£1000 RX8 sprint/track-car project

[seiben]

Some of you may have seen my Westfield thread – I’ve been taking part in the odd trackday and sprint (courtesy of the Javelin Sprint Series) for the last couple of years, along with my best friend. It’s been enormous fun, but having a fair amount of money tied up in a car that gets very little use has got me thinking recently about trying something different. Cheaper. Maybe a little more disposable.

And then, all set to go up to Croft last weekend, the turbo on my trusty tow-car decided it didn’t want to hold all of its oil anymore.

2017-07-08_07-04-25 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

Pete came to the rescue with a very kind offer for me to double-drive his current Fiesta – a 140k mile Zetec S with some ECP coilovers and a set of R888Rs. It was a bit different to the Westfield, but a lot of fun nonetheless!

2017-07-08_07-05-15 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35nL38iUay4

So a plan was hatched. We both do all the same sprint events, and would like to do more trackdays. Neither of us drive our ‘other’ cars very often, and both of us have more sensible things to be spending money on. Why not share a car? All the costs are halved. We have between us two garages, two sets of tools and a hydraulic lift. Trackdays just become car + additional driver. But what could we get?

We spent the 5 hour drive back from Darlington looking at many different options. Civic Type R? Clio 182? MX5? Too many in the series already, and we wanted something different. I got very excited about the prospect of an MG ZS180 (yes, really!), but it would put us in a class with VX220s and V6 Exiges. Same for an Accord Type R. Z3/Z4 were too expensive, but we did want RWD. We kept coming back to the obvious answer that was staring us in the face – I’ve owned one before, but even so the internet scare stories can be a bit off-putting. How would it cope with regular track abuse? Only one way to find out!

We set a budget of £1000 and hit eBay.

We almost had too much choice for our budget so whittling them down was a fairly arduous process, and finally chose one to go and have a look at. So, yesterday evening, I put down a deposit on this beauty:

2017-07-08_07-05-28 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

2017-07-08_07-05-39 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

Yep, £1000. It has a recent rebuild from Apex Rotary, starts well from hot and cold, and has clearly had some money spent in the past. It already has a stainless manifold and full exhaust system, Tein coilovers etc and seems to have had recent plugs, Magnecor leads and coils. On the other hand the paintwork is scruffy, it smells of dog, has a bit of play in the steering column and has some horrendous drug-dealer wheels fitted (those rears are 265 section!).

So, plans? Well, the coilovers were on the list already so they’re a bonus. The exhaust does have a cat (so MOT friendly) but is fairly loud and the manifold is blowing slightly. We might be a bit close to some track noise-limits, so I’ll need to investigate that. We’ll flog the wheels in favour of a couple of sets of standard wheels (one for road use and one for a set of R888Rs we already have ready to go on). First sprint event is in three weeks so we have our work cut out! Longer-term plans will be to strip a reasonable amount from the interior, acquire some braided lines, fit a bolt-in roll cage, bucket seats and harnesses and take it from there. Hopefully it’ll give us a reasonable amount of fun without grenading itself.

Pick-up this weekend!

Edited by seiben on Friday 30th June 10:54

Edited by seiben on Monday 10th July 11:05

[seiben]

RC1807 said:

A grand for an RX8?!
fking hell!

Bookmarked.

We had a choice!

[seiben]

MrBig said:

seiben said:

Yep, £1000. It has a recent rebuild from Apex Rotary, starts well from hot and cold, and has clearly had some money spent in the past.

Sorry?!?! A thosuand quid for one thats already had a rebuild?!?

These just got interesting again....

Yep, a couple of years ago admittedly and it's done about 15k miles since. Still, it seemed healthy enough from the test drive. Time will tell!

Found a pic of my old one, as well:

[seiben]

DMN said:

They are great cars on track, loads of grip in the dry. In the wet though they can be handfull. make sure you have decent rubber with plenty of tread on if its wet. Watch the old Clarkson Topgear review on youtube. He says basically the same thing.

Thanks for that. We'll try and get a set of Rainsprouts for the road wheels I imagine so they can double up as wets.

[seiben]

Gary C said:

They really like being thrashed.

That's lucky

[seiben]

Well, we made it home!

20170701_183145 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

So, what does £999.50 of RX8 buy you, exactly? Let's see what we have here...

20170701_192012 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

20170701_192501 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

20170701_192620 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

20170701_192608 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

20170701_192644 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

20170701_192911 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

20170701_194335 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

20170701_194344 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

Pretty grim really. What these pictures don't convey is the vile smell coming from the boot. It looks clean, but something has definitely died in there.

Still, it drives well enough. Pulls well, handles OK (those stupid wheels aren't doing it any favours), but it is very loud. Gearbox seems fine, if a little whiny in second.

