so sad to see your 'titanic' sinking :( plenty of good parts on there! good find anyhow!

The parts car is very rusty. I've seen worse though, and if the quarter weren't cut off of it, I may have tried to save it.

Not much progress has been made this year at all. Been busy with other projects. thinking of buying a known good used engine to install in the car just to get it up and going.

Beautiful job on both the NG and the 88... so good to see people giving these cars the love they deserve rather than blowing the engine and tossing them in the junkyard.

Thank you! In the hands of many people, this car would have been parted. It does have a bit of rust but the car is well worth saving. I really love the car very much and its worth it to me to slowly bring the car back. All of the cars I bring home I love and appreciate.

That Nordic Green was such a great, under appreciated color. I wish they had continued making them past ‘04. I could say the same thing about the blue and black second gen RX’s as well. Don’t quite understand Mazda’s color choices like dropping great looking ones.

Nordic Green was available in 04 and 05, but was dropped in 06 to usher in Phantom Blue. Don't get me wrong, Phantom Blue was an exceptional color, but Nordic Green is by far my favorite! I'm not sure if it was a cost thing or low sales in Nordic Green that convinced Mazda to replace the color. They did the same with Titanium Grey as well. Replaced it in 06 with Galaxy Grey, which is darker and in my opinion, not a beautiful of a color. Mazda did great with the color choices on the 8 over the years, that's for sure!

I started the car a couple days ago and moved it around the driveway and took a couple pics. Figured ibwould post a couple pics since I haven't posted any in awhile. The car badly needs a bath and a new engine. I feel bad because it's been on the back burner for so long. But working two jobs and having 6 kids doesnt help much with getting all of my projects finished.

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Life happens
 

With 6 kids I don’t see how you have time for much of anything...,even making more kids! I ended up putting my 8 in a storage container on family land. It’s all locked up and just waiting for me to retire and start driving it again. We ended up getting the boy an all wheel drive car for Upstate NY snow. I couldn’t let the 8 go since it is 100% solid. I just saw another Nordic green on Craigslist for 500 bucks, but it was a rusty mess, but the interior was nice. The urge to horde is strong....,

LMFAO hording is good especially if you will give them love. I just picked up my second rx8. not $500 but engine is good but had an accident with a deer. I go on ebay before I bought the car found a hood same color for $150 and a front bumper for $350. Will be back on the road soon. Love me more Rx8s

Actually the second one I bought is a 2006 in that same meteor grey color as the rx8 next to the Nordic green above

Beautiful car you got dude, its always nice seeing these cars in good hands.

Thank you very much. I'm hoping to be able to get to it soon. I've been working two jobs to stay afloat so I haven't had a ton of time this year unfortunately. I was looking at the car yesterday talking with my son about getting an engine for it.

Well in my hunt for a good engine for this car I found not one but two lower mileage Mazda reman engines! I ventured out last night and bought them both. I further decided to buy the cars they came out of as well. I'll be back for those. I'm going to call my local Mazda dealer today, with whom I have a good relationship, and have them run the vin numbers of each car and have them tell me at what mileage each of these engines was installed. I know the mileage of each car so I can get get a good idea of the mileage on each engine. The dirty engine was removed from a 70k mile Nordic Green Touring model. The guy said he launched the car and heard what sounded like a chain breaking and the engine never ran right after that. Said it shut off when warm but would restart shortly thereafter. Turning it over by hand, it generates strong compression pulses. Definitely a great candidate for a rebuild. The cleaner engine came out of an 83k mile Velocity Red GT. The guy said it had no problems running and was destined for the Nordic Green Touring car. It also has strong sounding compression pulses. This is the engine that I will be using for my Nordic Green GT. I'm going to order an engine gasket kit and get everything cleaned up and post better pictures of every step up to and after installation.

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This is the car the alleged good engine came out of. Its next on my list to buy as I made a deal for it last night:

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Happy like a hippo
 

Watching you rescue more rx8 makes me happy like a hippo!!!

Ordered the engine gasket set yesterday from Mazda. Should be here in a week. I'll start prepping the engine in the mean time getting everything cleaned up. I'll post more pictures and a video when I do.

Makes me happy to do so. I love rescuing these cars. I did the same with RX-7's for many years. These cars are just too awesome to let sit and rot away.

Made some more progress on getting these engines cleaned up. Once I finish cleaning them, I will pull the car in the garage and begin removing the engine to prepare for the cleaning and transfer of parts.

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This is the engine I will likely use, which has 50k miles and was known running well when removed:

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This engine will be destined for my Titanium Grey Touring and has only 30k miles according to Mazda records:

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Engine gasket set came in and the engine swap will begin soon. I need to find a good used clutch kit to toss on the engine. I don't want to blow a ton on money on a clutch set and have issues with the engine. I'm doing this low budget and taking a gamble so a good used clutch will be just fine. The clutch that's currently in the car is definitely a puck style clutch. It's either on or off. There's no progression in the pedal.