The 1.8 L engine has nothing special to it? Au contraire! It has such a wonderfullly characteristic intake note, somehow deep, earthy, coarse, but warm ... I don't know - I immediately recognize it from a distance. 8:14 also brought a big grin to my face. That is the sound I remember! Please don't spoil it with some obnoxious sport exhaust sound, instead do it like Quinn from The Slip Angle and celebrate this beautiful engine sound by installing ITBs: ruclips.net/video/jyd5mfwMLIY/видео.html Regarding fuel consumption: 13.5 l/100 km is pretty high, but may be you were really stuck in traffic most of the time. :-) With the same engine and may be 1/4 city, 1/4 autobahn and the rest b-roads I usually had a consumption between 8 and 10 l/100 km (also dependent on how often I was doing the drift stuff and chasing the redline). About the weight: There are a lot of things that add up. Now driving a ND I can definitely say that the NB has some weight stored in sound dampening. The ND is loud as hell, and not in a good way. At 140 km/h a normal conversion isn't possible anymore (at least not in the Primeline version with the less dampened roof). Everything is thinner and lighter in the ND and therefore prone to vibrating. It is awesome as hell what the Mazda engineers did to lose so much weight (look at those thin brake lines!!!), but it comes with a price. So - enjoy your quite NBFL! Especially on the autobahn at top speed that thing just hummed, where as in the ND I feel like I'm sitting in the middle of a hornet's nest. Last but not least: I spotted at least one roundabout in your video. That's the base for some good content come winter and night time. ;-)
Not to worry, for me, the engine IS special I just meant it's not necessarily an exotic piece. But there's an upside to that. It's low maintenance and more or less bulletproof. Anyways, good tip on the ITBs, though at that cost I suspect I will go with restoring the bodywork by eliminating the rust first. That might be sometime in the first half of next year, but it remains to be seen. As for fuel economy, if we are talking about mixed driving I can achieve about 10l/100 km but with minimal city driving. Otherwise, in a lively drive through the hills, I can get 7-8 liters no problem, and it baffels me because I consider the work for the engine to be much more demanding (3-5k rmp, climbing, agressive turns etc.) But anyway, those are insignificant details. And not least, thanks for taking an interest and sharing your thoughts. Cheers, mate!
@@techbytech85 Yeah, rust prevention or repair is definitely the first thing to do when one acquires a 20 year old car. The weak spots on the NB are the front frame rails and the sills right in front of the rear wheels. The latter can be prevented if one keeps the the drain holes, where the folded roof goes, clean. I always did that, so no problem there on my NBFL. But I neglected the rust prevention on the underside, and in the end the front frame rails did not look too good. It is good to hear that you are gonna be smarter about that than I was! 🙂 Cheers!
![KSI - Dirty [Official Visualiser]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VoDh1h1dPUE/mqdefault.jpg)
The 1.8 L engine has nothing special to it? Au contraire! It has such a wonderfullly characteristic intake note, somehow deep, earthy, coarse, but warm ... I don't know - I immediately recognize it from a distance. 8:14 also brought a big grin to my face. That is the sound I remember! Please don't spoil it with some obnoxious sport exhaust sound, instead do it like Quinn from The Slip Angle and celebrate this beautiful engine sound by installing ITBs:
ruclips.net/video/jyd5mfwMLIY/видео.html
Regarding fuel consumption: 13.5 l/100 km is pretty high, but may be you were really stuck in traffic most of the time. :-) With the same engine and may be 1/4 city, 1/4 autobahn and the rest b-roads I usually had a consumption between 8 and 10 l/100 km (also dependent on how often I was doing the drift stuff and chasing the redline).
About the weight: There are a lot of things that add up. Now driving a ND I can definitely say that the NB has some weight stored in sound dampening. The ND is loud as hell, and not in a good way. At 140 km/h a normal conversion isn't possible anymore (at least not in the Primeline version with the less dampened roof). Everything is thinner and lighter in the ND and therefore prone to vibrating. It is awesome as hell what the Mazda engineers did to lose so much weight (look at those thin brake lines!!!), but it comes with a price. So - enjoy your quite NBFL! Especially on the autobahn at top speed that thing just hummed, where as in the ND I feel like I'm sitting in the middle of a hornet's nest.
Last but not least: I spotted at least one roundabout in your video. That's the base for some good content come winter and night time. ;-)
Not to worry, for me, the engine IS special I just meant it's not necessarily an exotic piece. But there's an upside to that. It's low maintenance and more or less bulletproof.
Anyways, good tip on the ITBs, though at that cost I suspect I will go with restoring the bodywork by eliminating the rust first. That might be sometime in the first half of next year, but it remains to be seen.
As for fuel economy, if we are talking about mixed driving I can achieve about 10l/100 km but with minimal city driving. Otherwise, in a lively drive through the hills, I can get 7-8 liters no problem, and it baffels me because I consider the work for the engine to be much more demanding (3-5k rmp, climbing, agressive turns etc.)
But anyway, those are insignificant details.
And not least, thanks for taking an interest and sharing your thoughts. Cheers, mate!
@@techbytech85 Yeah, rust prevention or repair is definitely the first thing to do when one acquires a 20 year old car. The weak spots on the NB are the front frame rails and the sills right in front of the rear wheels. The latter can be prevented if one keeps the the drain holes, where the folded roof goes, clean. I always did that, so no problem there on my NBFL. But I neglected the rust prevention on the underside, and in the end the front frame rails did not look too good. It is good to hear that you are gonna be smarter about that than I was! 🙂 Cheers!