I heard from Robbie the manager of Pettit Racing UK that the supercharger may come back, and if so will be fitted with a larger capacity Whipple brand supercharger, the 1600AX to be exact. If the Pettit Racing supercharger comes back, it will make its debut on the RX3.8

 

Whoa, that sounds drool-worthy for sure! Also is "RX3.8" slang for something..? Like the RX8 R3 model maybe? Not familiar with that term... I Googled it but couldn't get any results :/

 

 

I tried the best I could. Its kinda tough with the pulley on and not the other bracket for a side by side. Also the metal is thicker. So if you are looking at the motor, its further down to the left. Kinda like originally it was positioned at 10 o'clock and now its at like 8 o'clock if that helps

 

I brought the 8 to work today if you need more photos. Its also really sunny out

 

keck did ya figure out the sensor you asked me about? theres a thread on air pump delete here if you need it

 

 

Just thought i would post this here

 

keck - this is the tensioner bracket I got, can you tell whether it is the upgraded one or not..?




And Madtaz, that is the exact same set I got, with the anodized blue and everything... Gorgeous!


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Hmm it’s tough to tell. I would just basically tighten down the tensioner pulley and see if the top part tilts towards the alternator belt. If it flexes then it’s prob the old one. If not you should be ok. Honestly with the RRP pulleys you don’t need to crank down the tension as much since the wider belt grabs better so it might be a non issue

 

That's kind of what I was thinking/hoping... We shall see.


Also, despite already having the two heat exchangers that came with the SC kit, I went ahead and purchased this Pettit-built custom undertray setup from Bennett Built Performance for my install; the two air-duct hoods direct airflow down through the heat exchangers and directly out the open bottom. I want the best possible cooling setup I can manage to get, living in SoCal where it's always hot.


Given this, I will probably be selling the two perfectly good exchangers that came with the kit eventually. I'll post an ad in the Classifieds section once I actually get the undertray setup installed, or if anyone wants to call dibs let me know. Or even better, if anyone has any ideas for putting the extra two heat exchangers to use in my own car I'm open to suggestions, although I'm not really sure there's a lot else I could use them for... Could I daisy-chain them together and run a quadruple-heat-exchanger setup? Would that even do anything extra? Or is that just crazy/pointless?

 

Hmm...I want to say someone did try daisy chaining all 4 but I cannot recall specifics. I seem to think it was Old Dragger or one of the Florida people. I would call Pettit and see what they say. Personally I would wonder about the ability for that little pump to move the fluid through everything with 4 exchangers but thats just spit balling.

BTW what front lip are you running OtherSyde?

 

Here: https://www.aliexpress.com/store/pro...628948798.html


But I actually got mine from Ebay (I've been through 2 now) because they're only like $79 there and sometimes you can even get free shipping. I love these lips because they're flexible and take a lot of punishment, and when they break I can get another one for like $100 or so, rattle-can it with color-matched paint (I've gotten very good at the technique), and slap it on the car within an hour or so. I've been through several because I have a tendency to miss dips/culverts/water ducts here in San Diego (they tend to be subtly integrated into streets and driveways here and I never see them until I'm like, on top of them). This is why I don't buy an expensive carbon fiber lip - it would be a waste on my car I also just love the way this lip looks - I like the little pseudo-canards on the outer edges of the base.

 

hmm so like this one?

For 04-08 Mazda RX-8 RX8 EVO Front Bumper Lip Spoiler Urethane | eBay

 

Any updates OtherSyde? I am curious about the intercooler setup

 

Not yet... Still deployed in the Pacific ocean somewhere I have a HUGE pile of new car parts sitting at home in my garage, just waiting for me to get home and start installing them I promise I'll update as soon as I get some progress, don't worry!


[EDIT] - Forgot to add, yep that's the front lip. It's very flexible and quite easy to install.

 

Keep me updated! I finally got the ignition hopefully sorted out so I am now revving it back up to 8-9k and the car feels great. Right in time to garage store it for the winter.

I really want that lip but I threw out my old factory air dam when I installed the oem front lip. Never would have thought it would be so difficult to locate one to attach an aftermarket lip to it. And the OEM part from mazda is stupidly overpriced.

 

Wait what? I sold my factory air dam long ago; my front lip has nothing under it but the stock bumper. It's anchored to the bumper on the front in 2 places right outside of the lower "mouth" of the front fascia by two smooth-top bolts that I painted to match the car (they're pretty camouflaged - they just look like 2 small, subtle bumps/buttons on the front) , and again by two bolts right inside the wheel wells (the lip wraps around the sides and reaches into the inside/front of the wheel wells a few inches, so I bolted it in there), and the back/inside/bottom of the lip is anchored in 4 evenly-spaced spots to the undertray with little metal braces that kind of look like 4-inch-long pieces of Erector Set kit (those building toys from the 80's/90's).


