shopping for a truck...

[buttons]

i feel ya on this one man! i was born to drive a standard, autos really put me to sleep. BUT they are getting better and better every year and its real hard to match the consistency of an auto. ive been looking for quite some time for a SBRC 4.8 5 speed 99-07 classic but they are pretty damn rare... especially up north where everyone has 4wd trucks. id pretty much just swap all my stuff over into the NBS truck but prolly will never happen. some people just need the fun and complete control on a manual. im one of them. nothing better. good luck on your search

Shifting part is only the half of it. I love the sound of a V8 under direct load. Automatics slip partially and changes the tone of the engine. Granted this can be done with a full lock up torque converter... Yeah, in michigan its hard to find what i want. It needs to be at a dealership unless someone wants to trade for an 06 Mazdaspeed 6. More then likely, i might not get a truck. One dealership offered me 11,000 on trade, another offered me $14,000ish I need $16,000 to even consider a deal. If i cant find a dealer to offer what I need... looks like ill be modding up the mazda.

Right now with just intake and a cobb access port it makes about 250whp (awd)

[midevil1]

go to carmax and see what they will give you. Or you could always buy my truck. 12,500.00 and it's pretty much done. 2004 with less than 48000 miles. Check it out in the classifieds.

[GasGuzzler]

There are no short bed HD's. The 5-speed trans sucks (manual) for performance....sorry to those that have one. A loaded 2004 CCSB hemi Ram with leather isn't worth $11K in the real world so leave that RC to someone else. You have a masdosomething. Doesn't seem like much of a trade.

[txarkitekt]

go to carmax and see what they will give you. Or you could always buy my truck. 12,500.00 and it's pretty much done. 2004 with less than 48000 miles. Check it out in the classifieds.

Yeah, I'd say the same--go to CarMax and see what kind of offer they will give you.

Midevil's truck is the one to buy man! Its got the HO 5.3L, which you would LOVE. You really should get it!

But the Mazdaspeed 6 is a great car too--lots of aftermarket things to be done on it. Its a good lookin car with a badass motor in it. Is it the Grand Touring model? How many miles? If you are sitting around 20k-30k miles, you might be able to get $16k out of it with a private sell. I doubt any auto dealership would give you $16k for it...

[buttons]

The mazdaspeed 6 replaced two cars. The more mods I did to my firebird the less I liked driving it -- well commuting in it. Lots of vibration and i could never get it figured out. I also had a 02 passat 1.8T i was driving to and from work. I thought if i got something like a STi/Evo/Speed6 I could haul my family AND haul ass. Not to mention they are all wheel drive for the winter months.

While the speed 6 had the most options for the lowest price. i got my 06 last year with 15k miles for 19k. 274hp stock, 6 speed, hid, bose, etc etc So far ive only done an CAI which does nothing or possibly made the car slower and then got a cobb accessport and put in a "canned" tune. This made a huge difference, mazda's car has electronic throttle control, after 5500rpms the ecu starts closing the throttle and the car falls on its face. WIth the cobb, it stays open to redline, The car feels like it should from the factory now.

I was right on the border of doing 3" downpipe, 3" test pipe, 3" cat back for $800 which should bump me up to 290whp~ based on what others have dyno'd Then I started thinking about the future. Im planning on relocating to north carolina this year and would like to get out of some debt at the same time. Trading my car in for 15-16k towards an 8-9k truck would go along way to giving me some more financial breathing room... not to mention I could use the truck to haul my stuff down there -- use the truck to fix up a foreclosed house, i might buy -- and get back into the v8 world.

4cylinders can make plenty of power and get good gas mileage, but i hate the vibration. They arent smooth like a 6/8/12 My car will go like stink above 3500rpms, but from a dead stop you can tell the engine struggles to get the car moving under normal driving. I love the sound of a v8 too

The highest horsepower mazdaspeed guy right now has 398whp, and he just parted his car out and is trading it in. Most mazda guys cant get over 315whp even with huge turbos because the MZR motor is so hard to tune. I think the MAF maxes out at 350whp. There is guys with just regular mazda 3/6 with a non direct injection 2.3 that made over 400whp -- its a real pain in the ass to tune these direct injection motors. They have high compression, very little after market support for injectors/fuel pumps. We get knock like crazy. My car will knock going down the highway at 75mph in 6th gear just going up a slight hill sometimes.

[txarkitekt]

Yeah, that is the Achilles Heel of that great motor--the DI. Sure, it provides more power and better efficiency from the factory, but there is little out there right now in the aftermarket world to support those DI mods. There is no doubt the MZR is a great motor, it's just that there is a plateau...once you get there, you want more, but there is nothing else to do. I know the mods for a 'Speed 6 are expensive. If you get out of that car and get into a GM NBS truck, then you can take the equity you get out of it and throw some mods on.
I have pretty much every bolt on mod needed to support everything else, and with a good live tune, I see 20-21 mpgs on the highway.