Are there any pieces of scrap metal under our 1st gens that need to be taken off? Like skid plates and stuff? Everytime I look down there, i see like 10 pieces of metal that have either come loose and are hanging, or rusted really bad, or just plain trash from the road (hehe). I am thinking about lifting my car (at a friends house) and cleaing up under my car... what do you guys think?

 

not really.. most of the random metal that is under there is heat sheilds

 

So.... don't remove them? What about victoria british replacement parts?

 

when you start changing things around, some stuff can be removed.. like once i got my carter fuel pump, no reason to have the other fuel pump down there or the heat sheilds for those..

and all the exhaust heat sheilds are gone now that i have my rb exhaust (not sure if that is good or not, but oh well)

 

I may just get some tin snips and make my own damn heat shields. Mine are all flakey and coming off.

 

Caught the heat shields from my cats on a speed bump once... Gone... Well drug it for a bit, wondered What the hell is that. Looked under, ripped it off and threw it in the hatch.

At my shop, customers com in, I hear rattling under my car. Jack it up, a minute with a prybar, hammer, or some good pliers... All fixed.. No more rattle.

 

I read somewhere that some of the heat shields are asbestos So i'd say it'd be a good thing to pull'em.

 

Hell no, the heat shield is all metal. And it weighs quite a bit, mine is gone

 

-Lafz@Pele, funny story. I am a stock man myself. I believe Mazda didnt put the stuff on the car for no reason. Even though we feel it is of no use, if you put thought into thingz you will think of a reason for everything on this wounderful car. I would try to save as much of the heat shelds as possible...this way it doesnt come up through the floor board and make the railing of the seats heat up and other thingz too. I have had that happen to my very 1st seven.. Someone took the heat sheildz off. Just my bit of advise.

Mike

 

The heat shields on my 7 have been trimed,( i just did it)
so they don't hang down on the sides,and enough still
remains to keep the heat low inside the car, i left the
heat shields from the rear axle back around the gas tank
etc. alone though..mazda was pretty good about putting
non functional crap on these cars,if it's there,there's a reason for it

 

I removed all that crap underneath... It's a sorce for unnessary noise and weight. I can honestly say that I didn't notice any change by removing them. Car may seem louder inside, but it was removed when I redid my full exhaust system. I say scrap it..... besides the exhaust doesn't come close to touching anything important under the car. And it makes the car easier to work on, especially if you want to work on your drive line components...

 

The heat sheild does not weight much at all, you guys act like it going to slow you down or something, the thing is only like 2 pounds.

 

I dunno about you guys but my passenger side floor gets rather hot. I've had plastic jugs expand to the point of popping open from the heat. I wouldn't go hapahazardly removing heat shields...

We never removed heat shields at work, because there's that one time in 10,000,000 where someone parks over dry leaves and it catches fire and burns their car down, and they'll blame US for it because we took the heat shields off. So instead we just clamp rattling pipe/cat shields up with a couple hose clamps, or drill and put in sheetmetal screws to re-attach rusted-off body shields. Works like a charm!

 

No they weren't... Those three catalytic converters on my exhaust, after the manifold are useless. As is the rack of solenoids on the top of the engine.

 

All my solinoids work, and as far as the converters go, I think there has been a large improvment over the last 20 years which is why we can get away with 1 - 2 converters now.

 

What solinoids are you talking about? And if they arn't needed (working or not) can I remove them?

 

They are the black plastic thinks on top of what is called the rats nest, they have different colored dots on them. they weight maybe 4 - 6 oz each.
Take-em off you dont need time advancement on your car.

 

Well, see, Mazda cares about things like EMISSIONS....

 

blah.. who needs emissions

 

I do, if I want to register my car

 

yah, well that is my problem.. no cats = no regestration for me.. i need to do something about the soon

 

how impossible is it to pass smog without all of the emissions crap? (not concerned with visual) if you through a cat or two in, is there any chance?

 

Need an airpump to supply the oxygen needed to break down the HC and CO into H2O and CO2.

The purpose of the ACV is to direct the airpump output as needed. The solenoid rack controls various goodies related to this.

Without a cat expect the engine to put out 1500-2000ppm HC's. Limit is usually around 150ppm or so. Basically the smog sniffer would read "TILT"

 

i would obviouls hook up the air pump and acv again (or probably just hook the air pump directly up to the cats) but the question was more of would i be all right without the rats nest

 

OK, that thing that has the different colored dots... what's that called? My car is all stock... do I need those things hooked up without a replacement exhaust? I will be getting one soon, just want to know...