It took me all of an hour to get it fully installed. It's on there pretty good too - it's already survived many ground-scrapes as well as plowing over a dropped Christmas tree on the freeway at about 60MPH without budging a bit. You shouldn't need anything underneath this lip, just some nuts and bolts and a few little mounting brackets you can buy for $4 at any hardware store.
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Thats good to know. I always thought it needed the factory air dam support in the middle because it would rest on it. Do you have any pics of the car straight on?

 

Yeah the lip will just bolt right up! Here's a couple pics.

 

Wow that actually looks perfect

 

Whew! I'm finally back on US soil. Jesus that was a long deployment. Anyway, I came back a few days ago to a small mountain of car parts in unopened delivery boxes sitting in my garage and it was like early Christmas! I wasn't planning on installing any right away because I have so many things to catch up on after 7 months of absence, but yesterday I was over at the girlfriend's house and we got in my car to go find breakfast, and BAM. Clutch pedal went to the floor and stayed there. I've experienced this before in my old SVT Contour - dead clutch assembly (or some major component at least, possibly a master/slave cylinder, etc.).
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Being that I need my car functional for work and such, I called my Mazda dealership but they had no appointments for another 2 weeks. 'Tis the season for Mazdas to break down I guess? So I called the nearest highly-ranked nearby garage in San Diego, and they said they could look at it the very next day (today). I carefully limped my RX8 the 1.9 miles over there while barely able to shift gears at all, and it turned out the guy at the front desk was a former Speed3 owner and Mazda enthusiast!


We chatted, and I asked if they could install aftermarket parts (the dealership obviously is not very keen on this subject) and he said it would be no problem. So I figured if I'm going to have my car out of commission and half-disassembled for several days and pay hundreds of dollars anyway (and I wouldn't have much time to install mods with the compressed upcoming holiday schedule either), I might as well get a few of the more basic bits installed in preparation for the Pettit kit, right? I convinced the girlfriend to give me a lift back to my place and grab a few things to get installed: The RE-Medy Series II style water pump and upgraded thermostat, new KOYO radiator, and 4 of the 7 total Ryan Rotary Performance pulleys (the remaining 3 are the SC tensioner pulley and the 8psi and 11psi pulleys). I unboxed them quickly and snapped a few pre-installation pics, and headed back over to drop them off at the shop.
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Fast-forward a day and they get ahold of me this morning and give me some awesome news - my clutch is not dead after all - it's in decent shape - but when I had the Mazda dealership replace the wonky clutch pedal a year or so ago (it was breaking), they didn't adjust it correctly or tighten it down enough; it just needed some tightening and adjustments and it was good to go! I really thought my clutch was toast, but this is great for two reasons - one, I'll get my car back way faster since no new parts need to be ordered or waited on - and two, it'll cost a butt-load less. I guess this just ended up serving as a sort of inadvertent excuse (and kick in the pants) to go ahead and get a few preliminary cooling mods installed, pre-supercharger. I should have it back in about 2-3 days, and I'll post more pics of the newly-installed supporting mods (the ones that are visible anyway).
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I won't likely be able to get much more done before the holidays, but it looks like I'm gearing up for supercharging faster than I expected!
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Pics...

 

Glad you made it home safe and sound!

 

Which psi pulley are you going to run? I would DEFINITELY recommend going with the 8psi first. It will feel fast. If you start with 11psi, the 8psi will feel like nothing. The last few years that I ran the 11psi, i had belt slippage issues on the Pettit pulley and would only see 7-8 and the car felt neutered.

You are going to run something like the Torque app and obd dongle to monitor the temps real time right?

 

Oh yeah, definitely running the 8psi to begin with. For one, like you said, I don't want to ruin the 8psi feeling by jumping to 11psi first. Secondly, engine longevity! My engine has 59,600ish miles on it right now, and although it feels very sprightly and healthy, putting high boost on it will likely hasten its inevitable decline. And finally, I read somewhere that if you want to run 11psi or higher, you need to upgrade more things - namely your fuel pump and your injectors (did you do this on yours? And/or other supporting mods?).





Yeah I have the Torque app and a Bluetooth dongle, I will definitely keep an eye on the temps! That stupid temp gauge on the dash is... less than precise, for sure.


I think the biggest, scariest part of the install for me is the wiring part. I understand the whole coolant loop and most of the various other tubing and I have the installation guide, but the guide seems to assume one knows a lot about the wiring (location of wire looms, pin-out diagrams, colors of wires, etc.) and I am not at all familiar with that aspect. How hard was the wiring to do?