- April 2009: Bought my first RX-8, fell in love with it
- June 2013: Get rear ended by numptie in a 5 series touring and car gets written off and then exported to find life overseas. Much sadness.
- August 2013: Buy another Winning Blue 231 and promptly join mates on a Euro Road Trip. End up driving 2,000 miles with a blocked cat and no power.
- April 2014: Join the RX8-OC and immediately start jumping on group buys, buying parts and getting my hands dirty for the first time in my life.
- December 2014: After another Euro Road trip I yearned for more power and bought an FD. Engine promptly fails. Expensive rotary lifestyle snowballs.
- November 2015: Change jobs and no longer commute. Sell RX-8 with a heavy heart.
- FD life continues: Various track days and another Euro Road Trip happen. Car mostly awesome, but keep buying parts...
- 2017: Worlds slowest single turbo conversion commences. I can only assume that Hayward's got sucked into a time dilation field.
- November 2017: After many failed deadlines and the Car Limits day that I had booked in good faith rapidly approaching I gave up on waiting for the FD and decided to re-scratch the RX-8 itch!
I bought the car from a mate of Boosted and then gave it a great shakedown at Car Limits the next day (Videos below). The car seems to drive really well which is a relief, but it's by no means perfect and nor would I expect it to be for the price paid. Here's the specs and some of my early observations
The Good
- Engine and gearbox from a Cat C 06 car which means the engine only has about 40k on it despite the chassis having 69k. I've never been in an RX-8 that starts so instantly and consistently so. It pulls very cleanly throughout the entire range
- Currently unknown exhaust system. Mooted that it may be a Piper-X which I have never heard of in the RX-8 world. Looks similar to a Toyo to my eyes, but is more refined. Either way it's almost perfect. Not too loud but purposeful.
- D585 coils
- Grooved brake disks on rear only
- Avon ZZ5 tyres, which seem pretty good
- Some early boot lid rust and some on sills (not sure how bad yet)
- The usual condensation in the rear tail lights
- Bodywork not perfect, but nothing bad for a 13 year old car.
I will try to have a closer inspection done on it, and go for a few cosmetic improvements. What I don't want to do is mod the hell out of it. I already have one rotary money pit! I might treat myself to an Axial Flow though if I can find a sensibly priced used one.
I will also post updates on the FD here when there's actually some good news to share. Right now it's agonisingly close, but has an undiagnosed flooding issue on cold starts. Otherwise it's basically ready, mapped and goes like stink ...apparently