What a busy summer/year it's been. I haven't been around these parts in a while. Thought I'd drop by to check out whats going on and share my new toy with everyone. It's a 2004 RX-8. Perhaps it's midlife crisis kicking in but I've really had an urge lately to get something I can tinker with, maybe autocross too. It's a pretty fun car to drive.

Nice! You'll be hearing from Chris soon!

I want one of these for my mid-life crises...which I'm planning for the Spring:

Ya I thought Chris had an 8. Maybe he can share some insights with me.

I've been a bit obsessive lately reading about these cars, thinking about even attempting to rebuild the motor if it's required someday.

Right on, Ben. Congrats and enjoy!

I think Chris has a few RX-7's, too.

I drove and loved an RX-8 before buying my current (midlife crisis) car. I just didn't fit me very well in a number of ways, but it was FUN.

Mark, that's cool. What is it?

That's a pretty sweet car Ben. Gratz!

We expect to see some dash mounted GoPro videos if you get into autocross racing. We used to do that every winter out on the river once it froze. It started informally but grew into a popular, semi-organized event. It certainly gives a whole new perspective on drifting.

It's a Can-Am Spyder. JP's wife says that I'm not allowed to have one, but I'm going to rebel and get one some day anyway.

Wow on a frozen river? That's crazy and awesome. Maybe it could be something like this.

Sweet ride! Enjoy!

Mark, NO MOTORCYCLE FOR YOU!!!!!!

Here I am!

Yeah, I have also have a 2004 RX-8, black.

Also have a (not running at the moment) 1991 RX-7 Convertible. I sold my sort of running 1986 RX-7 coupe.

What do you want to know about it?

And holy crap, Ben, you are tall!

Very good Ben; enjoy. And yes, you certainly are tall; you make the RX-8 look smaller than my Miata!

What i find "inane" is how such a big man can fit into that car!
(nice car though)

What is more 'inane' is why JohnK owns a Miata!!
Really John? A Miata?

Ah i shouldn't make fun.
I drive a Corolla. Bent on saving the world by using less gas.
Next month, hybrid.

Yeah, chess; maybe a little more gas, but a lot more fun!

Congrats on the car, Ben! Hey, don't put too much into the midlife crisis thing. We all have the right to get things that make us happy.

And, John, I recently joined your Miata club. Yeah, it's a whole lotta fun!

My uncle has a Miata, I was chasing him around unknown (by me) streets in my '8. Once we got to our destination he said, "you really took that round-about at speed." I didn't know we went through one, but I did remember a piece of road that I thought was totally insane because I was like, "right!, left!, right!" off camber, in about 25 feet at 50 Mph, but it was where I able to catch up to him.

I have the Racing Beat intake and exhaust. I love the way they sound. Not like a fart can, but deep and throaty. Highly recommended.

Mark, to make you feel better, you can have an erzatz midlife crisis and buy that Canam for me.

One of my 'most fun in a car' moments came in England going through roundabouts in a BMW 3 series driven by a guy who raced motorcycles as a hobby.

Nice car Ben, congratulations!

Thanks for all the kind words everyone.



Ya at some point I'm definitely going to mod this thing. I'm not a fan of the fart can either. I'll probably start with intake. I did find some oil on the air filter. I read on rx8forums that installing a catch can should fix that.

Do you have any pics of your mods?

The Racing Beat stuff, you'd never know it wasn't stock without really looking.

I do have carbon fiber fenders on the front, as I bought it crashed, and needed to replace the passenger side one. Turns out the carbon fiber isn't much lighter than the factory aluminum ones (like a pound per side). Does look cool though.

My old neighbor in LA has one of the last RX7's. He has played with the turbo and induction system and EMS so much its not funny. He's currently running about 470 HP.

I just got one of these:



Yes, in that color, too! Loads of fun to drive on the nice winding roads of GA.

Hey Scott, I know you'll need something to ease the pain of the UGA/LSU game. Nice ride! Hope the jorr-juh dawgs fans are treating you OK.

Funny you mention pain killing - I was stomping grapes in Paso Robles while the game was underway. I think I got the better end of the deal. I don't get too much grief from the locals over either football team choice (Saints being the other one).

