Yay for me! Boo for Hellfrauds!

First the bad news. I went down to Halfords today. I was after some new windscreen wipers, and some touchup paint to sort my various scratches and scuffs.

Apparently Halfords only stocks 323BJ wipers in their bog standard Halfords own style. Which I refuse to buy. The Bosch wipers they would have to order, no matter what store I went into to get them! Sigh!

So I thought I would get the touchup paint. Turns out they stock a whole 5 different colours for Mazdas, and that their paint mixer was kaput! So I ended up leaving the place with just some windscreen wash fluid! Least it was cheap!

Thats the end of the bad news onto the good news. While browsing round the Club323f forums I noticed a a topic about modifying the standard air intake system. The stock system has a really really bad location for the open end of the air snorkel.

So this afternoon I took my front bumper off, cut a hole into the bumper reinforcement below where the snorkel sits and reattached it all. Hey voila! My first ever mod! Not really tried it yet but I think throttle pickup is a bit more responsive! But thats not the bit that im happy about, its because I managed to take the bumper off and put it back on all by myself! Im so pleased about it because I have never done anything like that on a car before!

I'll try and get some piccies posted up here soon!

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog! I have decided to keep this blog as a way of keeping track of how the progress on my car is going and so that I could share any information I learnt while in the course of doing things to my car.

So a bit of an introduction.

I bought my 1998 Mazda 323F GSI 1.8 about 6 months ago. Its my first ever car so its special to me! :)

I have no experience what so ever in maintaining a car. I've yet to take a tyre off myself!

... but I plan to learn!

First things first I want to sort out what is wrong with the car as it is. I've got my list of things to do on the right hand side so you can see what I need to do and what has been done.

After I have sorted the current things with the car I think I might try and do some small modifications. I don't want large wings, neon lights or racing stripes, but it would be nice to have a few small engine improvements, maybe some small body modifications and some nicer wheels. However that is all in the future.

I just hope I don't break my car in the process ... ;)