
Ever since getting back into RX-8 ownership with the purchase of my panic buy shed RX-8, I have fancied the idea of getting a great condition, lower mileage, ideally special edition car, which I could take a bit more pride in. Don’t get me wrong, the last car was brilliant, and having got the track day bug with it, I probably had more fun in that car than any of my previous rotaries.
However I finally decided that I was ready, and when this PZ hit eBay, I knew I had to go for it. Fortunately I managed to win it, which is unusual given that I’m generally pretty conservative in my bidding. This did put me in the slightly ridiculous position of committing to buy 2 RX-8s in the space of 2 days, but that’s another story….
I went to collect and was immediately impressed by the condition of the car. The body work was good. The previous owner, threw me the keys and after a satisfying test drive, business was swiftly concluded and I got the joy of a 3 hour rush hour commute around the M25 getting acquainted with what felt like a pretty special car.
I found an expired (hopefully redeemed) £5 RX-8 OC voucher in the folder for the car, and one of the keys was attached to a RX-8 OC keyring. After a brief forum search, I discovered a previous thread for the car covering 2016-18. Although many of the prior mods from this period were reversed, I can thank WhelanUK for investing in and taking great care of the car. Also shout out to Nick (13Black) who did a lot of prior work and produces very informative invoices. I can see that he’s personally addressed every imaginable service item with this car, albeit 7,000 miles ago.
The back story of the good condition of the body, is down to WhelanUK having some arch rust fixed at a body shop and then treating the car to Krown rust proofing treatment. There was still a smidge of the 3 year warranty left when I took ownership.
Other surviving features include:
- Decent compression results as tested by Luke Murdoch 10 days before I bought the car
- D969 coils
- Supporting minimap from 13Black
- Filled engine mounts
- Sohn tank
- Toyo exhaust
- Dimpled and grooved disks, with some decent pads
- Rotary dial on stereo
- Piano black ashtray
- Full led interior lights
- Alloy passenger footrest
- Some random ditch finder tyres!
The car almost wanted for nothing, but I had other ideas and still had a load of parts to move over. Having bought it, I SORNED it until I could fit the following:
- Cusco anti-roll bars (which i re-painted red first)
- Meister-R coil overs
- Refurbished front and rear calipers with braided hoses lines
- Racing Beat back box and dual res
- Axial Short Shifter
- Oil temp and pressure gauges
- Nexus satnav conversion
- Xcarlink stereo adaptor
- My other set of PZ wheels with RainSports on them
- AEM induction.
- Led taillights
- Halo headlights
- Greddy front and rear strut braces
- Full 40th Anniversary interior (Thanks to BigPete for the referral on that - was a bargain)
- Nardi steering wheel
- 20mm wheel spacers
- Wire brushing and applying vactan to any surface corrosion that I found (thankfully not very much)
Not all of this work went as smoothly as I would have hoped. One brake pipe fitting wouldn’t release, and I came back to it later having acquired a blow torch and some vice grips.
I also discovered that the drivers door actuator only worked intermittently, which didn’t improve much after some lubrication. Big thanks to NickP47 for gifting me one from a breaker car.
It's been a big lockdown project and overall the largest amount of work that I've personally ever done on a car, and I'm slightly surprised that I've managed to do it without any professional help.
With the car finally on the road, I have taken it to FW Motorsport for an alignment, which has made the front end turn it very sharp. It’ll be interesting to see how my first track day in the car goes.
So with all of that done upfront, this may well turn out to be an uneventful project thread [2022 Alan laughs as this comment].
Better do posts of me enjoying the car instead.
I still have a few parts to fit, whenever I can be bothered:
- Aero half skirts - still waiting....
- Illuminated gear knob - done
- Braided oil hoses form the recent Group Buy - not needed as turns out theyve already been done


