I bought this car in 2016. It was my first Nordic Green RX-8 and it was very rough when I got it. It did run...ish...but the engine was low on compression and was hard to start and of course would not restart when warm. The car originally came from Moon Township Mazda in PA. The car spent its life in PA before coming to Ohio. Years of PA winter were not kind to the car, nor were some of its previous owners. The interior was a wreck amd the car was rusty. Its only gotten worse since I've had it because its sat for the last 9 years while I focused on other projects and battled kidney failure. I debated selling the car but thought I could use it to teach my middle son how to diagnose and fix issues on a car. He seems to have taken to doing so and thus I have decided to hang onto the car. I need to learn to fabric and fix body panels and sections and what better of a car to learn to do so. And who knows, it may turn out ok. In the meantime, I will update this thread slowly as we tinker with the car and progress towards making the car better.

Here are a few pictures from when I first got the car in 2016 and after I cleaned it up a bit:









Proof that it did at one time run:





Fall turned into winter and not a lot of progress was made:

 

My middle son showed a lot of initiative when helping me work on an RX-7. He absolutely loves RX-7's and I saw this as an opportunity to teach him quite a bit about cars. He helped me install a new power harness and starter in this car amd he did the majority of the work. I decided then that I would hang onto the car and teach him as we progress with the car.



I did get the warranty history on this car from Mazda a few years back. Its had quite a few warranty repairs!

 

Yesterday he and I cleaned the car up a bit and are getting it prepped to start fixing things. The first thing to fix is the immobilizer issue. The car no longer reads either of the keys thay I have for it. I did find some rodent chewed wiring under the fuse blocks in the engine bay. I repaired the wiring and the issue persists. I will check wiring diagram and study the system and see what else I can do. I would hate to have to tow the car to the dealer to have the keys reprogrammed. I attempted to see if it had any codes and there is no communication with my scan tool. I suspect wiring at this point. I started with some basic wiring repair last night. Soldering, heat shrinking, taping, cleaning etc:



The car in its current state. Absolutely awful: