Dorito Fun
 

I bought an '09 RX-8 R3 back in the beginning of July. It had lots of weird issues... and apparently a blown engine. Spun bearings, so I can't even make funny apex seal jokes.

It had a pretty long list of mods, so not a total waste.

While I was replacing the engine with a friend, I did Hotchkis swaybars and fixed a LOT of other nonsense. Replaced the stupid spherical bearing Megan Racing lower control arms in the rear.

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Typical rotary, visiting gas stations often :lol:

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About a week after purchase the damn door handle broke. The fix involved trapping myself inside the car among other stupid things.

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Oil pan full of copper

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Pulling the engine a week and a half later

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Hotchkis swaybar:

https://i.postimg.cc/htCmk7Zs/image.png

Wrapped the stock header:

https://i.postimg.cc/k4StRYJY/image.png

More swaybar goodness:

https://i.postimg.cc/hPc7h0HM/image.png

Reman Mazda engine arrived!

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Quickly turned it into this:

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Then this happened the next day:

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I got the injectors cleaned and flow tested, when they arrived I quickly did this...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZScG2DmjFg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOcdxvfIBLE

I've been breaking it in since!

https://i.postimg.cc/xC6BH56H/image.png

I LOVE RX-8's!!

MAN this is going to be a fun thread to follow!!

Congratulations!!

My interest in this is significant. I've been contemplating selling the miata and moving to one of these. Since they have a chance of fitting a child in the back seat and are basically a hardtop NC. The reliability makes me nervous.

I love these cars, reliability factor not as much... but then again, i like subaru's sooooo....

LSX swap? :devil:

Looking forward to the build

Glad to see you guys are interested too :) I've always wanted an RX-8 R3, so this was a nice find.

Dropping the car off for alignment and inspection tomorrow, it currently has like 1.5" of rear toe in, it's pretty sketchy to drive haha.

Definitely no ****ty LS swaps, that's the one thing that I hate most in the world lol

Nice!! What are your plans?

Just some light prep autocross/time trial stuff and fun street car. I'm going to keep it fairly simple.


On that note... Went to get it aligned and a vast majority of the adjusters were seized, so there will be updates to come on that front. It did get to a "decent street alignment" but nothing special.

Offset upper arm bushings for more front camber were in the plans anyway, but now I'm doing a delrin/OEM lower arm build up front and replacing the arms with the stuck adjusters in the rear (everything back there is super crusty so not overly surprised)

I've had a tune on the car, but it was set with stock dwell times even though I have upgraded LS2/D585 coils on the car. I tweaked the dwell table to "known good" values and holy crap the car is way smoother, faster, and more responsive. I'm still only part way through the break-in process so I'm only able to rev to ~7k RPM and it feels great.

Sweet!! Looking forward to the progress.

Did new brakes the other day :)

https://i.postimg.cc/KjfSRpXj/image.png

Tweaked the tune to better match the ignition coil dwell times to what the upgraded coils on my car want and it's *so* much smoother, more responsive, and feels more powerful too. Huge difference in performance from such a simple thing.

Very cool! I must have missed it, but what are you using to tune with?

Aren't these super sensitive to detonation?

I didn't say anything about it, haha. VersaTuner! It's odd, it's like playskool tuning in a way coming from MazdaEdit on the ND and MegaSquirt on the GTI.

*super* sensitive, so knock is definitely a "must avoid" thing. Not as bad as the turbo engines, but still horrible.

Ok, since my last post I got the tuned pretty well dialed in. Should be ~190whp now on 93 octane.

https://i.postimg.cc/zGQX3KX1/image.png

Got the midpipe with HFC done up with my buddy Jeff! He has quite a collection of Mazdas, haha.

https://i.postimg.cc/659QPB1F/image.png

Got the car inspected and an alignment was attempted... Unfortunately 6 of 8 adjusters were stuck so that turned into an adventure with the sawzall and new bushings and new arms where needed. Unfortunately I got the front control arms out fine but they exploded trying to press out the camber bushings... so Jeff volunteered up his spare control arms. I did Mazdaspeed offset bushings in the front upper control arms for more camber while it was apart.

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Alignment specs now are pretty nice!

https://i.postimg.cc/ydvmSLJN/image.png

Pretty low when the bushings are properly clocked (loosen them and torque everything at ride height)

https://i.postimg.cc/zfW5BQcn/image.png

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How does it handle now with the new changes compared to the Miata? I'm imagining a bit stiffer?

Definitely softer. Just kinda mediocre shocks & springs. ND feels like a scalpel, this feels like a sportier normal car.

I completely forgot the hardware your Miata has on it. That makes total sense now.

I remember driving my friends R3 about 6 years ago. Fell in love with it, except for the lack of power. Everything else was so dialed in for a street car, I really, really loved driving that thing. Of course everything on it was still relatively factory fresh.

At this point it's definitely an older car but not terribly far off the mark. It doesn't do anything badly, just needs some refinement and you can definitely tell it was still designed to be more usable as a normal car. I'm taking it camping this weekend and it's stuffed with camp chairs, a tent, etc... and I'm barely using the cargo space.

The power delivery is really unique, with the tune it's a lot better feeling but it definitely needs to be revved. It's smooth so revving it out doesn't feel aggressive like in a normal car, but it still needs to be worked which is pretty fun!

It rained a bunch, I only did two sessions, the truck broke, I spun the RX8 through the grass violently and avoided any sort of damage! Unfortunately the GoPro cut off literally 2 seconds before crossing the line on my fastest lap (1:54.7, nothing impressive if it was dry) and it missed my spin too.

Here's my first session:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysPl1rCwvO4

Here's my second session:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf3pt149H1E

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New wheels are on, used takeoff tires from my Miata.

Coilovers ordered...

Love a set of perfect spec RPs