I’ll start by saying the ad caught my eye for the wheels. I have a nicely running 2011 GT with ugly aftermarket wheels and I prefer the OEM look. I unfortunately can’t find S2/Mazdaspeed 3 wheels in my area in decent shape without driving to the next state.
It’s cosmetically rough with 92k miles, the interior isn’t the best, paint is toast, driver side door handle is broken. Not counting the paint I could make the interior better and fix the door for $200-ish. Some of the paint might come back with polish but the clear is coming up.
When I first talked to them, I asked about the wheels, even offering to trade the wheels with wheels I had plus cash, but they want the car gone. They immediately dropped the price from $1400 to $900 without prompting them for a lower price so I think there is room to go lower.
I could only get out of them that the engine lost compression, but no real details. It’s an S1 so it could just be bad coils/plugs/starter/flooded. I need more details on what happened to make them think compression loss.
If I did keep it and get it running again it would be a decent auto cross car to get started with or use for practice doing engine and body repair.
Upsides:
- I get another RX8 to drive and my wife could drive it too being AT
- I get to put the wheels on to my S2
- S1 parts are easier to find than S2
- It might be an easy fix
- Could potentially flip for a profit
Downsides:
- Finding room for it would mean I lose most of my shop space
- If the coolant seals are toast, I don’t have an engine hoist or stand for a rebuild
- It could become a parts cannon project if it was never taken care of
- Rebuild Cost
- Unknowns as I haven’t seen it in person
- I don’t have a trailer+winch to make moving it around easy
- My driveway has a sharp incline so backing a trailer in isn’t the best on the truck’s transmission
If I just take the wheels and call a car haul away company they would give me less than $400 for a non-running RX8 and I feel bad for sending an Anniversary car off to be broken/scrapped.
That is where I landed a week or so ago but it’s still there and I keep thinking about the what ifs. Everyone I’ve talk to around me has said go for it, but don’t have any rotary engine experience. So hearing someone saying avoid makes me think I’m not crazy for not picking it up.
Your estimates aren’t far off for a complete rebuild. Those prices are also around just buying a remanufactured engine from Mazda. Interior would be tough to get back to OEM and I could get it wrapped if I wanted to make this a show car/daily driver but I already have one of those.
There’s too many unknowns to for sure rebuild this engine. To me, it’s really only for sure worth it for the wheels. If I could get away for $500 and rent a uhaul car trailer it might be worth it.
I didn’t mean to give a false impression, i’m by no means an expert, or a rotary guy. I like cars and i’ve absorbed some stuff hearing people talk about rotaries over the years, but I gave you my perspective as to what was going through my head when I read your post.
I like my cars relatively risk averse. For context I don’t think i’ve ever owned a car with more than 80K miles (currently have a manual 2011 BMW E89 Z4 30i with ~50k miles).
The numbers i picked were from a crude google search over a coffee, but I think they served more to illustrate why I would be cautious rather than a bullet proof breakdown of costs.
I stand by my point that a seller dropping a 30% discount on ya is not confidence inspiring. However… have you thought about giving him a stupid lowball, like $50 more than scrap value? That way if you get to work and you start sliding in past your proverbial elbow, you can cut your losses at least knowing it was dirt cheap.
Having said all that, it sounds like you’re kinda down for a bit of a project, in which case my perspective is totally misaligned to yours so please take anything I say with a heap of salt.