That there is nice looking!

SWEET!

That is pretty cool looking. I've been reading a lot at r88club.com, tons of info over there. Doesn't sound like the RENESIS is very moddable thou, compared to previous gen rotaries.

I'm guessing you meant, rx8club.com, and yeah. I am a moderator of the fc3s_org (2nd gen RX-7) Yahoo group, and probably have made close to a 1000 posts there, I'm not nearly as active on the RX-8 forum.

Mazda learned from all the modding and tuning that had been done to the 13B engines over the years. They incorporated just about all they could into the Renesis. So yeah, there aren't many gains to be had that Mazda didn't explore themselves.

Handling can be improved a bit though, stiffening the chassis (Mazda did this in a few special cars), better suspension components, and just going to newer tire technology (I have Bridgestone Potenza RE970AS Pole Positions), and even though they are all season (a dedicated summer tire can be even better, but don't dare drive them when it gets down into the 40s) they stick incredibly well, and move water off the road like nothing I've ever felt.

Chris, interesting results for the new Michelin Pilot Sport A/S 3 in the latest Tire Rack tests .

Those RX-8's are fun cars. Very underappreciated. Get yourself some sticky tires. Best mod you can possibly do. I can recommend Michelin Pilot Super Sports without any reservation. I put some on my car this past spring. I was running Nito NT05's. I have quite literally had to re-learn how to drive the car.

This weekend I flushed the coolant, replaced the plugs, coils and wires then changed the oil. It still runs so I didn't doing much wrong. Going to take it down to the SCCA Nationals site in Lincoln this coming weekend. First time doing Autocross.

Exiting! We want video.

Particularly if it goes like this.

I don't know who I respect more, the drivers or the people with the kahunas to stand on the side of the road when they drive by?

Top Gear and WRC, even more awesome together. I'll try to get some sort of videos but I'm sure it will look lame with me putting around trying to learn how to drive my car.

Somewhere there are old film videos of me racing on an ice track on a frozen river with no special traction aids allowed above winter tires. It can't be any funnier than that and I was once of the more competitive racers.

I need to look into those. I bet someone back home converted a few of them to digital.

Murph. I remember watching some guys ice racing like that when I was a kid and wondering why you would want to 'race' that slow.

I don't know who you were watching but we sure didn't go slow.
The straight stretch went up the middle of the river for about 2 km or so I'm guessing. More than enough time to build up as much speed as you wanted. Then quickly realized you 'didn't want it' on the turn at the end.

We had enough room that even the snakey parts were big. Also, the river was almost never a shiny, slippery surface. Rarely could you skate on it for instance. It was more likely covered in a light layer of snow after the track was roughly snowblown by a small team of farmers with big blowers on thier tractors. The snow kept the ice soft underneath and was probably a lot more grippy than you might be picturing but yet still pretty crazy at speed.

I don't know what you saw, but I'm guessing our version wasn't anything like it. Hmm....I wonder if I could convince anyone to start it up again.......

This was on the big pond behind Fanshaw dam in London so there were not any 2 K strait stretches to be found.

Well the Autocross event was a lot of fun. My times sucked but at least I improved each run. I need to do something with the raw video my wife tried to take. I have to thank her for trying but it's pretty much mostly shaky cam. Here are some pics one of my friends took.

Album

Looks like it was fun Ben! Did you beat the Bug or was it all tricked out?

Alas my buddy in his ancient, slow, Beetle beat me but he's been doing RallyCross (dirt) this year while this was my first race of any kind plus I've only had this car a month, so...

I'm confident I'll continue to improve. The first couple runs were intimidating but I improved every run I made. It's amazing how much faster it feels in the car than viewing it from the outside. Out of all the cars there the best time was something like 55 seconds while my best time was 73s (My buddy did 71s in his Beetle).

Video

Fun stuff!!! Wish it was done around here. I think Sharon might actually approve of me trying out her Mini Cooper for that.

Although, I'm still filing the bug loss away for when I might need it in the future...... heheheh

Great car, now add some Axiom speakers in it

...and a turntable.

rez on an old thread, just thought I'd share my weekend project/experiment here

I think it's too small. It doesn't even touch the ground. Looks really nice, though.