on mazda3forums for details on the install.
Later in '08 I replaced the OEM heated glass with blue tinted wide angle glass from www.thespeedline.com. The outer edge of the glass is convex and helps eliminate blind spots, and the blue tinting greatly reduces glare while driving. Really it's nearly an equal to my auto-dimming rear view mirror at night. That and they look pretty snazzy too.
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Here's a pic of my installed Dual tone Fiamm horns. I didn't get any while installing, so this is just the after. These are the Fiamm Freeway blaster trumpet style horns. I replaced the stock hi tone, and added a low tone. Each of these horns is 138 decibles and is very noticeable. They fit in the stock location with only a little bit of trouble as there's very little space in there.
The sound of these is worlds different than the stock "clown car" hi-tone horn. Click here for a sound clip. The clip is from droyal on the mazda3forum who has the same setup.
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I installed my Aux Mod basic audio input by Sylfex in October '05. It plugs into the Tape/MD jack on the bottom of the HU and provides a 3.5mm audio input to the stock stereo. I use this to play Mp3's from my palm pilot so I have more options in music and don't have to carry as many CD's.
Before installation
It's a little circuit board and pops right into the jack on the bottom of the HU. Check out Sylfex for more info.
After installation
the cable is routed behind the stereo and comes out in the ashtray. Once I removed the ashtray insert there's plenty of room to coild up the cable for storage, and the door will still close over it.
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I've been on a mission since I bought my car in May '05 to try and retrofit the variable intermittant wipers of newer Mz3's into my '05 which only has fixed intermittant. I mean my '02 Hyundai elantra has VIW, so shouldn't my Mz3? After several setbacks and disappointments I found that there was no way to do this using OEM parts without replacing expensive computer components that they didn't put in the '04/05 models.
My salvation came in the form of billm from the mazda3forums who built an intermittant control module for me. This method provides 8 different delay settings ranging from every 2 seconds up to every 30 seconds. It only functions when the wiper stalk is in the "OFF" position, and is overridden whenever the stalk is in a different position.
It taps into three wires of the wiper stalk harness to tell it when to wipe, and is controlled by a potentiometer (read: knob) that I mounted in the steering column cover. Look here for an install walkthrough.
