My 323 build.

[Noi5eB0mb]

thanks for sharing! you've taken a pretty crappy car and turned it into something very unique and cool! props for not giving up and the creativity it took to get this done.

What he means is you took a shit car and did it up LIKE A BOSS. I am definitely subscribing, we have a lot of these cars around here, I never thought someone would take such an unusual platform to build on. Good job man!

[neilandbob]

I too thought it would be BMW, then when I saw the Mazda I was dissapointed......that soon went away though, cool build and you're still smiling after all those engine problems, nice job.

[Hotsauce]

Glad you continued to build the car even after so many hiccups

[Lt. Dangle]

Props to you sir, this is gangster, and I will always have a soft spot for a KL powered platform. Now just get some megasquirt, a set of camshafts, and a KLG4 manifold.

[motocaddy]

thanks for sharing! you've taken a pretty crappy car and turned it into something very unique and cool! props for not giving up and the creativity it took to get this done.

[Zic]

ahhh yaeh
you had a lot of ups and downs, props for sticking to it.
just change those damn wheels.

[hinrichs]

badass build, never expected this when i clicked

[Vermilion]

Truely a great build and well done for sticking with it during the bad times. Glad to see you're enjoying it!

[Dr.AK]

Really cool little car Isn't it a bit front heavy with the V6, though?

When I read the title, I was expecting a BMW 323i.

[P78]

cool story bro

no joke

[DeeAOne]

Thanks man. Appreciate it.

However I've been doing this build thread for over an hour. It's time for bed. lol

[Funtington]

SOOOOO MUCH WIN!
mucho respect!

[DeeAOne]

Alright. So after many requests I'm going to try to make this build thread. I'm warning you, it's pretty lengthy. lol

In Feb '09 I picked up the car with a blown headgasket for $500. 2 hour drive turned into a 6 hour one. lol



Fixed the mechanical issues and then you know the first mod I had to do, cut springs. The chrome dookies were only temporary. I was scared to ride around on 13x5s. lol







Picked up these Prime 5 stars for $50. Needed some work but I got them looking pretty decent.



Ditched the S10 lip and painted the bumpers. Still stock 75hp beast at this point. Nothing special yet.



The little B6.



Not long after doing the bumpers one day my buddy and I were just BS'ing while working on his car, and we got on the subject of swapping my motor. I thought about doing the 1.8L BP swap at most, a really common swap in these cars. He asked me about the V6 that's in the Mx6. I was like "as far as I know it's never been done, and I don't plan to do it." I left it at that. lol boy was I wrong..

Not even a month later I was talking to a guy at Autozone who had a Probe GT. My friend had mentioned the KL, and the dude was like "well I have a KLDE I'm about to scrap. The headgaskets are done." That's all I needed to hear. I took it as a sign that this swap needed to be attempted.

Fast forward to the next day and I picked it up, for free.



Slowly gathering pieces for it, almost ready to drop in. It was pretty incomplete..



MX3 shift linkage and 626 Trans. Pick up both for $150. (It's times like these I loved not having something in demand, everything dirt cheap, lol.)





What the car was looking like at the time. American Racing 14's I got for $140. This was one of my favorite stages of the car.



I had almost everything I needed to start the swap, but the little old B6 decided it could do no more. Crank pulley sheered off the motor on the interstate, and wedged itself between the crank nose and frame, instantly locking up the motor. Talk about scary..



So I went ahead and started the swap since the B6 was done anyway.





Gotta love having friends to help out.





Bye Bye B6. This little motor took a hell of a beating. Fastest I got it was 94mph downhill, same day it blew. lol



Of course we had to do a test fit of the KL since it hadn't been done to my knowledge at the time. We had bets going whether it would fit or not. lol



It's in! sorta. lol



Started cleaning the bay..



And then the horrible task of making mounts begun. Luckily my friend is a welder so I had tremendous help from him.

Stock rear mount worked on the KL trans, thank god for Mazda being lazy. lol



Mocked up the passenger side and front mount, not yet bolted in or welded.





Nice clearance huh? lol



Welding the passenger side in..





I was doing shift linkage at the same time, turned out it was an inch and a half too long. So it had to be shortened and rewelded together. The only reason I knew MX3 was close to what I needed was because its what people use in the newer gen Protege/323.





