onwsk8r

First of all, I'm thrilled to be here! I've had an rx7club.com membership for upwards of 20 years, and I remember how pretentious I thought you all must be when this site started. What took me so long to get here? The gen1 Mazdaspeed3. With just a bit of tweaking it was more than capable of taking 30mph curves at 75, possibly more, and had the added bonus of not being weighed down with an oil pressure gauge, which is how I got to rebuild the engine. That was a few years ago. Anyways, I came across an '04 RX-8 with 10k on the motor and 115k on the chassis listed on CL for $4k. It had just the perfect amount of issues (23 line items in my Google Sheets spreadsheet thus far), so I snagged it for $2,700, and for somewhere between $2-3k, it could be in tip-top shape.

So regarding the title of this post... My new-to-me RX-8 has a busted left rear shock. How does the parts store's shock compare to Mazda's shock? And are all car parts store shocks created equal?

Are there any common reasons the fog lights go out (I haven't looked at anything yet)? I'm having the same problem with the DS power mirror.

Is there a way to get a newer map DVD for the navigation system? I used to do GIS stuff for a living.. I see it uses a format called SDAL (per the disc and the owners manual)- is that proprietary? Does it support anything else? That's a neat feature for not sucking down my phone's battery- GPS takes a lot of power. I'm a bit more nimble with the phone, though

One last thing, speaking of phones- I've searched through some threads about hooking up Pandora or Spotify to the stock sound system, and I see a lot of Parrot and Grom (didn't see any Dension, though). I'm sure it's no different than any other car, but what do you think? What's a good brand, and what works well with the car? And after I get it, am I good to go with the factory head unit and speakers? The radio sounds pretty good on them, but Pandora Plus at 192kbps is a whole different animal.

Thanks in advance,

Brian