Titanium Grey Restoration
 

The other night my boys and I went and picked up a non running 04 6 speed Touring model in Titanium Grey. Appears to be a once loved car with a RB exhaust but the engine has seen better days and I was told it was leaking coolant pretty bad. The car needs everything really but I love bringing these cars back so I'll pack away at it and bring the car back to it's original condition. Regretted selling my last Titanium Grey 05 and this will make a nice replacement. More pictures to come today as I put some time into the car.

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Can't wait to see how this thread develops. Keep us posted!

Got the car unloaded yesterday and reassembled what the previous owner removed from the engine. Seemed as though he was thinking about pulling the engine.the engine was locked but I was able to free it. I removed the plugs...those pictures are to come.... and saw how they were soaked with what appeared to be stale gas, carbon, and perhaps coolant. I ran a compression test by ear with the plugs pulled and there was very little compression. I hooked up my rotary compression tester and it wouldn't even pick up 1psi on either rotor. I expected as much to be fair. I'm not swayed from restoring the car. It's very restorable and I feel as though it should be saved. I took a couple pictures yesterday, nothing great but I wanted to shame some of the progress with the community.


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I wanted to share pictures of the spark plugs that I removed from the car when I first brought it home. The condition of the plugs does in fact point to coolant seal failure. The previous owner said that the engine was smoking white and had an external coolant leak as well. He said that he overheated the engine once as well. So I am pretty well convinced that the current engine, which is the original engine, is toast. But I wanted to share the pictures with everyone here because these are the worst set of spark plugs that I have ever pulled out of an RX-8!

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Great attitude on the preservation route. I just picked up my 5th one a couple of weeks ago which is originally ti-gray as well. The guy decided to try an ls swap after I got the reni running, failed and was going to part it out.. He gave me first dibs on parts so I just bought everything he had. I'm glad you have it , I know it will be treated properly.

Thank you very much for the kind words! I feel terrible that when the engine fails, people see the car as worthless then and part out perfectly good 8's. This one was destined to be a part out to someone else. It only has like 88k miles and its not rusty which is rare here in Ohio. I'll likely end up just buying a reman engine for the car and enjoying the car for many more years. It need paint and some other odds and ends but that's what makes a car like this fun. And I paid next to nothing for the car so that's a win as well. Glad you were able to save another one from a V8!! Well done sir!

Still working on getting a title for the car. Powered it up the other day with a good battery and turned everything on and rolled all the windows down and just made sure everything was moving freely. Took a couple pics to share:

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I had my youngest out in the cars with me playing. She loves the cars and loves playing in them.

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And then something weird started happening with the information display... it went from displaying normally to displaying lines...and then back to normal...and then to lines..odd. I'll have to dig into that issue. I do have a spare I can swap in however.

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Really nice 8. I bought a Titanium Gray as well recently.
Mine has a engine in a good shape, though a bit weathered on the exterior.

You are like the SPCA for RX7 and RX8s. Whoa!

I have quite a few examples of each. I've had 42 RX-7's since 1999. It's really been an amazing hobby and now I can in life my children as well and it's all for the better. Wouldn't have it any other way.

I have had this problem when the car sits in the sun for a bit. It resolves after it cools down....

Not much new with the car. Its been sitting but not forgotten about. I had it uncovered yesterday and cleaned it and let the kids play in it. I pulled the radio to repair it as well. I like to do little things while I'm waiting for parts for my other cars. I really need to get rid of the lowering springs as the car sits entirely too low. It's so low that I can't even get a floor jack under it.

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Great work pulling another car off life support!

It's really great what you're doing!

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I appreciate you saying so! It's been a long road with all of the project cars I have and what's been going on on my life personally. I really try and save as many as I can.