And here she was, in and sitting on her own.



pushed out the garage to clean her up..



Then came the next issue, axles. The stock 88 hubs were way too small to accept the V6 axles, and had a different spline count. So I did some research and found out that the 90-94 protege LX used the same spline count as the KL cars do, and it's the closest to my BF (86-89) 323.

So I bought a whole front setup out of the junkyard.



Had to drill out the lower control arms to accept the BG (90-94 protege) hubs.



Installed. However ran into a problem with the BF tie rods being too short. So I had some nasty toe and camber. Headache after headache I swear.. lol





Ended up finding out that BG tie rod ends will work on a BF tie rod, and are longer. So solved that problem.

Driver side axle at first was a MX3 1.8L V6 axle. Too long at the time but I didn't know..



Passenger side was a whole problem in itself. A passenger side MX3 axle was almost 2 inches too long. The hub stuck out way too far and the strut wouldn't even bolt up.



So I got a guy who claimed he could make me a custom shaft. Yeah I got played. lol



But I ran it anyway because I had other problems to focus on. My radiator arrived around this time..





Had to ditch my A/C to put tuck the radiator under the core support to make space.



My custom $27 hose. My buddy let me go through all the hose at Autozone to find two that would work. Used an exhaust reducer to bring them together. They were different diameters at both ends..





Almost there!



Next up, and my least favorite by far was wiring this baby up. I almost quit the build during this stage. I was so frustrated because I didn't understand wiring enough to tackle a swap like this. Many nights and cursing, but I got it wired up with the help of my friends...I was so happy to hear it run.

http://youtu.be/gSmux6fkTSg

Now that I felt much better that it was fired up, I had to tackle yet another problem. The 323 used a cable clutch and the KL transmission is hydraulic. At this point I found out about a guy in Canada doing a KLZE swap in a Festiva. The chassis' are very similar, and this was his solution. Kinda like an adapter from cable to hydraulic.



when you push in the clutch the cable pulls the release fork on the trans. It work for awhile, but I kept snapping clutch cables. So i went full hydraulic conversion later..

Finally got around to cleaning it up.



3 weeks later after all the work, spun bearing number 6. I was so through with this build by then. lol






I decided not to give up though, and saw it as chance to upgrade from the KLDE. So I painted the bay and got it ready for yet another new heart.



JDM KLZE



Swap was much easier the second time, just had to drop in the ZE since they are identical on the outside.



Picked up the Isuzu I-Mark bumper right after dropping in the ZE. So I had a new front and a new motor. Life is good! lol



Car stayed like this for some time..



Like the only interior shot I have while I was cleaning the carpet. Don't mind the ghetto speakers.. lol



Finally got around to replacing that shit axle with a custom made piece from DriveShaftShop. The driver side MX3 axle was replaced with a Kia Sephia 1.8L BP axle. Yet more sleepless nights of research help me find out that it would work. lol



Everythiing was good for some time.. until I decided to try to fix what wasn't broken. Wanted to swap out the injectors off the old manifold I had. Little did I know these injectors were bad. I had taken them off the ZE because a straight neck ZE manifold won't fit in my car. Either way I went to put them in my curve neck manifold and fired it up. 5 minutes later I had a hydrolocked motor full of gas.

So I got it up on stands and dropped the pan, and pulled off the head. First piston I pulled, number 5..



needless to say I was terrified to see what the rest looked like, but I got lucky and only bent one more.

So down to bare block it went so I could attempt my first motor build..





Mmm shaved heads! Cheater compression gain. lol









Started right up. I'm pretty proud that my first build was a success.

http://youtu.be/wVxi7lcb710

That's how she has been since then with the exception of my XXRs that I finally got in after 2 months of waiting..

And here she is today!



This is not a hardparker either. It gets abused just about every weekend. This was a little run from this past weekend.

Mildly built Conquest.
weisco pistons, Cams, Rods, SS valves, tune. etc..
Skip to 2:30 to see our run. About 40-120.


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k8d08LZExY"]OTR Cobra and Conquest - YouTube[/ame]

That's pretty much the life of my 323 since I have had it give or take a few little misc things.. I put a lot of work into it, and am very happy with how it's coming out. I hope you guys enjoy..