WVrunner1984

Hello everyone. I am obviously new to the forum. I have been casually shopping for a sports car for the last 6 months or so, but I have pretty much settled on the RX8. I have test driven 2 of them so far and was really impressed. I live in the Denver area, and I have struggled to find sellers willing to get a compression test which has made the search a little more difficult. I saw another post mentioning buying your own rotary compression tester and performing the test yourself on the sellers car. I would be interested to hear if others have found sellers receptive to this approach. I plan to post a WTB add on here once the post restriction is lifted to hopefully connect with a more knowledgeable seller who has properly operated the vehicle and has documented compression info. I am also open to picking up a non runner or shell and putting a reman engine in from the start.

CaymanRotary

Buying the tester pays for itself if you are dead set on owning this car. Not only will you ensure you are buying a car with a good engine, you will be able to monitor your engine health over the life of your car. Also, you can charge others to perform the test. It's easy to do.

Edit: I would recommend buying a car with a good engine already installed. Reman'ed or professionally rebuilt engines go for $4k -$6k. The cost of a good shell with a bad engine is $2k. So with a budget of $6k - $8k you can find a really nice RX8 with near zero issues. I don't know about you but I prefer to drive my cars than fix them.

alterego

If the sellers are unwilling to do a compression test, it should be obvious why. Its a wise and fairly reasonable investment to get a compression tester early on if you are already willing to replace the engine by yourself.

It would take you 15-20 minutes at most to do your own compression test. Mazda charges $120-200+ for a compression test and all you get is a piece of paper with the numbers on it.

WVrunner1984

Thanks for the replies. I have a couple theories on sellers not having compression info available. If the car is running well they can sell the car with a clean conscience, and there have to be some sellers who aren't aware that the car can be low on compression but still start and run well. I also think that from a sellers perspective the cars are already priced super low and maybe the known risk associated with the engine is part of the low asking price. Running cars with 80-100k miles in my market seem to be selling from 3-5k. I could empathize with a seller not wanting to buy a 300 dollar tool to sell a 3k dollar car.

I was planning to buy a rotary compression tester once I purchase a car. I guess I hadn't really thought about asking to do my own compression test on a sellers car. Have either of you had luck with sellers being open to you/a stranger taking a wheel off their car and removing the spark plugs?

CaymanRotary

They welcome it every time. Its still their car and the idea of a free compression test is positive even if you don't buy it. You definitely want to come across as knowledgeable as possible. At least with a test, then you know what you are getting into.

Most any other mechanical issue is solvable for reasonable amounts of money. The engine is just simply always worth more than the entire car to fix. That's why it's so important to make sure compression is good before purchase. Make sure you are using a swivel joint taking out the plugs. They aren't cheap so don't break them.

alterego

In theory it is simple enough however because you need to bring a jack to lift it up and then put it on jack stands it may be a liability concern especially if they have something to hide.

CaymanRotary

Only need to jack up one side and take a tire off. Everything is super easy to access. The only major thing you can really break are the spark plugs. Other than that, a compression test is really easy to do.