well my 8 (silver 04 mt 28k miles) should be arriving in the next day or two, and I just figured I'd ask if there's any advice you all could give me as far as little things to look for while I'm giving it a good look-over and test drive. carfaxed it already and no open recalls and a clean record, and i've test drove a new one.. actually the mazda dealership gave me one to drive overnight last month so I already know how badass it is in that respect.

 

give her hell, scare the salesman. make sure all the recalls and TSB's are done to the car. check the underbody, make sure its all good. make sure the engine sounds good.

 

Be sure to take it to at least 7k on each shift all the way up to 4th gear to be sure your gears/synchros are good to go. Of course try to find a good area to do this, merging onto highway is good. I didnt do this and later found out my 3rd and 4th gears were bad (would grind goin into 3rd and 4th at high rpms). If there is any grinding whatsoever then demand they get fixed cuz will just get worse.

 

nice, and its right off the highway too. thanks for the quick responses. i dont think i would've thought of redlining all the way through 4th. good idea, and good excuse to give 'er hell before i drop my $$$.

 

yup. i didnt know to beat it before you buy it, but i tested two 8's before i bought mine, and of course i went easy on it, but then the salesman was like, "now we are gonna go on the highway!" so we got to the on ramp, and i was in first gear about to shift into second, and the guy said punch it. i was like WHAT??!! so i did, and i was amazed.

just do it, it will be fun for the both of you

 

go about 70 in 6th gear and seam innocent.. throw it in 3rd take off

muhuauahhahaha

 

this is bad... i can already tell my 3+ years with no speeding tickets is about to come to an end.

 

ok so here's my checklist so far.. besides the obvious

condensation in the headlights
griniding gears
broken visors
squeeky brakes

are there any more "common" 8 problems I should consider?

 

marbles in a can sound coming from the engine.

 

I thought the conclusion was this is normal. No?

 

no, you dont want to hear that, that means that the engine is knocking. you dont want that.

 

this is why i'm going to go with carmax's full fledged extended warrany instead of a cheap third party one...

 

make sure that covers engine and tranny. if i were you, i would practically memorize what the warranty covers.

 

yea i've looked it over quite a few times. camax's warranty has a good rep and i think its as good as any other extended warranty you could get besides mazda's.

one quetions which i'm sure has been answered 100's of times but while i'm here... how do i know if its a touring, gt, etc??
at the moment i know it has fog lights, sunroof, and cloth seats, no body kit. i forgot to ask if it has xenons but i'm hoping so (i've heard that if there's fog lights there's probably hid's)

 

well dont quote me on it, but the main sign that an 8 is a sport, is if it doesnt have a sunroof, and has cloth seats. touring, which is what i have, has leather seats, power seats, and a bose sound system. the grand touring has a navigation system, and other things like that

 

check clutch, put in neutral and make sure it doesn't chirp! Mine did and I needed a new clutch and throw out bearing. But a light chatter is normal so don't flip out when u hear that, watch the idle. Rev it ip and let the rpms fall to see if the idle returns to normal. Watch for water in taillights

 

well she arrived today. after waiting for a week i finally have my 8! must've had a smile on my face the entire ride home, and i took the looongest way possible. i've had a wrx, my step-father an sti, my roommate has a Z06, i've driven 350z's and s2000's..ect. and i gotta say not one of these cars can hold a candle to the thrill i get out of this car. don't know what it is either. i know the 8 isn't considered fast compared to these cars, but it definitely feels like it. and after reading practically all of the the thread "little things" on this forum, it's funny noticing it all.

thanks for all the advice. i checked all of those things, including redlining it all the way through 4th gear, and it drove great. only defects i noticed was the button on the center console was just about broken and one of the plastic shields under the grill was hanging down alittle cause a pin was missing. carmax is of course going to take care of these small issues. i'm expecting some reliability issues here and there, but i could care less right now for some odd reason.

 

nice. that smile wont go away for a while. trust me. now dont worry about what people say about how the renesis is unreliable and is crap. you take care of your 8 and it will last forever. there is a rumor that with age, the renesis actually runs better!! and dont believe the silver curse.

good job!! if you plan to mod at all, or hit up the track, there is a LOT of info in the stickies, and being new, people will give you **** for not searching or whatever, but if you need to find something on here, just use the advanced search, or google. they work way better than the normal search

 

congrats!!! Enjoy it