Ownership Verified: My 1991 Mazda 323F

A retired couple around the corner from me have an absolutely immaculate 323F. Every day I walk past, the owner's outside polishing it, fixing whatever needs fixing, vacuuming it and more polishing. It seriously is in concourse condition. I wish I could buy it second hand.
 
Sounds great. It probably has a lot better equipment than mine, too.
 
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Worn front left is worn.
 
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So, to replace the worn tires (which I successfully ruined completely at Botniaringmeet), I had four new Goodyear Excellence tires installed three weeks ago, quite affordably. After I got home, I noticed that three of my wheels were marked with 4-6 dents on each.

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Went back to complain the next day, and pretty much faced a wall of denial. "Couldn't have been us, maybe it's your neighbour who's taken a chisel to them." Called a customer board, filled out their complaint form and mailed it to the tire shop - demanding 50% off every tire that had been installed carelessly.

Two weeks go by, and this morning they called they'll settle and pay me. "Could've been the weighting machine." The damage is quite noticeable, and will annoy me immensely in the future, but at least they owned up and refunded reasonably.

Anyway, the tires are really good.
 
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are you sure your tires are inflated hard enough. the center profile looks like it's still in OK state, while the edges are completely worn...
 
The alignment probably wasn't completely right. Anyway, that tire and the others are probably shredded by now.
 
Tire shops must be the worst business in terms of taking responsibility for the shit they screw up. A local place around here managed to screw up mounting all 4 of my brothers brand new tires. They ended up blowing out and all the tire shop had to say was "Tires were defective, contact the manufacturer." Worst part is you can't do much if anything to prove otherwise, best thing to do is just never go to the same place again. Good to see you were able to get something out them though.
 
There's a great little shop down the road from where I live that has never chipped a wheel mounting tires for us, it's a great feeling supporting the little guys who know what they are doing.
 
public's old left front tire looks like the Failtima's old left front tire.

...what is it with FG and bald left fronts? Lulz.
 
public's old left front tire looks like the Failtima's old left front tire.

...what is it with FG and bald left fronts? Lulz.

We like to go around right handers really fast? :p
 
There's a great little shop down the road from where I live that has never chipped a wheel mounting tires for us, it's a great feeling supporting the little guys who know what they are doing.

Yeah, I want to find one like that.
 
I used to have 1992 Mazda 323 GT 1.8i with DOHC. Loved it, but the maintenance costs on the old thing just became to much. Especially when quoted ?500 for a single brake caliper. The car was definitely a looker. The one below wasn't mine but was the same colour and looked just like it. I always loved the pop-up headlights, it's a pity no cars today have them today, apparently pedestrian safety laws made it to difficult and expensive to incorporate them into a design.

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When I got the car, the mileage was 94 423; now it's 50k more (and a little bit more than that to be exact). This Friday, I dug the F out of a snow drift and juiced the battery up with a jolt from the Sapporo - as it was time to attend the #gear.fi Ice Track Extravaganza on Saturday. Which, due to global warming, got cancelled (the only overly warm weekend of the winter just had to be this past weekend, and there was too much water on the ice we were supposed to hoon on). Anyways, despite getting the cancelling SMS halfway through my journey to Kymi Valley, southeast Finland, I wasn't complaining. After three weeks behind the wheel of the relatively enormous Sapporo, the 323F felt light, sharp, direct and hugely enjoyable. And last night, starting off at 9:30PM, I had five-ish hours to drive back west.

I just can't tell you how much I like the gearbox. The movements are short and slick, and imho it feels better to use than any BMW's I've driven. I love the steering feel, too, despite the car running on winter rubber. So, what's there left to hate? Not much; the Sapporo has taught me how useable cruise control is, and that the 323F could use a bit thicker sound proofing. And after 2000km in the Mitsu, switching on the full beams and finding the inside door handle were challenging. But creature comforts like cruise are useless in the F, to be honest - it's all about being light and no-frills. Since I couldn't just select cruise and let the car sit at a comfortable 2500rpm, it was the natural course of action to simply over-drive it. I had all the speed camera locations for the 500 km drive stored in my head, I had a Thomas Dolby compilation in the CD player. So, I drove camera-to-camera, only stopping for a burger and a coffee halfway through at midnight. If you don't count truck rigs, I probably saw three cars after passing Tampere - and despite giving the F stick, it still did 7l/100km (33,6MPG) on 98E5.

So, both of the cars have their uses. The Sapporo does long-distance well, and there are times when I like to be cocooned in blue velour and chrome inserts - and do not care much for darty, jittery sportiness. But give me a slippery, deserted road, a clear sky and a desire to get somewhere quicker than I need to - and I'll take the 323F every time.
 
Nice writing. :)
 
You know it's summer in Finland when you can start seeing through the snow. :p
 
Yep :p

Will be keeping the winter tires under the Sapporo for a while, in case it snows/freezes again. I do my long-distance driving with it, so it needs to be secure.
 
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A little bit of spring cleaning.
 
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