As usual, I had a friend drive my car around while I was out of town for a couple weeks. He called me one day and told me it wouldn't start. He told me that he started it once, and shut it off without driving it. So I assumed it was flooded. He had someone give him some tips on starting it back up again and by the time I got home, it started. He tried explaining it to me, but I have no idea what he did (he speaks pretty much only Chinese, and I don't speak very much Chinese). I assume that since it starts up each and every time, it's deflooded. However, I still smell some gas when I'm in the car. Also, startup seems to be a bit more labored than usual. And performance-wise (not sure if this is related), the acceleration feels a bit weaker than normal (although I've had this problem before when the weather is warm).

Should I take it to the dealership and have them take a look anyway? If I did, what can I expect to pay (even if they had to deflood it all over again).

 

If I remember correctly, mazda has a specific deflooding technique, which isn't that difficult, so I imagine that should solve that (I could be wrong, I'm sorta new to rx8s). If that's the case, I imagine that still smelling gas would be indicative of either an exhaust leak or an evap leak (which happened to me, and I was also smelling gas in my car). Again, I don't know that these things are true, so I'd have them validated by other people before you actually follow through. Just a direction to maybe point you in