Vigo,
My uncle helped me by helping me do all of the body work and paint on my 65 mustang when I was his age. I'm extremely happy to return the favor and do the same thing to help out my nephew with his first car. 
On the flip side, it'll keep the tradition of being able to drive a stick shift alive in our family.
Great project. Did you manage to get the front bumper off without breaking some of the body clips? I know genwon MS3 guys have a bunch of trouble with them. So much so that they commissioned Quik-Latch to make a custom sized post for the the application to prevent sagging.
My father had a 2007 black hatchback GT purchased right around the time that I graduated college. It was quite a bit of fun to commute in.
The0retical wrote: Great project. Did you manage to get the front bumper off without breaking some of the body clips? I know genwon MS3 guys have a bunch of trouble with them. So much so that they commissioned Quik-Latch to make a custom sized post for the the application to prevent sagging. My father had a 2007 black hatchback GT purchased right around the time that I graduated college. It was quite a bit of fun to commute in.
My front bumper is all effed up for that very reason.
Bumper came out no problem but it is an Austin, TX car that I don't think ever left the state it's whole life. So everything came apart pretty smooth.
So I got most of the new motor ready to go back in today. An interesting thing when I took the oil pan off the old motor. I was fully expecting it to just be full of metal glitter from a bearing. I found nothing. The only place I saw any metal was in the oil filter. I'm beginning to think the motor mount that was toast was the cause for the knock and not the motor actually being bad. Oh well, Not a big deal. The motor had over 200K on it and the new one has a fifth of that. I didn't have the right torx bit handy to pull the bearing caps and see. I may actually have a good core for the re-builders.
Surprisingly, It's all going together pretty decently. The only real snag I've ran into so far is the 2.5L motor has a locator dowel on the one mounting spots for the alternator so I had to bore out the alternator mounting hole to make it fit.
The only major thing I have left is putting the crank pulley on the new motor. I was starting to get hot and tired today and I just didn't want to mess it up so I'll get that tomorrow after work or maybe later tonight. From there, I'll put the flywheel and new clutch on and put the transmission back on. Then it will just be plugging all of the sensors back in and run the hoses. I'll have some picture of some things to post later.
Oh, And I found a MS3 rear sway bar and a set of volvo c30 sport springs at the local pick and pull. It'll drop the car a little bit and should make it nice and neutral. I need to stop shopping and just get it done or I'm not going to want to give it up. 
So Budget Check:
Car: $100
Engine: $510 delivered
intake adapter: $100
Intake Gaskets:$18
Exhaust Gaskets: $22
Strut Mounts: $114
Struts: $316
Springs: $20
Rear Sway Bar: $15
Rear Main Seal: $35
Timing Kit: $35
Headlights: $165
Antenna: $15
Rear Tires: $142
Tire mounting and Alignment: $150
Rear Lateral Links: $60
Front Control Arms: $129
Clutch: $168
Cooling hoses and Thermostat: $71
Front Brake Pads and Rotors: $119
Front Tie Rods: $80
Motor Mounts: $99
CV Joints: $126
Grand Total: $2474
Overall, Not too bad. There were a lot of things on here that were not 100% necessary. I didn't need to change the control arms, I could have just gotten new ball joints but I figured the bushings were close to shot so I just did those too. Same thing with the tie rod ends. One was bad but I didn't know when the other was replaced so I replaced that too. Also, I could have made my own intake adapter with some more time but I was tight on time and didn't want to have to worry about it. Finally, the car didn't need new rear tires but they were discontinued and they were close enough anyways that it made sense for me to put a new pair on while I could get them. Finally, I could have possibly reused the CV joints but chose to put new ones on just because they were off.
Overall, I have to say the swap is really rather easy. It's not much harder than a straight engine swap. The only thing that was hard is that you have to change everything over to the new motor. Again, Not hard but just time consuming. Just changing the front crank pulley took about 2 hours since you have you have to lock everything down since the front crank pulley is not keyed. The only really gotcha is that I had to bore out one of the mounting tabs of the alternator.
I should have everything connected and buttoned up this weekend. I won't get it started because I have 1 part missing that is on order.
Nice build
You know it's funny that you never hear of anyone using volvo springs on a regular Mazda 3. I took mine off an R-Design C30 and I'll be very interested in seeing what the final drop looks like. I put them in over the weekend while I was installing the sway bar and replacing the lateral links which weren't as toasty as they looked bolted on the car. They slide right in and are exactly the same size as the stock Mazda 3 springs which I already knew would be the case since it's exactly the same chassis. I'll get some pictures when I'm done. I wanted something subtle but still very usable since this car will see snow in it's future.
Not sure if you're getting private messages but I found a couple of Mazda5 parts in the garage you can have for shipping cost. I sold mine off last year. Cool project, I really liked the Mazda3 I had other than the 4 speed auto.
I just recently noticed that blown-motor 3s are going for mega cheap in my area, except that all of them are also rusted all to hell.
Still, some interesting stuff here. Lots of penny-pinching opportunities.
Thanks for the offer Bluesideup. I'm actually almost done and don't need anything else but it's really cool of you and I appreciate the thought.
I spent tonight getting the front suspension all taken care of and I'll put the axles in and bolt in the struts probably wednesday. I should have the motor fired off this weekend and then all I'll have left is to fix the one stud that sheared off on the passenger's rear shock mount and put the new lateral arm in on that side too. If everything goes well, I'll be delivering it in 2-3 weeks.
I'm going to spend a couple weeks driving it to make sure there are no bugs in it before delivery. Timing will be perfect as he starts school the week before labor day.
So final check in. The car is all done. I'm really happy with the overall results. The Volvo springs gave it a nice 3 finger gap all of the way around with a little more rear spring so the car is really nuetral. I liked the 2.5l motor in it. Gives the car nice pull though all of the gears.
The only other gotcha that I ran into was the vvt oil solenoid in the top of the motor. The one from the 3 didn't fit the opening for the Ford so I had to patch in a new harness for that. Luckily, they had just the plug available new for pretty cheap. Other than that, the car went together really easy and I think I'll be out shoping for a 2010-2012 3 hatchback this fall.
I can get that out of my garage so I can now get my other project in the driveway ready to sell.
Awesome swap!
Would you by any chance be able to post the source material you used for the swap? Have always been curious what was involved in dropping a 2.5 into a 2.0 or 2.3 equipped car
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