Help needed! Loss of power, sluggish, poor pickup n high mpg
 

Hi there,
I'm a newbie who needs help with my gf's RX8, i've been indebted to owners clubs in past for valuable information and hoping someone can help again.
I'll explain symptoms and what i've done to try to remedy.
The car starts and runs from cold or hot, however low in the rev band it seems sluggish, with poor pick up and looses power. For instance approaching a round about in 3rd gear at 30mph and exiting at 20mph the engine won't pick up car chuggs and you have to change down. Whilst motoring in normal traffic in 5th at 30 mph the car won't pick up and you have to change down, sometimes to even 3rd.
Also hill starts, in 1st gear its almost impossible to pull away unless you have about 4k revs. In normal driving once you get past 3-4k revs the car goes like stink! Motorway cruising is no problem what so ever. Car has done 60k and has a good service history from previous owner, my gf purchased it only earlier this year with 54k miles on it.
Now i've changed the coils, spark plugs, catalytic converter, cleaned the MAF sensor, checked the ESS and also done a compression test (albeit not a comprehensive, checked all faces with a gauge). At present i'm at a loss as to what it might be, the Mazda garage tried to sting us earlier in the year to replace headlights as they wouldn't level (found a DIY fix), so i'm relectunt to let them under the hood.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks Lee

you are in the uk? 5spd or 6 spd ?

Get a real compression test done first, report and we shall go from there.
An UK based company stole my compression tester so there's at least a real one up there.

I like your do-diligence, I can clearly see you have researched around the forum for ideas.

I too would recommend finding what the compression is on the front and rear rotors.