My right round brake light does not work and the right rear turn signal doesn't either. Initially I just assumed it was the bulbs. But last night I noticed something when you turn on the right turn signal, the round brake light flashes lightly. Could it be a relay or something? Or should I just replace the bulbs and see what happens? Thanks.

thewird

 

Check for a bad or loose ground to that light.

 

check that the right bulbs are installed. some weird things happen if you put double filiment bulbs where a single filement bulb should be (and vice versa)

also....didnt you like JUST buy this car? it needs to have all factory equipped lights working to pass a safety.....

 

Yah, I did. I haven't safetied it yet since the place I bought it from wanted $695 to safety and emission it. I figured bulbs, DRL, heater would be a cheap fix so I paid $35 for the plates and 10-day permit. Gonna check now. I haven't really wanted to look at it the past few days cause it was so cold so just drove around with it hehe. Already put over 1,000 km on it with lots of 9k RPM love ^_^.

I'm planning on disconnecting the VFAD when it gets warmer. The stupid thing makes the car feel like theres a small turbo on the car that opens up at high RPM but robs power at low RPM. Well it actually feels like theres 2 turbo's, one at 5.5k (VFAD) and another at ~6.5k which I assume are the secondary ports opening so I can't really fix the second one.

thewird

 

Well I figured out why it was funny. The whole thing was a mess.

The turn signal connector was in the brake hole
The brake light connector was in the reverse hole
The reverse light connector was in the turn signal hole
The bulbs between the turn signal connector and the brake light connector were reversed

So I put everything back the way it should be and no bulbs are burnt at all. However, the brake light connector does not fit in the hole and the turn signal connector is too small for the hole. So for some reason the whole unit was removed at some point and the holes swapped I'm guessing o.O. Anyone know how to remove the unit?

thewird

 

what do you mean "the unit" like the wiring harness peice that has been all mixed up or the actual tail lamp assembly? the tail lamp assembly is as simple as taking the clips off the trunk liner in that area and pulling it back. there should be 2 or three 10mm nuts and maybe a clip/locating pin type dealy holding the lamp inplace. its a peice of cake.

 

The lamp assembly. Thanks.

Thewird

 

Pull the inner liner in the trunk in that area...remove nuts...I think there are 2?, electrical connectors, and pull lamp assembly out

 

remove nuts...ouch....hahahahah

 

Sorry to break you the bad news, but removing the VFAD won't make a lick of difference. The bad throttle response is just the way the car was designed. The gearbox ratio is geared very optimistically, as if the engine puts out 180 lb/ft of torque coming off idle. The car will always feel like you're one gear too high when you're not spanking on it. Good thing you bought this car to put a turbo in lol.

 

Um, I can clearly feel the VFAD opening at 5,500 RPM and then the secondary intake ports (i believe its the secondary ports) somewhere between 6,500 and 7,000 RPM. The fact that I can feel it means its choking the engine just before it opens which means its missing power below 5,500 RPM.

thewird

 

The auxiliary port opens at 6000 rpm, that's probably what you are feeling. VFAD is strictly a noise control device, it has virtually no effect on hp.

Secondary port opens at 3750 rpm. 7250 rpm is when the variable intake duct thing kicks in. 5500 rpm is VFAD.

The Racing Beat REVI intake homepage gives a pretty good account of the experiments they did on the OEM intake design. Basically when they deleted the VFAD piping and switched to the REVI airbox, they found no gain in the lower rpm, and only 3.5-5hp gain in the last couple hundred rpms before the redline. So intake restriction is a non-issue until you hit 8000 rpm+ with the OEM system.

There is a really quick way to disable the VFAD if you want to try it out. Just find the green electrical connector that controls the solenoid-acuated VFAD flap. When you unplug it, VFAD is stuck wide open at all rpm. The Mazda engineers even included a dummy blank plug for you to plug your now useless VFAD plug into (you'll see what I mean when you do it). I don't know how they managed to sneak that big F-ck You dummy plug into the final design, but it always cracks me up when I see it. Nerdy engineering prank at it's finest.

Here's the Racing beat page on the OEM intake: http://www.racingbeat.com/REVi.htm

 

Ok guys I need a little help. I pulled off the headlight assembly and found out it wasn't as I had imagined it. You can't just swap the holes, it seems to be a solid piece. Are the headlight assemblies different between years? All I can say is what the hell lol. Like I said the connectors/bulbs are too big for the brake light and turn signal light. Little help lol.




thewird

 

thats odd man. i dont think there is anything different between years accept the 09s have a completely different lamp assembly. but that would be pretty obvious. do none of the plugs fit any of the holes? or is it just that the correct ones are fitting in the wrong holes? What im getting at, if its the latter option, then you can simply switch the ends either by pulling them apart or clipping the wires and soldering the correct ends for each bulb on the correct wires. is there any evidence of someone having tampered with these before? or an accident that was repaired at a shady body shop. lol.

 

One of the plastic pull-out pins was missing form the center piece on the trunk (the first piece you get to remove the bulbs). And one of the plastic pins are broken on the lamp assembly (I didn't break it I'm sure). It seems to somehow have been shrunken with heat. So that gave me an idea...

I didn't want to buy a new lamp assembly so I pulled out the old soldering iron and this was my solution . Fits like a glove ^_^ The other side only needed a touchup so I didn't bother taking a picture.




thewird