i recently bought (and fell in love with) 04 rx8 with 80k miles on it, long story short i spent $5,000 on the car $2,000 on new tires and new clutch and now my engine has flooded due to an internal coolant leak. So, i am already $7,000 deep into the car and i need a new engine which will Net me (including labor) about another $7,000 according to Ricks Rotary Performance in the bay area (re manufactured from Mazda)
So my question is will the re manufactured engine from Mazda be reliable? OR would it be a better idea to have my current engine rebuilt to fix the coolant leaking issue? i have heard thats a bit of a gamble but should be much cheaper then 7k right?

 

There is a very high chance that big parts of your engine are out of spec and cannot be reused. Even if you fix the coolant leak, there's no guarantee you won't have to open it up again in 10k miles. Go for a known good rebuild/reman engine. Mazda's quality these days is good.

Is yours an automatic? $7000 sounds WAY too expensive for an engine for a manual car, you can get a better deal from a Mazda dealer.

Give a call to Pineapple Racing, Pettit Racing or Rotary Resurrection to get a quote for an engine shipped to you. Should be cheaper.


By the way, flooding and a coolant leak are 2 different and unrelated conditions. Flooding can be fixed for free, coolant leak requires a rebuild. What were you told exactly?

 

Where are you based? As said $7K is a lot of money for an recon engine.

 

$7K?! A Mazda reman can be had for ~$3K after core exchange, if you shop around. Removal and re-installtion should not cost ~$4K. I would expect $7K to just about cover a built race engine installed. Hell, a Star Mazda sealed race engine from Drummond and the like only costs $5K.