First things first, lets give it a clean!

20170701_204329 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

20170701_204631 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

20170701_210034 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

20170701_210000 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

20170701_205951 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

20170701_205929 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

That's better!

Also found this little chap:

20170701_192335 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

And a MYSTERY SWITCH

20170701_192438 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

So, plans? We have a growing list for next weekend when i'll be making the maiden voyage down to Kent - mostly servicing, but the exhaust manifold gasket needs sorting and it'll get a service as well. I'm also in danger of getting a bit attached to it, so it'll be getting some racing-orientated decoration

In the meantime, I'll drive it for the coming week and see what else I come across

[seiben]

otolith said:

If I remember rightly, DSC comes back on if you trigger the ABS. Press and hold for several seconds for no means no.

Yep. Found that

Funk said:

Christ; looks like these are £535/yr in VED...! fk that...

£300-odd for this one. We were careful to go pre -06.

[seiben]

Well, things are slowly starting to happen in preparation for the weekend. I've managed to secure two sets of standard wheels - one with some decent branded rubber which we'll use as road wheels, and a ropey set of bare wheels which will get sprayed a silly colour and shod in a set of R888Rs.

We also have a full set of service gear to go on (plugs, coils, leads, oil & filter, EBC Yellows) as well as a new exhaust manifold gasket. Chatting to a couple of specialists revealed a few things we should probably know by now:

1) Apex Rotary (who did the engine rebuild) don't really seem to have the best reputation....
2) the stainless manifold (most likely a Japspeed) is almost certainly junk, and is in fact blowing because they have a habit of warping
3) Mazda want a hundred bloody quid for a new exhaust manifold gasket
4) oil choice is a very emotive subject amongst RX8 owners

Well, 1) we can't do anything about, so let's just see how long it lasts

2) and 3) are a bit easier - we'll pilfer a standard manifold off a breaker, and Pete (my partner in ill-advised carfoolery) managed to get hold of another gasket from a local specialist. We opted for some 10 40 semi-synthetic oil after chatting to the guys at Opie Oils and doing lots (and lots) of reading on the subject.

I'm using it as a daily driver this week to get to know it. So far I've had one startup out of about 20 that was a bit smokey, but I'm hoping it's down to a bit of oil overfill rather than anything more sinister. It also pops and bangs when changing up at 9k rpm, which would have been fun for anyone along my drive to the station at 7.00 this morning

2017-07-04_10-08-20 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

[seiben]

Last bit of tinkering last night - find out what the mystery switch does! I had an inkling that it was going to be a fan override switch, and sure enough...

Mystery wire by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

...which leads through to...

Engine bay by Ben Edwards, on Flickr


And, under that (very sharp!) engine cover lurks this little piece of ghetto engineering

Redneck fan by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

Yep, it's a fan switch. Useful for track work I suppose, but it's on a permanent live so we'd best remember to switch it off again.

Oh well, at least I know what it's for before I sit in traffic for many hours tomorrow evening

[seiben]

Thanks - yes, I rather like the look of them too but would rather go for standard wheels on track. Those massive rears probably won't help the handling much

[seiben]

exgtt said:

Could the previous owner have premixed allowing for the odd smokey start?

Possibly, I suppose. Would premixing potentially cause that? It's been good as gold since (touch wood, etc.)

Road trip to Kent this evening. Give me a wave if you see me on the hard shoulder of the M25 :hehe

[seiben]

Well, that was an intense weekend!

First up, off to Uxbridge to pick up a set of bare wheels. Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic was in full swing, it was hot, and the air-con doesn’t work. I’d forgotten how much heat these things generate! Still, wheels collected I headed back to the M25 and down to South Kent. I’m a complete Waze convert now, as well – it managed to steer me round a closure on the M25 that the gantries weren’t showing, and another set of traffic on the M26. Total driving time from Marlow to the Marsh was 3.5 hours including a stop for the wheels, which wasn’t too bad really. I was absolutely sweltering by the time I arrived though!

First things first, I had to introduce Pete to his new race car! We took it for a nice run around the marsh back-roads and confirmed our list of jobs to tackle for the weekend. That done, we had beer and caught an early night.

One of the biggest jobs we had to do (and so, the one we did first) was sort out the blowing exhaust manifold. It had a stainless aftermarket unit fitted which has been farting away merrily since I picked the car up, but Pete had managed to get a good standard unit off a breaker all ready to go after a bit of fighting with stubborn studs:

2017-07-07_11-08-48 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

So, as of 8am Saturday morning, we got to work!

2017-07-08_10-33-23 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

And after much (much!) swearing…

2017-07-08_10-33-38 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

No prizes for guessing where this POS was blowing from….

