SparklingFresca

I have recently made the great financial decision of purchasing another rx8, because why would you only want 1, when you could have 2? Originally I wanted to have Andrew build an LFX swap for me, and go drive down and pick it up on a vacation to the tail of the dragon, but sadly Andrew no longer offers the service of completing the swap, only selling the kit. I don't have that much room in my garage or the time between racing to fully commit to completing the swap, so I was looking at purchasing one already completed. I found this one on the facebook groups, only the 2nd LFX swap I have seen for sale in over 3 years now, and it fit my criteria of being rough around the edges, which compared to my shinka is nice to not have to worry about the inevitable dings and damage from trackdays and autox.

It's usage will mainly be for track and autox, and possibly an occasional winter driver. The car came from Mississippi and included the tire trailer, the seller installed a hitch receiver on the rear crashbar which pokes out right below where the license plate is, it's a pretty slick setup. As far as I can tell, it's a base model S2, there are no foglights, no traction control/DSC. The car definitely has tons of power but it feels very linear in it's power delivery, just like the renesis. It really starts to pickup right around 2.5-3k RPM where you can feel the VVTI system start to surge the car forward, and pulls effortlessly all the way to the 7.5k rpm redline. Even with the 3.27 rear end gear, it almost feels like the car could use an even longer final drive depending on how you would use the car. 1st and 2nd gear go by really quick up to about 63mph in 2nd with the 17's wheels mounted. I expect the 18's to bring 2nd gear up to around 65-67, which is a great top of 2nd speed for my local autox venue, it's a very high speed course.

Overall it's a fun car that should be a blast at my autox and track vanues.

The sellers mod list
"Prepped for SCCA XSA class and NASA TT3 class.
- 2010 RX8, 83k miles on chassis, 9k miles on drivetrain when installed at 72k miles
- LFX V6 engine & Drivetrain. 2015 Camaro donor, roughly 295whp
- Redshift BC racing adj monotone coilovers w 12/7 kg/mm springs
- Andrew Kieslers 32mm hollow front sway bar
- Oem 14mm rear sway bar “yellow dot” (progress 19mm rear ava)
- Eaton true track LSD
o Camaro SS 218mm gear set, 3.27 FD ratio
o TrueTrac elite gearset
- 6lb lithium ion battery 600CCA
o Replaced with a AGM red top
- 3” exhaust with BHR resonator. High flow CATs and exotic speed rear muffler
o Turn down that can be put in place of rear section (v band clamp)
- Solar performance 76mm throttle body
- Jackfab laminator FX intake mod (and waffle removed)
- Offset bushings (-3.5 F camber)
o -3.5FR, -2.8R, 6.5 caster, 1/16 rear toe
- 17x9 Konigs w/255tires
- 18x11? w/ 285/30/18
- Corbeau race seats

SparklingFresca

Have been slowly picking away at the LfRx. When the previous owner dinged up the drivers fender/headlight, he ended up buying HID headlamps to put in the car when it came equipped with halogens. These wiring harnesses are not compatible at all so you only get the function of the high beams and looks like to be a huge pain in the *** to convert from halogen to legit HID headlamps, so I figured the easiest route was to buy some used halogens on FB marketplace. I was adamant to the seller about making sure they are halogen headlamps, which they appeared to be, and when they arrived they had an HID conversion kit on them It actually wasn't a big deal, since all that garbage easily came off, it was essentially a ballast, the controller, with the HID style bulb just plugged into the normal housing with no other modifications, you can see that stuff in the bottom left of the picture, it's about the junkiest HID conversion kit I have ever seen.

The lenses were in extremely rough shape and took me about 4 hours to completely restore with the Sylvania Headlight restoration kit, which I highly recommend. I ordered some Philips Halogen RacingVision GT200 H7 bulbs to use in the halogens, and will see how those bulbs work out. If they are terrible I might look into actually converting the vehicle from halogen to HIDs, or try and sell the HID headlamps, I am not sure yet. I don't do a lot of night driving so I doubt it will matter much to me, but I say that now without actually having experienced low wattage halogens for over a decade now.

Next item is to install the emergency brake cables since the P/O snapped the cable that comes out of the e-brake handle. Luckily he saved all the hardware for me so it should be a simple thing to add back on. I have the entire center console removed to get easy access to the chassis cover so you can reach your hands down above the driveshaft and actually connect the three cable system without taking the driveshaft out.

There is a slight oil leak on the front cover of the engine and will have to dig into that eventually, and there is also a significant vibration at about 76-80mph, which clears up after 85mph. It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't cause something in the rear seats/trunk area to vibrate at a high frequency, so I have the entire rear interior torn out so I could investigate. I wasn't quite sure if the vibration was from the rear end/poly mounts, the rear end itself, or from the driveshaft/ujoints, so I put the car on jackstands so I could run it unloaded. The vibration still happens with the car on jackstands running up to 76mph, and completely goes away by around 90mph, which makes me think maybe the u-joints need to be replaced or the driveshaft needs to be balanced. I did find one balancing weight welded to the driveshaft so again, I am not too sure and may need to bring it to a driveline shop in the future.

After the e-brake cables are replaced I should be good to go get an inspection and start driving the car again.

After that is the basic maintenance stuff, pump in some GM syncromesh friction modifier trans fluid, do an oil change and try out the quaker state full synthetic 5w-30 which seems to be the top oil these days, check out the sparkplugs, etc. I have reached out to Andrew about ordering the track package air intake but he has been pretty unresponsive lately, likely due to all the requests he makes, so in the meantime I will just get a new air filter or clean and oil this one.

The 17" Konigs that came on the car are extremely light, I was very surprised. I would bet that the wheel/tire combo which is 17x9 with 255s is actually lighter than the 17x9 RPF1s with 255 RE71rs on my shinka, but the konigs have some 340 rated general g max tires mounted on them, so maybe thats where the weight difference is compared to the beefier bridgestones.