This is an offshoot of my post looking for info on the lightweight flywheel. Reading the MazdaSpeed brochure carefully, I noticed that on the 8, the OEM lightweight flywheel is a "green" warranty item, that is, good for 12 months/12,000 miles.

The warranties on these performance parts (Blue and Green only, Orange has no warranty at all) supercedes all original warranties- the original Mazda 4-year, 50,000 mile warranty (if applicable to that particular part) dies as soon as the MS part goes on- and you better have a Mazda dealer install it, or even the abbreviated warranty is void.

I'm thinking that a person has to have a car that is either almost out of warranty anyway or clearly out of warranty, or has lots of money and the inclination to keep tweeking their 8 into an even faster machine than it already is, factory warranty aside.

Are mods like this just not a good idea for the RX-8 driver who only puts a few thousand miles a year on the car, stays off the track, doesn't street race, and just got it brand-spanking-new?

Pretty clever on Mazda's part. Tempt you with performance parts, get your money, then reduce (or cancel, for Orange parts) your warranty.

Another question is what effect MazdaSpeed parts would have on an extended service contract. I can't find any mention of that at all. I plan to grill the service manager at the dealership when I take it in for it's 3K oil change.

Am I missing anything here? TIA.

All warrantee issues are only related to what parts they involve. IE - You could run 234097 PSI on your engine and it will not affect the warrantee on your interior panels. In order to change a warrantee on a previously warranteed part, some kind of change must be causal. In this case, a dealership might be able to try and argue that a flywheel they installed affected the transmission but if you have issues with your engine 13 months down the road, I don't think they can really make a case that the aftermarket flywheel (which they installed) was causal. The parts themselves are 1 year warrantee. If you had a non-mazda flywheel, they would still have to prove causation to void warrantees on the rest of your powertrain.