Day trip to TPS Kent

[Lucky7]

I had a journey over to TPS Kent today. Thought I would share my positive experience as one or two things may be of interest to others.

Background is my very clean 20k miles '53 RX-8 was very slightly off-colour. A slight metallic noise, occassional, under acceleration and it was not starting right on the button, even though it was by no means slow to start. No point me getting anyone unfamilar with an RX-8 to look at it, as to someone unfamiliar the slight changes were hard to notice.

Now the first item is nothing unusual, Cat had failed. But the big suprise with this is that the cat was not the cat it should have been. Back in 2013, my car was tapped from behind when stationary. The exhaust was pushed back, and my then local Mazda dealer said that the whole exhaust system needed replacement. I understood they charged insurers for the offending party over £2k. But turns out they put a cheap aftermarket cat on after telling me they used genuine Mazda parts. At least I assume this is the case, as I cannot think of any other occassion when my cat could have been swapped.

Also the rear box was not attached properly and the incorrect bolts used to attached the cat section, all rectified by TPS.

The coils did not show obvious failure, a couple of the ignition leads had some corrosion, changing the original A spec coils to Mazda latest spec plus the leads with magnacor was carried out and immediately the starting was improved, fires up instantly and running more smootly.

They asked me what the red coolant I had in it was. Triple QX red 5 year life, I had that put in last winter. They showed me a customer engine under rebuild that had used that coolant which had caused internal corrosion. Advice is not to use this. I was unaware of this before. So swapped that out with Triple QX Purple that they say is better. I belive red is G12 and Purple is G13, so maybe that is useful info for anyone else not aware.

Finally they did a compression test. I was a bit apprehensive; my car is low miles but 18 years old and I never pre-mixed (ironically because I was worried it may harm the cat).
Results: 250 rpm, Front 7.0-7.1-7.0, Rear 7.1-7.0.7.2.
I guess it may be down to changing oil every 1000 miles due to low mileage and maybe not driving it hard enough!

A bit of a treck for me as I am the opposite side of the M25, but all in all well worth it to get above issues fixed. TPS team recommended.

[ChrisHolmes]

Even after 5 years you could raise the query with your insurers and ask them to check with Mazda regarding if the dealer purchased a genuine cat from the parts division at that time. They will have records and as It’s an expensive part they would only order when they had a car to fit it to. It’s a case if fraud so the insurer should be interested.
Alternatively you could approach the dealer and say you are going to report the situation to the insurers and see how they react.

[Lucky7]

Good suggestions Chris, however the insurers were not mine, they were that of business owner whose van hit mine. They settled directly at the time and not through my insurance, as the van driver hit and ran, but didn't have foresight that his van had the name of a well known parts retailer written all over it, so they were keen they sorted without fuss at the time and pay a Mazda dealer to fix it. The Mazda dealer itself is no more and the group it was part of bought out and claim they don't have records of that time.

[chriskirkham]

Good people at TPS, wouldn't take my RX8 anywhere else, even though it's a 130-mile round trip.

Sent from my SM-T550 using Tapatalk

[Torque23]

I have just been to TPS last Saturday for the first time a week after getting my 54 plate RX8 for a compression test. Your figures are very good. Mine were all between 6.5 and 7.0 . Going back there shortly for getting all the fluids changed and give it a more thorough once over. Going by how far people are travelling to TPS, I am glad only being 40 miles away.

[Koren]

Guess I'm spoiled, being only 14 miles away! Going in two weeks to have first service post rebuild, and the rev limiter removed! (Little bit overdue, but had some issues chasing down some CEL codes I wanted to do myself)