Hello everyone! New to the Foruum, but pleased with what I've seen so far, and hope to be pretty active on the site.

I just purchased a black 2007 Mazda 3 sport hatchback. I am curious what should be my first "mod" to it, so I will phrase the question this way. If you had 200 dollars, what would be the most important mod in your opinion?

I'm not going to mod it to heavily, I really prefer things to look just slightly better than stock. So far the only thing I've done is rewire my cigarette lighter to work when my car is off. (also was trying to fix the ground loop by grounding to same place as radio, but this didn't seem to work at all) I plan on doing some audio work and some engine work, but I do definitely consider myself a noob. I am a senior in electrical engineering at the University of Alabama, though, so I do have a fair amoutn of electrical experience and have recently done a fair amount of work on my '98 explorer that I just replaced with my three (anyone want to buy an explorer? )

One thing that I am honestly considering doing, if easy, is trading the Mazda horn for the explorer horn. Man, one thing that bothers me is a high pitched monotone horn. The Mazda isn't bad, but nothing will sound better than my explorer IMO.

Seriously, though, I think I might paint my rims to color match to my black exterior and paint my calipers red. Just a few little things to make it stand out, and I also may put a small strip of red underneath the side windows to help break up the black a bit.

So what else do y'all think? What is the first thing you did to your virgin Mazda 3?

 

I have three suggestions I make to all new owners, and you've already named one of them. Those are: third key, heated mirrors, and dual tone horn.

For the key if you have two working keys you can program in a third yourself in about 10 seconds. If you have only one key then the dealer has to program a second key via the computer which costs $$. Alternately some lock smiths can hack the system to add a key for less $$. Still if you have two keys adding a third one for the cost of the key is a simple insurance against having to pay anyone for key programming.

For the mirrors all of the wiring is present up to the harness to the mirror housing which means all you have to do to add heated side mirrors is replace the glass and run about 12" of wire from the glass to the inside harness. Given your profession you shouldn't have any issue with doing this, though you can replace the entire housing with the pre-wired one. If you decide to do this mod you have a few choices.
1) install the heated OEM glass ~$45/side
2) install aftermarket heated/blue tinted/wide angle glass ~$90/pair
3) install heated OEM housings ~$200/pair
4) install aftermarket housings w/ head/blue/wide angle, power folding, LED turn signals in cover and puddle lights underneath ~$350

I initially installed the OEM glass. I later got in a group buy for the blue/wide angle glass from thespeedline.com. I love tsl glass and highly recommend it. First off the heating element on the OEM doesn't cover the center of the glass and tsl covers the entire glass...... In theory the center of the OEM glass gets heated from the sides, but tsl glass heats up faster. The wide angle is awesome and helps a lot with blind spots (does take some getting used to though), and the blue tinting helps decrease glare.

I also installed LED puddle lights in my OEM housings which come on when the doors are unlocked, when the doors are opened, and when the ignition is turned off.

Lastly the horn.... yeah it's terrible. I replaced my stock high tone Fiamm with High and low tone Fiamm Freeway Blasters. Car sounds great now. I know of many people who have installed just a low tone horn and it really does make the car sound like a car. Other people have done the Hella Supertones, or a stebel nautilus compact air horn (literally the size of two cans of redbull), or some other off brand horn. Just about anything is an improvement.

Congrats on the purchase and welcome to the forums.

 

I will most likely make the third key, but I almost want to risk it, since I've never lost a key in my four years of driving. That way if I did lose one I would have another key at home to not lose. But then again, if I commit to that, I know I'll lose both... hah.

I like the idea of the puddle lights and will definitely look into that a lot more as well as an overhead ambient light and a few other minor niceties. I will definitely look into the horn more too, and honestly am thinking about trading it with my explorer... even though it would sound like a truck.

About the heated mirrors, I really don't understand them to tell you the truth. Maybe because I live in the south and don't deal with ice and snow. I've heard they are good for fog too, but I've never noticed an issue with it. I might be interested in upgrading the entire console one day to add the lights and all the aftermarket goodies, but I still don't exactly understand the heat.

Thank you very much for the suggestions, though, and yeh.... I'll probably make a third key

 

Yes they are very useful for morning fog on the mirrors. Also for when it's raining as they'll help the water droplets on the glass evaporate so you can more easily.

for both the mirrors and puddle lights here's a walkthrough I did when I installed mine. HOW TO: Heated mirror install, & LED puddle lamps

If you're concerned about adding one key and losing two then you can add more (up to eight total)