Hey there, so I've been eyeballing rx-8s for a while now and finally can get one. I have found a used 04 with 120k miles but only 5k on its second motor replaced 7 months ago. With a newer motor would I have more reliability with it? The previous owner changed oil every 3k miles, put new oil in every other fill up. I mean it seems like he knew how to care for it. Just curious about the dependency of the newer engines especially this day and age.

 

Adhering to an oil change interval isn't going to prevent an engine from failing if any one of the other problems crop up. Plus, the oil change interval is not the only maintenance need that this car has, there are quite a few other points that need regular maintenance as well, any one of which could fail suddenly and take out the motor with it.

https://www.rx8club.com/new-member-f...t-here-202454/
See post #33 and post #37


There are plenty of ways an engine can fail, and far too many people that let one happen to know how much is really to negligence and how much is to stuff that is actually uncontrollable.

Since it was replaced after 100k though, the owner likely paid for it out of pocket. The question you need to find out is where that engine came from. There is a huge difference if it was a quality rebuild from a reputable vendor vs a shade tree mechanics rebuild vs a Mazda reman engine. A poor rebuild could mean that the engine is already failing.

 

I do see your point, I had looked at a different one last weekend that a Mazda dealership tried to sell me and then when I asked for a compression test and it came back bad, they offer 1000 off the price of the car lol. But definitely will look at the link

 

Im gonna try to get all the info on the new engine as possible

 

Compression test before you buy. I would also look to see if any codes have been cleared on it recently.

 

Yeah im gonna talk to them about the compression test and have them hook it up to the computer

 

If you own a code reader. Take it with you, YOU should check the codes. Stealerships will only tell you what you want/need to hear. They will leave everything else out.