Generation Specific > Rx-8 Build Thread

Vera's Story - '09 RX-8 Sport

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toplessFC3Sman:
Vera is a 2009 RX-8 Sport, in pearl white with the 6-speed manual and 84k miles. She was previously owned by another rotorhead on here, and I got her from a dealer after they flooded her engine and assumed that the engine was toast and not worth the effort. Part of this was spending a few hours at the dealer pulling plugs and de-flooding the engine, but it resulted in them selling her to me at their wholesaler's price of $4500. Totally worth it, since she is in very good shape.



I intend to keep her mostly stock, nothing radical, for use as a more fun DD and HPDE/Rallycross toy, in addition to the Saab (Nina) and the FC RX-7 project (Savannah). However, there has still been some work done mostly for reliability and getting her ready for the track.

- A cheap HID kit had been installed that only worked intermittently, and after trying new bulbs, ballasts, and main relay, I eventually just ripped it all out and put the OEM H7 bulbs back in the projectors.
- Cleaned out the water in the taillights by taking them off the car, drilling a hole in the bottom inner corners of each, draining the water, then filling and sloshing with white vinegar followed by distilled water. Once they were clear, I plugged the hole with a generic plastic panel fastener of the right size, cut down so it didn't protrude too far into the housing. So far, so good!
- New BHR ignition coils & NGK plugs and wires to try to solve what felt like a slight miss at high RPM. These didn't do it, so I'm holding onto the parts that were originally on the car as spares.
- Cleaned the ESS and reset the NVRAM, plus cleaned the MAF to address the slight misfire - this worked. Checked the catalyst and it looks perfectly fine.
- Hawk HP+ brake pads for the track. After one track day, they're squealing away though, so I'm swapping back to the nearly new pads that were on the car
- General G-Max summer rubber on the OEM wheels.

And, she survived her first track day perfectly! I was just getting to know her, the repaved Waterford Hills track surface, and don't have a ton of track experience so I was in the beginner group, but was reeling in just about everyone else in that group pretty quickly, with most laps right around 1:27. Vera performed flawlessly, no signs of misfire, no overheating, the brakes stayed strong although I could probably have dropped a couple of lbs of tire pressure. I ended up doing the course in 3rd gear to simplify things and reduce the chance of problems while focusing on the driving line, and it went very nicely.




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murz:
Glad you were able to get such a great deal on this. After watching your video, it really makes me want to get into HP driving, an RX8 seems like the perfect car to do it with too! Any plans on upgrades?

toplessFC3Sman:
No, I don't plan to do much to her beyond maintenance. Maybe small things like front brake cooling ducts and mud flaps for more track days & rallycross/ice racing, but I want to keep her comfortable and reliable for fun DD duty.

I was looking back at the lap last year in the tuned Saab (Annalie), and I was doing about 1:30's then. This was on the old pavement, and what people were saying was that the repaving was worth ~2 sec for lighter cars, and almost nothing for heavier ones, so I figure maybe 1 second due to the track for the ~3100 lbs of both Annalie & Vera (hopefully they don't get mad at me for posting their weights). I think I was certainly doing a better job driving this year, but otherwise at least on this track, the two cars seemed fairly well matched despite their differences. I was shifting more in Annalie (mostly to avoid a low-RPM misfire), she had a bit more grunt (~250 hp, 285 ft-lbs, vs 230 hp and 160 ft-lbs in Vera) but was FWD, and had slightly wider but slightly less grippy tires than Vera.

fidelity101:
I did about 1:25-28 in the rally car there on the old track per lap there, I was excited for my 8 to lap there but with the failed engine that is gonna have to wait, and the black flagged for sound quickly in the rally car...

toplessFC3Sman:
This past weekend I went out to Grattan for the first time with Vera, and it was a blast! There were sessions on Sat & Sunday, and we camped out Fri & Sat night in the infield/pit area. That track is so much fun, with the blind and off-camber turns, bumps, and how so many of the corners could be strung together into long complexes. I definitely improved a lot over the course of the weekend, but am far from proficiency or good repeatability yet. Vera performed flawlessly on the same set of Hawk HP+ pads from Waterford (I had spares just in case, but these are still less than half-worn), now with braided stainless brake lines too. All-in-all, very minor mods.



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You can hear the red-line buzzer going off at various points there, I was generally topping out 3rd gear right before the jump and before the turn 11 hairpin (before the run up the hill to the main straight), which is ~85 mph, and topping out 4th on the straight which is ~107 mph. By the end of the weekend I could start to string together most of the corners well, at least some of the time, and laps were around 1:40 based on the video.

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