The most popular performance improvement is to fit a 2.5 litre KL
engine, from a Xedos 9 or a 626 (not all had one!) You will
encounter the KLZE engine, removed from Japanese cars - beware; the
best have already gone, and what is left may be of doubtful quality.
There are electrical issues to address; the most important is to fit
the appropriate ECU. If you have a '95 or later, this is far from
straightforward, necessitating a complex adaptor which would have to
be custom-made, or changing the wiring harness to that from the donor
vehicle. The advantage of this mod is that reliability is
unaffected,whereas fitting turbos or superchargers can be quite a
risk (and expense - there are no kits - it all has to be custom-
made). The KLZE ECU is NOT the same as the KLDE ECU, and you really
should have the right one (KLDE is the export engine).

If you want to read up on this, go to www.mx-3.com, and search - if
you just fire off a question, the chances are that it has been
answered many times, and most of the membership are fed up with
newbies who don't search first.

The data you have for cambelt changes is correct, and, provided you
use a genuine Mazda part, that should be fine. Cost - well, it is a
big job, and the cost is mostly labour - if you go to a cheap place,
can you be sure they really did the job? The K series ARE NOT
interference engines, so no, if the belt goes, the engine will not be
damaged.

--- In mazdamx3ownersuk@..., jappocketrocket
<no_reply@y...> wrote:
>
> thanks for that Ian. I suspected as much. what is recommended then
if
> anyone knows? Also how often should we do cambelt changes? stuff I
> have says every 60k miles or 5years but I have seen shorter
> recomendations. whats average cost? quotes I have seen vary from
£250-
> £450! thinking of going to Jem in Hendon, north london.
> any symptoms I should look out for? if it goes does it wreck the
> engine as have seen varying reports on this too!
>