Mazda 3 / Axela

Treated myself to a new ride last month - now have a 2005 Mazda 3 1.6D TS Hatchback in Winning Blue Its pretty cool! Driving around for a month with its CD Player was pretty annoying though, so it was my patient for last weekend.

Its pretty amazing how easy it is to take this car apart. The trim pulls out. The glovebox comes out with two screws under the trim and quite a few pull out clips. The stereo is only held in with two screws. The vent panel is just two screws and a few pop clips. The whole center console is only held in with about 4 screws, and the cupholders ashtray etc just pull out.

I managed to get the cables run from the headunit to the amp location at the back by about lunchtime or so. Not bad. Though the fiddly bits will definitely take longer.

I am using the Autoleads PC99-X46 Mazda -> ISO adapter with 'Multistalk' interface. This connects up to the Autoleads PC99-SON 'Multistalk' adapter patch lead for Sony headunits. It even mentions RM-X2S and RM-X4S on the packet. Looks promising!

The dash kit I used is the 'Metra' kit available in the UK labelled as Autoleads. It normally looks boring with its cheap plastic, but I'm really happy with this shiny painted finish, the photo is lame and doesn't do it justice. The dash kit has a pocket to replace the display which I thought looks quite ugly. A bit of plastic was carefully cut to the shape of the hole and glued onto the hole of the pocket. This was sprayed gloss black. It looks good, but if anything it might be too much black. Its also hard to get a perfect finish on a small part. I may change it later.

The car has a factory fitted tray under the boot floor where my amp sits, and the cables naturally end up after running under the back seat. There are luggage hooks bolted to the chassis inside the boot and these make pretty handy grounding points.

Well, thats enough photos for now. The standard speakers in this car (non-Bose) are pretty bass heavy, but with a little fiddling with the equaliser it sounds quite good (as sweet as the Fabia). I think a speaker upgrade may improve things a lot.

If a Mazda 3 has Climate Control (most of them now I think since the recent facelift) the display would also show the temperature setting and ventilation legends. An adapter is available to get this display working again after the headunit has been removed is around somewhere.

The Autoleads ISO adapter had the permanent live and switched live the wrong way around compared to my battered Empeg loom, so look out for that.

Yeah. Really happy with how it turned out, its great to have it back in my car. The only annoyance right now is the steering wheel controls don't work, but I am doing a little troubleshooting (in another thread) and quite determined to get it sorted. Will post a solution here when I find it!

awesome install porn. Thanks very much for posting that. Looks great!!

Wow, dude! Excellent job!

Nice

I wish my dash was as easy to get into...

I believe we have a contender here for "best install" at the Birthday Meet..

Very nice. I especially appreciate that you did it yourself. Much more satisfying that way.

Thanks for the comments guys! I really appreciate them.

Looks good. Nice job with the Metra dash kit. It's too bad that the only company that makes these things does such a poor job. The one for my car isn't even remotely the right color. Fortunately, Volvo makes one.

Hi,

Did you total up your time (minus the ** breaks ** for explitives). A lot of people don't really understand how long it takes to do a real good custom job? They are used to the free installation claims from the "skilled" installation shops.

Ross

In terms of time, its really spread around if you want to count all the preparation and research - this is what makes the difference I guess.

I must have spent at least 3 hours on the Internet, an hour looking at the (invaluable) workshop manual for my car, 45mins or so in the paintshop (not including drying time, picked it up later). Taking the interior apart was really easy since I had the manual, only took about half an hour. Getting my power cable through the firewall grommet took over an hour and lots of shouting! The simple sounding task of threading cables under the tight carpet at the back took about an hour too. Drilling holes in my tray didn't take long... connecting up my amp, sorting out and crimping my loom took a long time too as it was quite a mess and I like to take my time on the connections.

