>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>BUILDING A MONSTER<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

So, you're ready to sink thousands of dollars into your Protege? Be sure to read this first so you know what to expect. First off, if you're interested in over 250whp, you'll *need* (to be safe) a built block. I *STRONGLY* recommend the Mental Addiction Built Block. When it comes to buying a block, you should NOT skimp out or simply find the cheapest solution. If you do, you will pay down the road when something happens, or your lower quality parts give in to stress. The Mental Addiction Block is a piece of art. It is the same engine that I am currently running as well, and mine has over 5,000 miles on it already in just two months with no problems at all.

Lets talk cost. The Protege built block typically costs $3,000 to $3,500 depending on how crazy you get.
If money isn't a problem, you could get some cylinder head work done too for another $2,000. You'll have one wicked engine if you have more money in the cylinder head than the bottom end. Remember- DON'T forget that if you're planning on buying a built motor, you'll STILL need to use your old cylinder head, or find a new one. I would recommend that you bring your existing cylinder head to a machine shop and make sure everything is within OEM tolerances and that your head isn't warped or cracked. Plan on spending at LEAST $3,500 because something always comes up.

Lets talk installation. Who's going to install your block for you? It is NOT an easy task, and is not something an amateur mechanic should do by them self. It is a very involved task and involves giving your body a tough workout. On my engine swap, we had three people working on it (Thanks Ryan and Jamie!!) and it STILL was something I wouldn't want to do again. Getting the engine out was definitely easier than putting it back in. My advice is if you plan on doing it yourself, goto Home Depot or a hardware store, and buy some small storage containers, and put all the screws, hardware, etc that you take off into the containers, making SURE to label them. This will save you a TON of time when reinstalling the engine. If you don't plan on doing the install yourself, plan on spending about $2,000 to have a mechanic do it. Its a LOT of work. Taking the old engine out, putting the new one in, recharging the A/C, all the fluids, reinstalling the head, new gaskets, etc.

Take a break- add up only two of the things I've mentioned. So far, I've only told you the cost of the block and the cost of the install if you don't plan on doing it yourself. The cost is upto $5,500 if you get it installed, or around $3,500 if you do it yourself, and this is just for the ENGINE, don't forget we haven't even thrown a turbo kit in the cost of parts or installation. You thinking harder about it now? You should. This is not something that you decide to do while day dreaming. Its something that needs to be well planned out and researched. Its not right for everyone.

If you do decide to go ahead with this, remember that it will take weeks to get your motor machined, assembled, and shipped. You shouldn't expect to pay $5,500 and have your Protege haulin' ass tomorrow. Its not that easy. It takes time. Having said that, I planned my upgrade like this: I bought the block in November, so I could have it by February or March at latest. I planned on installing the motor in March, and I set aside a FULL WEEK to do it with THREE people.

Don't forget about all the misc. expenses you'll get hit with while doing all this work... because I'm SURE that you'll have to buy something you forgot about, or lost (like hardware). What I would personally do if you're getting a built engine is buy a spare engine (so you can drive your car in the mean time) and then just swap motors out, and if nothing goes wrong, you're only out of your car for around a week, and then you have a spare block that you can either resell, or keep; its upto you.

After thinking about the engine so much, you should stop and focus on the other major obstacle to getting the power to your wheels: the transmission. Do you have an automatic? If you do, you really shouldn't be wasting your time on getting a built engine, because the Mazda Protege Automatic Tranny is garbage and won't hold anything over 10psi. If you have the manual tranny, you're doing better, but still, the internals on the tranny are designed for 100whp, not more.

Personally, at this point, think its fairly safe to hit 300whp on the manual tranny if you are GOOD at shifting and aren't hard on your tranny. If you beat on your tranny, or miss gears, or grind gears, you'll want to look into a set of aftermarket hardened gears, which you can get custom made for you and get custom gear ratios. This however, is NOT a cheap solution. Custom Gears cost about $3,000. Then you have another obstacle: axles. Will the frail stock axles hold 300whp punishment all day at the track? I wouldn't bet on it. Currently, a limited number of "beefier" axles were made for the 3rd Gen Protege by Drive Shaft Shop, but they may not be available. If they are, expect to drop another $500 just on two axles.

If you haven't gotten the hint that this is EXPENSIVE AS HELL to do, you better get that though in your head. If you are starting to think about making payments every month to get all this stuff, DON'T DO IT. Its foolish. Invest in something that has a return rather than something that loses value. You may ask why I spent so much on my car... sometimes I wish I hadn't done it. It would have been much nicer to have a large down payment for a house.

Spending all this money on a car is foolish if you don't have it ALL AT ONCE. Trust me, if you don't have all the money at once, and spend $10,000 on this all, and one part breaks, and you need a car for your job, what are you going to do? You'll be stuck. I know its not something you want to think about, but its foolish to only think about how fast the car will be- you should think about ALL the possible implications are of modifying a car to this degree.

After its all said and done, then you have to think about how to manage this huge, fuel sucking engine. What kind of EMS are you going to use? There are a handful of options when it comes to EMS: some of the options include: AEM, Haltech, MPI (crap), Emanage, Unichip, etc. Its a very big decision again involving potentially thousands of dollars. This is yet another area that you SHOULD NOT simply buy the cheapest. This is going to be the one thing that has virtually complete control of your brand new, built engine... do you really want a cheap program to fail and to blow or ruin your engine? Not at all. Download the software for each EMS and play around with it yourself- see how friendly it is, if you like it, the ease to tune, etc. Then find people that actually are running the EMS you are looking at and ask them questions- how reliable is it. Does the car run like OEM? How much time did it take you to tune it to your satisfaction? All these questions are good ones to ask so you can narrow down which EMS is right for you.

With all this money, you really should look at a good tool set, because when you "play" around with your car like this, things DO go wrong... I would encourage you to goto Sears or similar and buy a nice mechanics tool set. It will come in handy when you are facing your darkest hours. Also go buy a compression tester- the one tool to tell you if your engine is running correctly and as effective as it should.

If your EMS that you buy allows use of the OBD and stock ECU, I would also go buy a scan tool, because with your turbo kit and your EMS you will definitely want to make sure that the stock ECU and your car are still doing ok by scanning your CEL (MIL) from time to time. I also use my Auto-X-Ray scan tool as a scanner to tell me what my vital engine stats are (such as timing advance, intake air temp, O2 trim, fuel trim, exact RPMs, pending CELs, and much more) It won't hurt. Just remember, I told you this is going to cost you a lot!

If you are serious on spending all this money on your car and plan to "show it off" or to race it or similar, and have a fair share of money already into it, I would also suggest finding a company, local or national, that is interested in helping you or using you to advertise their product (Sponsors). I currently have two sponsors, and it sure is opening the door to getting bigger names signed on with me.

Take a good look at all the pictures on the page. You can see a little bit of what you may be getting into. Again, be prepared to spend a lot of time deciding what to do, and IF you go ahead with it, be prepared to spend a LOT of money, time, and effort getting your car to the 300whp level!

Feel free to contact me if you'd like to know more about my setup or if you have any other questions.

Page 1 Introduction to the MP3
Page 2 How to Build a Protege
Page 3 Current Modifications
Page 4 About Me
Page 5 Random Photoshoots
Page 6 Mazda Meet Photos
Page 7 Miata (SOLD!)
Page 8 Friends High HP Mazdas
Page 9 Blog Updates from 2003
Page 10 Blog Updates from 2004
Page 11 Blog Updates from 2005
Page 12 Blog Updates from 2006
Page 13 Blog Updates from 2007
Page 14 Blog Updates from 2008