2017-07-08_10-33-53 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

Next job was to go hunting for another set of wheels – this time, to swap the 19s for a set of standard wheels with good tyres we can use on the road. I’d slightly underestimated the journey involved for this one, as it turned out, but after a 65-mile drive to Brixton and changing someone’s wheels in the carpark of a swanky hotel (a pretty surreal experience, I have to say!) we came home with the goodies:

2017-07-08_10-34-25 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

Our work not over yet, we managed to find time for a full service (oil, filter, plugs, coils and some EMC Yellowstuff pads) before calling it a night. It was getting dark by this point…

2017-07-08_10-34-38 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

2017-07-08_10-34-53 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

Up early again on Sunday, and it was time for the fiddly jobs. I got started fitting the new numberplates – which wasn’t much fun given what I faced after pulling the old ones off!

2017-07-09_10-44-35 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

More important, perhaps, was securing the previously unsecured battery and correcting some pretty horrendous wiring bodges. Someone at some point has fitted a catch tank, the location of which was pushing the wiring loom against one of the pulleys. No damage to the wiring, fortunately, but it was only a matter of time! The unsecured battery tray was also a victim:

2017-07-09_10-44-46 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr



So, another tray from the breaker and a bit of swearing later, we had this:

2017-07-09_10-45-00 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

Much better!

On to the last jobs now, we got busy stripping some weight out of it. Front interior and seats are remaining for now, until we get some decent seats and a cage so we can run proper harnesses, but we still managed to remove a fair amount from the rear!

2017-07-09_10-45-11 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

2017-07-09_10-45-31 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

And, for the full-on Ricer Special look (well, I was starting to get attached to it, so what better way to cure that!). Purists, look away now…

2017-07-09_10-45-41 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

And with that, time for a test drive! It immediately felt much happier – the engine was pulling better, idling better, and (mercifully) there were no blows from the exhaust. It’s actually quite civilised on a steady throttle now! We were suffering with a fairly horrendous noise at WOT though, which after a bit of reading up turned out to the an issue known as ‘marbles in a tin can.’ Pretty alarming at first, but after replacing the BP 95RON with some V-Power it has gone away. I was a little nervous about the long drive home, but made it with no dramas despite the M25’s best efforts. We really need to fix the aircon, though…

So that’s it for now, it’s pretty much ready for race weekend in a couple of weeks. There are a few other bits to sort in future (a front splitter of some sort, refitting a standard airbox, investigate a Sohn adapter) but we’ll see how we get on at Blyton and take it from there. Assuming it survives to tell the tale

2017-07-10_10-51-59 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

2017-07-10_10-51-44 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

2017-07-09_10-46-05 by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

Edited by seiben on Monday 10th July 13:03

[seiben]

Gary C said:

Marbles in a tin can ?

Unusual to get detonation in a rotary.

Think it needs a sound thrashing to free some carbon.

That can certainly be arranged

[seiben]

So, I've just been sent this:


Tango by Ben Edwards, on Flickr

Don't think we'll lose them any time soon

[seiben]

culpz said:

Just a quick question with the above. Does the rebuild on the engine mean that the car can be turned on from cold and driven straight away? Or do you still need to do the usual RX8 start-up/shut-down procedure?

I'm not sure what procedure you mean tbh - the only thing I'm aware of with the RX8 is that you can't switch it off when cold as you risk flooding the engine, meaning it's tricky (and often damaging) to restart. I doubt the rebuild would have made any difference to this, although I suspect it's had a remap at some point which may have helped.

[seiben]

No worries, it's not a silly question at all

In all honesty there's so much misinformation around on these it's difficult to know what's right sometimes!

[seiben]

Vocal Minority said:

I can recommend replacing the coils with D585 coils from the various specialists.

The difference between D585 and normal (admittedly on their way out) was 1.2 seconds up Shelsley Walsh

It's on the "something to do over winter" list. We've put new plugs, leads and genuine Mazda coils on for now, once we're happy the car is actually going to last more than five minutes on track we'll start being a little more strategic about what we spend money on.

In that vein, if anyone can recommend a reasonably priced bolt-in cage (or half cage) I'm all ears

[seiben]

Right. Who wants to see me go backwards into a field?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcsDvL6qCuY

And my fastest run from Blyton:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVty-2QX3sE

Car performed really well. More details and pics when I have time!

[seiben]

Usget said:

You great banana first lap on the first run?! Bet they loved you!

No, last run of the day luckily! It rained after run 4, run 5 was damp and cautious so I thought I'd push a bit on run 6

Fortunately I managed to avoid ruining anyone else's run

[seiben]

I'll just leave this here...