New to UT and the RX-8
 

I recently moved to Layton, UT and picked up an '07 RX-8 Touring a few months ago. I'm looking for someone in the area to help teach me the ins and outs of the car. No mechanical upgrades at this point. Any help would be appreciated for a newbie like me. And if anyone has an ECU flasher/reprogrammer even better. I'm willing to go nearly anywhere on weekends if you're farther away.

For those just trolling, I'm pretty sure I've been told a few wrong things by my dealership. The two main ones are, 1. let the car idle for 5min before you put it in gear. 2. Rev the car to at least 4k RPM in neutral before turning off the car. Both these things should be done everytime you start or stop the vehicle.

The dealer has assumed you are an idiot.

The thing to remember is to never shut off the engine cold, or you have a good chance of flooding it, and the de-flood procedure is a pain. If you have to just move the car in the driveway, for example, it's a good idea to take it around the block and get it up to operating temperature. It warms up more quickly when being driven than just sitting there idling.

I've had my '07 for almost 16 months and never flooded it. You don't need to rev to 4k before shut-off. Mazda recommends 3k if you are using the engine-warm-up procedure without driving it.

Letting the engine warm-up before you place it under load is a good idea for any engine, especially a rotary, but not essential. It just means you may wear the internals at a slightly accellerated rate.

Yeah what JT said. Any questions you have just post here or either of ther utah threads and we'll do our best to answer it.

Well then i have pretty good one for you. my mother was here this week to see my new son and I made the mistake of letting her drive the RX-8 while she was here instead of the family car. Long story short, she ended up going over a piece of raised concrete in a parking garage and put a fair-sized dent on my passenger side quarter panel. I tried to trace the seam to the back of the car and it looks pretty well hidden. Any idea on how much a new quarter panel is or have any preferred mechanics to do the body work? I'd hate to ruin the look of the car due to a crappy mechanic.

Well your two options are this:http://www.trademotion.com/partlocat...layCatalogid=0 they have them for like 450 unpainted. Or locally body shop the only one I know who does good work is Unique Auto Body. Good luck, I would have gone crazy.:Eyecrazy:

For the size of the panel that doesn't seem all that bad. Now I just have to convince the wife :$ What's the likelihood that it can be simply "banged" out? There isn't any damage to the paint from what I've seen, just the undercoating.

Yeah, It can most likely be banged out but I'm no expert on body work and without pics it's hard to tell, but I imagine it can be done.

I'd say your mother should be paying for this. :banghead:

^^ +1

As per request, this is a photo of the damage. I didn't notice it until I looked at the picture but there appears to be a smaller dent just forward of the larger dent. Also, you can see where the undercoating has been scrapped off. :icon_no2: So that's it from what I can tell. Oh, and in case I forgot to mention this before, the incident occurred on Father's Day. Yay! :banghead:

I think that it can be popped out, may be a candidate for paintless dent removal.

Yeah, I actually see 3 dents there.

See what a pro body shop says. An estimate won't cost you anything.