Its hard to add up the time! The installation time from getting in the car and taking out the first piece of trim to having it in its current state was from Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon. I started at about 10am on both days and didn't work in the car past sunset at around 4pm. But that gave me some time at home in the evening to fiddle around cables, crimp terminals and power tools.

Yeah, that really looks like a great install, some people should take that as an example:

Pretty sweet! ISTR we used a digifine amp as one of our test amps in development of the mk1 (they sold them at the autoparts place a short stroll from my place...)

Hugo

Nice install!! And that's a great set of instructional pictures. Could post those on some Mazda forums for their information. Good work!

Wow! Very impressive.
I had to keep scrolling between the 'before' and 'after' pics. Nice custom work!
It's great to see empegs in modern cars.

Thanks Robotic!

But it seems that the local inbred crack smoking chav scum are curious.



Oh the joys of North London. Busted my rear window, maybe trying to open the door handle from the inside (?). Didn't manage to open the doors or take anything. Hopefully they have now realised that I have deadlocks and use them (click the remote twice - Euro spec only I think).

The alarm in this car is a piece of junk. The siren is in the boot and sounds like a beeping watch from outside because of all the soundproofing. Why they don't hook it up to the nice dual tone horn, I don't know.

Anyway, a Toad 125dB 6 Tone Siren is on its way, and a Toad GSM Text Alert is here so hopefully fit that tomorrow. Yes, the Empeg comes with me when I park.

Assholes.

Wow, it really is just not fair how car thieves operate. Cars should be sold with 12 gauge shotguns, standard.

Thank heaven your system was not harmed. Good move getting the alarm.

But has anyone ever considered (of course they have) an alarm which notifies the owner of a break in? How will you hear the alarm while you're at work? It rings your mobile and gives you GPS coordinates if your car is on the move, of course.

That would be nice.

OUCH! That really sucks, sein!

I hope they didn't hurt it too bad and you've got it back to normal again. Perhaps there's better parking nearby?
Tell us more about the Toad Alert, please!

I'm guessing that's what the "GSM Text Alert" he referred to is.

Sure. Its a little box with wiring loom and antenna which is basically a GSM phone with a Pay-As-You-Go SIM installed.



With the sense wire connected up to your alarm it can send you an SMS message when it goes off. It also has an output for an external siren, and a motion sensor built-in too. Its all configured by sending it messages with a pin. You can put it in valet mode, set the alarm off, silence the alarm, check signal strength etc etc with your phone. Its really neat. I happen to have the manual on my desktop, so I attached that too.

Finally got around to throwing out the standard speakers in my car. It really was about time, the more I listened to them the more I hate them! I went with a set of Alpine SPS-571A components.

Drill some holes. I'm a sucker for the stealth look, the tweeters gotta be flush, yo.


Installed and all wired up.


Man, these things are great! Sounds so good now, I listened to vocalists all the way home and drove slow so I could hear more! Oh, I just feel like going to sit in the car for a bit now lol. After a little bit of tweaking it really sends shivers down your spine.

Sexy!

Mmmm....
Fancy coming over and helping me install some here one day...

lol, I just wrote you a PM Mate, if you ever want a hand, give me a shout, I'm there!

No better way to spend a Sunday.

Very nice. I've been contemplating throwing one into my car, but I don't want to lose the stock dash. It's just an idle thought, though. I doubt I'll get around to installing it.

I'd say that running the power cable was difficult, but the whole of the rest of the install was very easy. It was great having the Empeg in the car, that standard CD Player was so lame. If I found myself back in time, I'd definitely do it again!

Its a shame you were not around a little earlier, a few months ago I took it all out when I sold the car. Now all the bits are with a guy on the Mazda 3 Forum who is unlikely to use the stalk adapter and some of the other stuff.

There is a little adapter you can get somewhere to keep the climate control display. Does your Mazda have 'Bose'? A good friend of mine has it in his Mazda 3 and it is terrible compared to the Alpine in mine. A comparison of the speakers is here and here.