Yea I have a lot of math to do. I think I might be able to squeeze 11 or 12k out of park mazda since I did business with them recently, and I know they will sell the car for at least 15k. I only have just under 23k miles on it anyway. If they try to screw me I will attempt to sell privately, but I would prefer not as its just harder to coordinate stuff like that. Then I have to fight the battle of finding something decent with nothing down, since most of our savings was used in buying the two cars over the past 3 months.

I have a feeling I am not going to be happy with any of the options for something "new" and I will end up sticking with the 8.

 

Just for reference...I bought my 04 with 40K for $9,800 from a dealer in Columbus last winter. The asking price was around $11,000 I think.

Granted mine is a base model, and it was the dead of winter in one of the worst ecconomic depressions of our lifetimes...but I think you see my point.

You may very well get more for yours, but plan on getting screwed out of a couple of thousand if you choose to go the stealership route.

My 2 Cents

 

ahh the things you find in the oddest places...

so about a month ago, it smelled like something died in my garage. thinking squirrel, mouse, bird... who knows. Checked all over the place and couldnt find a damn thing yet for about a week straight it smelled that way. finally, the smell disappeared and i forgot about it.

today, i am walking to my car and i see something bright orange inside the airdam. wth could that be? (kicking myself for not getting pics forst). jammed up inside is a cardinal... or what's left of a cardinal. on the brightside, my car never smelled bad inside from the poor little guy... thankfully!!! the bad part was trying to get him out. he was stuck. i don't mean wedged in stuck. i mean, it felt like he was glued down stuck. Grabbed a handful of paper towels and got a good grip on him and yanked. It sound like i was breaking twigs and sticked over my knee. I couldnt help but laugh. i half expeced to see legs or something still stuck inside when i looked in. all thats there though are a few feathers and dried... yuck. a bristle brush, soap and a blast of water will clean it no prob but man, it was funny seeing this bird jammed in there. odd though, he was face out, not face in.

found him and took care of all that just after i bought my lunch. needless to say, my lunch is sitting on my desk untouched. i'd bought turkey jerky at the gas station to munch on for lunch... yea, not gonna happen.

 

The price of these things vary so much its crazy. Mine was stickered at 15,9k when I bought it in April. Its safe to say that I wont accept less then 11-12k for a trade. Anything less and it just wouldnt be worth it.

 

I'm looking for the little wing looking part that fits between the stone guard and the wheel well. It doesn't show on the part diagram.

 

^ Not sure what you are referring to Doc.
Only thing between those two pieces is the whole inner mud guard.
Can you take a pic of your car (undamaged/missing piece side) so I can see exactly what you're referring to?

 

This is all I see for the front fender:

 

JUST HAD A THOUGHT and now my brain hurts...
Are you referring to the front splash guard?

 

hey guys, spark plug wires came today so im putting them on tomorow and then we'll see if we can move onto the intake. hope not. ill let you know in a couple days how they work out jon.

 

Good luck TJ.
Don't forget what I taught you with the coil order

 

I think that the reason I'm confused is that it might be torn. (Fargin cones! LOL)

The drawing may not be real clear either.

 

I looked through the workshop manual and still can't find the part number (might be post-03). If you've got a little time I'd post the question to Ash who seems to be able to pull part numbers out of his bum.

Jon - when you get a sec I've got a dongle problem. Last time I ran autocross I took it off. Put it back on and while it's getting power it's complaining about bad USB. Everything looks straight on the connectors but obviously at least one isn't making contact.

 

This what you're looking for Doc? Looks like you're not the first Autocrosser to have the issue:

https://www.rx8club.com/showthread.p...nt+stone+guard

Looks like it's called the stone guard (edit: err chip guard. Stone guard runs all along the bottom trim). As they note in that it may be a good idea to get mudflaps if they're BS legal.

Here's an install thread on the mud flaps that has more info about the stone guards (cutting them at least)

https://www.rx8club.com/showthread.p...nt+stone+guard

 

Does one of the pins on the dongle appear to be pushed in farther than the others?
I can take a look at it if you want.

 

alright so i put on my new wires today hah and the engine didnt explode when i turned it on which shows im no longer completely useless with a wrench in my hand.
but, i took it for a spin and although it did take a bit more pushing on my part, the engine still sounds like s**t and has a lack of power issue. took my friend brandon along and he even noticed the change in tone when the problem occers.

oh well, cross one off the list and i guess we'll move onto the intake now

 

^Well... you definitely needed to wires anyway since we found two that were loose and one wouldn't even snap onto the plug.
And it may still sound like **** (because of your intake) but how does your car drive now?
Do you still struggle going up hills?

 

alright two quick things.
one, none of the wires snapped onto the plugs. idk why but they wouldnt snap. there on REAL tight i made sure but i even had brandon try and we couldnt feel em snap in.
and two, yes i do. it takes a beating for instance todays case i took it on the highway for a nice run and after getting off it had a reak problem climbing this hill in 4th goin about 45-46mph.

did notice it took a lot more beating before showin the problem. so it rides a bit better and i know i definately needed new wires cuz the old ones were unnacceptable but the problems still there.

 

If they feel real tight I wouldn't worry about it.
Remember I told you there might be times where you question it since you don't feel the snap.
But at least you got to experience a plug wire that didn't snap into place.

I think the next thing to eliminate would be the intake (especially since we don't know if you have the problematic version 1 or version 2)

 

45mph in 4th gear going up hill sounds like the wrong gear...you should be in 3rd.

 

I got mine for $220... but thats because i work for bestbuy (im a geeksquad tech)
Normally they go for like $450-500. I personally like it better than the V1 ($300) which will pick up radar maybe like 50 feet before mine on curves, however it has lots of false alarms.

The solution in the past with the v1 to cut out a good portion of false alarms was to turn off Xband because no one was using it... HOWEVER recently me and some friends discovered that staties have been using xband. And even then you'll get false alarms whenever you drive past a radio tower... and driving in the city with it is a joke unless you've had it for a while and you know what is and what isn't

The 9500i is equiped with GPS, this provides a lot of cool features like showing your speed according to GPS and logging it whenever you detect radar/laser. You can set hotspot locations for speed traps and cameras, and even download sets of locations from the interwebz (really nice if your traveling). However the huge advantage to the gps is called truelock. It allows you to block out false signals permanantly. Mine is dead silent on routes i drive regularly except enforcement.


The v1 will pick up radar before the 9500i however they both do it so well ide rather trade a lil sensitivity for some accuracy. Since it was cheaper for me to get the 9500i it was a great deal for me.

 

oh yeah, i forgot to tell you i found the paper work that came in the box and it didnt say anywhere that it was v1 or v2 but i have the part number. anyway to look up what version it is with that?

hah if you mean f i was driving the way you taught me how then yes, i probably should've been in second

 

oh okay thanks for the info

but 450 is a little more than what i was lookin to spend, i was looking more in the 300ish range. so i may have to look into the V1, havent heard a whole lot about it tho

 

I shift into 3rd gear at 40mph. By you being in 4th you are basically bogging down your engine.

The Valentine V1 is a nice radar detector. If I remember correctly Tom has one.

 

you think so? i mean 45 in 4th is about 3200rpms if im not mistaken. is that lke too low of rpms to be cruising in? i mean i usually try and keep it at least at 3k rpms cuz anything lower than that ill just downshift. you usually dont cruise around that?

 

Like I said...I cruise around 4K. Cruising on a flat road at 45 in 4th would be just fine...but you are trying to accelerate up a hill. The car just doesn't have the torque to do it comfortably it sounds. Jon...you drove his car...would you agree?