Much better now.

 

Man, that looks good.

I need to get my Mazdaspeed parts painted, if only it wasn't 150 miles away.

 

There should be some awesome body shops in Jacksonville or Daytona that's closer to you. If I lived closer to a big city like Orlando or West PAlm I would hit up a classic car show, check out the paint jobs and quality, especially custom jobs and ask where they got theirs done. I wouldn't have picked my shop just by word of mouth. I had seen their work before. The guy who painted my car has 10 years experience at this shop. No idea how much he had before he started working for them. Problem is generally price, painting ain't cheep and lots of labor.

I end up paying just under $6100 for this which ain't bad. That probably could have got me one hell of an engine from pettit racing. Puts a smile on my face every time I step out my front door though.

 

The car looks great!

 

Wow! Absolutely wOw!

 

Back in Business!! Awesome!

 

looks like it came right from the factory, very nice!!!!!

 

Very nice. But damn, $6100.00 for same color repaint? Was there a lot of body work or new body parts installed?

 

Body rust in three places, new roof moldings, new emblems, door dent, new glass moldings, it all adds up. I wanted every piece sanded down and repainted. No touch ups, even the front bumper that was painted less than a year ago I had them sand it down and repaint.

Looking at my invoice there was 56.1 hours in body labor, 39.5 hours in paint labor, and about 1k in paint and supplies. I know it was pricey but I also was paying for their reputation and warrenty for life on their work. So if rust shows up again (thank you Atlantic Ocean) they have to repair it for free. I'd rather pay more to a shop that’s been doing it for 20 years and know it is going to be done right.

Downside is now I am paranoid about getting my baby scratched. I used to drive down my road doing 20/25 mph but now I crawl down my road at about 5 mph until I get to the main road which is paved. I then take off slowly to make sure no rocks are going to be flung from the tires and scratch the sides up. Got my VR mud flaps in to install over the weekend to help with that.

Word of advice to married men, never let slip that the thing your where looking forward to the most on a weekend you and the wife has off together is working on your car. Not going to the beach with the dogs, not grilling some flounder and home grown pineapples, not going to the movies, but installing mud flaps on a car.

 

To think that someone would pay for a $6k paint job on a $9k car..... I'm just kinda... speechless...

 

Nice paintjob, a bit expensive though seeing as they didn't strip the car but just resprayed it...

Other than that... it looks amazing!

 

Agreed....
And I just don't get it, how are coil overs or the other mods people were talking about "wayyyyy out of [your] price range" but a $6100 Orem paint job is not? You must be super **** about perfect paint lol

 

Yea. If it were me, I would've just wrapped the whole car and spend that 6 grand somewhere else, maybe even trade it in and get sth else, but maybe that's just me.

 

Because I love my car, you think that's expensive you should have seen the time and money I put into my last car, Jaguar XJS.

It was pretty much stripped. The stripped down pics wasn't the prep work in completion. Just the hood, trunk, front pumper, and areas that needed some body work.

Incredible ****, I am very CDO (that is OCD in the correct order) As far as coil overs for a mostly street car IMO are pointless. I'd go with some bilsteins and some nice springs and call it a day. From my readings most of the coil over systems are over rated and don't dyno well. As far as cost, I already mentioned that I had saved up for this. I didn't just pull 6k out of my ***. I like the OEM look, and I'm very obsessive compulsive so too change anything other than the OEM color I would have the entire engine bay stripped to match.

There isn't anything on the market i'd trade this car for. This was the car I wanted for years. I traded my Jaguar for this even though I had rebuilt the engine, new suspension, and many other things. Hell just to replace the rear brake rotors on a pre 94 XJS requires the entire rear dif and axel to be dropped and taken apart. I loved that car, but I didn't want a convertable any more and the top needed to be replaced among many other things. The RX8 is a much cheeper car to maintain.

 

Wait what...? Coilovers... Dyno? I'm confused.

 

Then I suggest some reading and research before you start changing out suspension components if you are unfamiliar with the dyno I am referring too, unless all you care about is having the lowered appearance. Not saying I'm an expect myself nor being an ***, all I'm saying is not all shocks or coilovers created equal.

 

All I'm saying is I wouldn't spend 6k on a 9k car lol but to each his own, it's your money lol.
Looks great anyway.

 

Hey OP, I am in the same boat. I'm saving to paint my Eight myself. Once I have the money I'll make the decision to either paint it like you or just get newer one. It is leaning toward paint right now since I have 80K miles and the compression is perfect on the motor. Your car looks great by the way!

 

Thanks! If you plan on keeping the car a long time I think it is worth it. I only have 55k miles on mine and I keep the interior really clean. Most people think my car is a lot newer based on how the interior looks.

 

looks great, but I cant believe you did an OEM red!

 

I think the OEM red is a very cool color. Mine will be completely repainted OEM VR next week.