Wall of text incoming. If you don't like reading, the pretty pictures are at the end.

I've been reading and searching the forums for about the last week or so soaking up as much information as I can and just wanted to introduce myself and say thanks for all the great DIY and noob friendly getting started guides.

So a little about the car. It's a 2005 Whitewater Pearl 6MT with what looks like the Touring package. This is my first manual car and so far it's a blast to drive. Picked it up for a little over 11k with 74k miles on the clock. Runs great and everything seems to be in working order. It came with a K&N Typhoon 2 intake, painted rims, lowering kit, painted sway bar, painted engine cover, and a cheapy set screw shift ****.

Stuff I've done so far:
Washed and waxed. I really need to take a clay bar to it though.
Oil Change with Castrol GTX Syn Blend 5w-20, Mobil 1 Filter
Cleaned and oiled K&N air filter
Cleaned MAF
Painted badges matte black with Plasti-Dip (turned out awesome, thanks to DIY section)
Touched up lips of rims with a sharpie, actually matches paint perfect lol


Also, ordered some parts yesterday:
Racing Beat oil cooler and condenser screen kit
Voodoo Magnum shift **** in piano black, the one that came with it is junk and the stock one that I got with it is stripped out.
Z-Enterprise grounding kit in red




So. Here's my questions and concerns section, if I should make new threads in appropriate forums just let me know, but I just wanted to write out my to do list basically.

This car is slammed on 19" rims. The frame and cat scrape when I pull out of my driveway even on an angle. I don't know what spring kit is in the car and I don't know how much it's lowered but yeah. I was thinking about a coilover kit so I can fine tune the ride height, but I'm not sure it's worth the money. Also, the rear right suspension bottoms out all the time on the smallest of bumps. It sounds brutal if I hit a small bump at like 45MPH. I have the stock springs so I was thinking of trying to put that back in but I like the lowered look. Also it's quite possible that the shocks are spent, I'll have to check those out.

The hood is kind of yellowing. It looks like a different color in the shade but in the sun it's not as noticeable. I have a couple options here. Plasti-Dip the entire damn thing, probably wouldn't look half bad. Or I could buy a new hood. Do you guys think a stock hood in carbon fiber would look tacky?

And the rest of my to do list in no particular order, will probably take a year or two to finish it out ha:
AFE Short Throw
SOHN OMP Adapter
Racing Beat REV8 Exhaust
BHR Mid-Pipe
BHR Ignition
COBB AccessPort
REVi Ram Air Duct, then maybe the Typhoon will work as intended and actually make power. Or maybe just replace with the REVi intake. Depends on how much money I have.
Paint brake calipers, haven't decided what color.
Drilled and Slotted rotors
Tint, 5% rear, 20% front
LED Puddle Lights


So yeah. If you actually read all that, I really do appreciate it. Any thoughts/questions/concerns/suggestions/advice at all, no matter how small, I wanna hear it. The more the better.



And of course the pictures, I didn't like the rims looking at the pictures in the for sale ad, but in person they look great and they're growing on me. The color is candy apple metallic red and the lips are gloss black.

 

Looking good!

 

not sure about the wheels but looks good everywhere else.

 

The painting of the emblems...............

 

Congrats and welcome. I love WWP but not sure on the wheel color.

 

You bought this one right?

http://phoenix.craigslist.org/evl/cto/2400610556.html

BTW jump on over to AZ Mazda Club and introduce yourself. There's a ton of 8 owners in your area. We always have something going on. We can give you all the info you're going to need on your car if you want to come out to some meets. We do a lot of track events as well, so maybe we can get you interested in the local NASA or AutoX events. Hope to see you over there man

 

Wow......... Wow, haha.

You have your mods & research planned out, I see.

Congrats, and be sure to apply some of that money to your HPDE funds.

All the best.

 

Not sure about the wheels and the fog lights but to each their own! congrats on the car WWP is an excellent color.

 

thought about Clear corners?
Other than than that you seem to know what your doing and headed in the right direction!
Welcome to the club!

 

Yeah to be honest I didn't like the rims in the pictures either, but when I saw them in person they looked a LOT better. They're growing on me too, but hey, at least they're pretty unique lol.




Yep that's the one. I'll definitely head over there and register, it'd be great to go to a meet and see how some other people have their 8's setup. Also AutoX and NASA sounds like a blast, I'd really like to get into that.

Now that I think about it, clear corners would look awesome I'll definitely look into those.

 

Me no like wheels either, sorry bro! Other than that, nice wwp rx8.

 

Yeah I kind of want to get them done in black chrome but I don't have the cash. I just committed to the PowerTrix coilover group buy so I can solve my suspension problems. That's 800 bucks out of the now non-existant mod fund lmao.

 

Welcome aboard. I would ditch the fogs and get a new lip. The wheels look heavy and don't flow too well but you can always have them painted or powder oated gloss black or paint match the faces WWP.

 

Looks good.
Proper list of to do's.
Clear corners should be on the list.
I like the rims.

 

Aren't those fog lights the ones you buy at walmart?

 

I have no idea. The previous owner had them on there.

 

clear corners
lose fog lights
are those stick on vortex genorators on the roof? if so get rid of them stat
idk about the rims
welcome, congrats and gl

 

Hurry and introduce yourself on AZMC. If you're ever in the market for new wheels, I have a set of RAYS matte black wheels for sale. They're on Phoenix CL right now. ESPECIALLY if you want to look into AutoX, NASA, or PAS

 

I registered over there but last time I checked my account was still pending approval. Im about to drop about a grand on powertrix race coilovers in that group buy so I don't have the cash to buy anything else at the moment.

 

Thanks for the pictures showing what the emblems would look like black on a white car. I was planning spraying them with plasti-dip but didn't know how they would look. If its not to much to ask do you think you could snap a pic of it in good light from the back?

 

Sweet!! I'll get Todd to approve your account!!

 

Yeah no problem man. I'll try to snap a few after work tomorrow. If not tomorrow then I'll be able to for sure on Saturday.



Alright cool, sounds good man.

 

Just got my Voodoo shift **** in today. Looks awesome and feels great. Definitely worth the money. SO much better than that plastic set screw one that spins around...

Also just ordered an oil catch can kit off ebay for like 25 bucks.

 

probably plasti dip

 

Congrats on getting the best color!

Lose the fugy fogs -- get stock ones -- rims look good - Get rid of those vortex fins too lol

I need to redo my emblems with plasti dip they came out like ****.