I've been thinking about getting an RX-8 and lurking the forums for a few weeks. Couldn't find the answers to a couple of questions so I made an account.

Is there any way to tell if an engine has been replaced other than calling Mazda with the vin?

It appears Mazda did away with the optional appearance package with the SII and made it standard on the R3. Is this correct?

I plan to go look at a few cars this week to try and narrow down what I want. See the differences in person instead of pics.

 

There is a reman tag attached to the front of the engine that you can look for:


There is no "appearance package" at all for Series 2. The R3 has R3 specific body additions, but it is not the "appearance package" or equivalent that the Series1 had the option for.

 

You may want to read the new owners thread. https://www.rx8club.com/new-member-f...t-here-202454/

A replacement engine will have a "remanufactured" tag on it like this: https://www.rx8club.com/attachments/...-reman-tag-jpg

The S2 is quite different in appearance, so the older appearance parts do not copy over. R3 has its own appearance kit, not the same as the S1s.

Get a compression test!!!

 

Good luck with your search...

 

Thanks for the info everybody

 

Finally got some time to go look at a copper red shinka. I mainly went to look at it to see the color in person, the car has more miles than I would want. I ended up not being a fan of the color, it looks a lot better in pictures to me.

The dealer who had it seemed shady. The car was obviously not well cared for by whoever owned it before. Appearance package was missing on one side, the front lip was loose, the front bumper was loose, there were LED strips running up the side of the console with the wiring for them running right along side it. The dealer said the battery was dead as the car hadn't been run in 2-3 months. Kept telling me it had a clean carfax and he could fix the bumper hanging off with some screws lol.

 

Poor car