Hi everybody. I'm stationed in Pearl Harbor, HI (Navy), and I bought my black 6-speed 2007 RX8 a month or so ago; it's my new suddenly-single divorcemobile. I'm migrating from a dying and very modded 1998 Contour SVT, another rare niche car (an aspect that is probably part of what attracted me to the 8, along with those awesome suicide doors).

Typical RX8 reaction - Damn, I can't really mod this car... Damn, the gas mileage kinda sucks... Damn, it still looks and sounds really cool and has amazing handling.

The car is a salvage/rebuild title. Some guy bought it for about $20,000 or so in early 2011 (reciept is still in the glove box), then ran it into a pole or something and smashed in the passenger-side fender/apron/headlight/blinker. It was claimed for salvage, basically because he wanted to get out from under the payments and get himself a pickup truck, as I understand. So a guy at a local auto repair shop run by an Asian family who works mainly on Mazda's and Lexuses (Lexi..?) bought it, and had a couple of black RX8's lying around. He swapped out the busted parts, stuck a set of powder-coated neon green MMR rims on it, and put a catless midpipe and a GReddy cat-back exhaust on it along with a Weapon-R intake (which I gather from reading the newbie's modding guide that it’s not only useless, but probably actually detracting from my engine power).

I bought the car for about $8,900 with 34k original miles on it. Everything runs great/smoothly so I basically just plan on keeping it that way with careful maintenance, since modding it would be both way too expensive and way above my level of auto expertise anyway. I've already done some research about how I'll probably need to have an engine swap or rebuild before long - and bookmarked rotaryresurrection.com and Pettit Racing's custom Renesis engine site, and also determined that there's too much controversy over whether MazdaManiac's Cobb AccessPort is worth buying or not for me to spend $600 on one any time soon. I just want a vented carbon fiber hood (for cooling and style), possibly one of those slick-looking front clips, and maybe some sightly more subtle rims eventually.

I kind of get the impression that the current Renesis is like the primitive, buggy, inefficient, cave-man-like precursor to those next-gen 16X rotary engines that Mazda's apparently been working on, with the aluminum side-housings, direct injection, and longer strokes. Basically I plan to keep my RX8 alive for as long as possible, until I can maybe hopefully get my hands on whatever new car Mazda creates next that uses those new engines in the next 2-4 years, assuming that's not a total pipe-dream.

The guy I bought it from also gave me the original stock cat/midpipe with it, so it can be street-legal when I move to SoCal in a year, and also an entire second engine with roughly 40k on it. Not too shabby overall, but with no warranty I'm glad I at least got a model that's new enough to have some of the original kinks worked out that plagued the 2004/2005 models. I already installed my amp/subwoofer, and in the process managed to accidentally touch the accessory wire to something I shouldn't have - which blew a 15amp starter fuse and prevented the car from starting until I located and replaced it in the engine compartment fuse box, so at this point I've downloaded the PDF manual and at least become familiar with the fuse layout already.

I really only have one question: that intake... I highly suspect that Weapon-R just "fabricated a tube, made a port for the MAF, and jammed an air filter on the end" (taken from the modding guide on this site). I mean I realize it adds at least 35 horsepower because of the neon green it's been painted (see my gallery), but I'm pretty sure it's not going to pass emissions/inspection in California. The only other option seems to be either a stock air box or the K&N Typhoon intake(Part # 69-6030-1 - it runs about $240) which is 50-state CARB-exempt via Executive Order D-269-37 HERE on Page 4. But given the unique nature of the 13B's intake needs, I feel like I might just be better to just buy a used stock air box? O.o

Anyhow, that's my situation/intro in a nut shell. I look forward to meeting everybody during the process of making all kinds of desperate raving posts about all the weird noises and shudders and glitches my 8 will probably develop in the next couple of months (if the write-ups on this site are accurate, anyway

James

 

Welcome! Sounds like you're having fun already. Good thing you've got the neon green intake, with matching wheels. Really gotta be careful with that. The same intake, when painted pink, actually drops power by 5 HP. Even worse if the wheel color doesn't match.

Cave man is pretty good. They invented the wheel, and millenia later nobody has found a better shape for round.

On the air box... IMHO you're better off with stock, especially if you can find one in the FS section here or a salvage yard for less than the K&N. Not much power to be had from aftermarket intakes, and the stock filter cleans the air better than K&N.

Ken

 

Cave man's are smarter than Einstein...lol

Anyway, welcome to the club James!