RX-8 Test Drive Issues: Normal?
 

Hello fellow RX-8 owners, I've been browsing your forums occasionally for a couple of years.. and finally decided to take the jump and buy an "8."

Luckily, there's a fella I work with that is selling a 2004 RX-8. Its fully loaded, including the DVD Nav system, 6 disc changer, everything. Manual transmission of course. It has almost 35,000 miles on it.

Well, today I took it out for a test drive! Wow what a bad little car! I love the feel of it and the powerband. Wasn't hard on it at all.. kept it under 4,500 RPM just to get a feel for the sleepy side of the car. Still is fun! However, I have some issues with the vehicle.

It has been garaged kept its entire life. I don't think they have been hard on the car... mostly driven by his wife. The issues I have are the following:

1. Rear end noise inside the car is VERY loud and distracting. I think it is the tires, but I can't be sure. The tires don't look very worn all around, but he tells me they recently replaced one of the rear tires after a puncture. I don't know if one tire being new could cause the problem. It produces a "wow wow wooah wooow wooow" noise once you get above about 40mph. Is this typical?

2. When the clutch is depressed in neutral, all you can hear is the engine/AC. VERY quiet. However, once you let the clutch out at idle, I noticed a slight rubbing sound or hiss coming from the engine/transmission area while in neutral. I can't tell if its the clutch plate bearings... or what. But, is this typical as well for the Rx-8?

The guy originally said $20,000 to me for the car. Today, he told me $23,000. I'm sure I could get him back down. Tomorrow I plan on going to my local Mazda dealership and taking an "8" for a test drive to see if it has the same issues. Maybe I'll buy a new one. ;)

Thanks for any insite you can provide,
Steve

Sorry guys,

Did a search and it seems these are normal issues.

The tires were extremely loud though. Is this really that common on the Potenza tires?

1. It's probably the tires. When I first got mine the car was really quiet and after about 3,000 miles the potenzas started to get noisy. They switched to Dunlops later in production and they seem to hold up a lot better.

2. Mine does the same thing. Appears to be normal from what I've seen.

Price seems fair. Only thing I'd add is ask him for service records and make sure the oil was changed no more than 7K apart and that quality oil/filters were used. Asked if anything was replaced under warranty.

I love mine. Great car. The more I drive it the better I like it.

Thanks for the information!

They have all of the service records, and its only been serviced at the dealership.

I'll go over the records just to double check.

What type of Dunlop are they using now?

1. 35K miles on the original tires is probably pushing their limits....if you buy this car you'll have to replace them soon, so I'd bet the noise is the tires....which mean's you'll be dropping 700-1000 bucks or so

2. The sound is normal

If you take the VIN number to any Mazda dealer, they should be able to give you a copy of all the recalls that they performed to the car. Any parts that they changed should also be in that print out. That's what I did when I bought mine.

I think $23 may be a bit too much, may be not. I paid mine $24k with 15k miles. Fully loaded (no NAVI and no 6 CD changer)

Also, if you decide to buy his car, have it inspected. Run a compression tests (about $70) and make sure the result is good.

Here are the results I got:

Rotor #1 @ 212 RPM: 7.7/7.3/7.5
Rotor #2 @ 216 RPM: 7.6/7.5/7.2

They used a Mazdaspeed tool that is calibrated/certified every year.

Mazda minimum specification is 7.0 Kg/cm^2
Extrapolated to 250 RPM, the engine compression is over 8.0 Kg/cm^2

They told me that these numbers are very good

For more info, check these posts:

https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-tech-garage-22/compression-test-engine-%7E19k-miles-68829/
https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-tech-garage-22/compression-test-question-you-guys-69288/

There are some more, just run a search on "compression test"

I just picked up my '05 rx8 last thursday. I have Dunlop 8090 tires, which don't seem loud to me. I have read that these are considered summer tires though so I will be switching them out with good all-seaon tires.

Great thanks for the info guys. I drove a hard bargain with the guy and got him down to 19k!

So just need to get tags and I'm good to go!

Will take it in for a compression test, new tires, and also check the firmware.

I'll check out some of the threads about tires.. also will look at the Dunlops.

Thanks again fellas,

Steve

About the noise....
When I was test driving various 8's I noticed that some were louder than others, especially on the highway in 6th (consistently worse than 5th, oddly enough). I didn't check the tires, but assumed all the '05's had the same ones. Maybe tires were the reason. I ended up buying a quiet one, changed the tires to the Pirelli PZero Nero M&S after 300 miles and it was still quiet.