emottau

[QUOTE=WaveMagnet;7344241]Anyone know what REALLY happened to that part load of RX-8s on that capsized container ship? Did they ALL get crushed?[/QUOTEt a]

The production cycle had ended (If I'm not getting my years mixed up it was due to a factory fire) well before the Cougar Ace capsized. The ship contained several CX-7's and the first shipment of 07 Mazda 3's. I know, I had 35 cars on that ship with 4 already sold as factory orders. In stead, we went 2 weeks without a Mazda 3 on my lot. At about 65% of our sales at the time, believe me it hurt. To add insult to injury, the ship bypassed the port in Tacoma and instead was brought in to Portland where they were unloaded and the 20 or so damaged vehicles were seperated from the other several hundred LESS THEN A MILE FROM MY HOUSE. I could literally see them from my roof with binoculars! At first they were going to sell them then decided against it and packed them up almost 3 months later and sent them to China. It seemed like every other phone call I took for 6 months had to do with that ship. Boy, I'm still a bit pent up over it aren't I?

FirebirdSlayer666

iTrader: (3)

They crushed all the cars that were on the Cougar Ace. It was too much of a liability since they were exposed to salty sea air at whatever angle it was tilted at for the poriod of time. Sucks because there were also Mazdaspeed 3's on there

esmith972

Here's the story how they flipped it back over. Pretty epic, I must say.

http://www.wired.com/science/discove.../ff_seacowboys

MichaelXMorris

not even I just looked this up. I was planning on the same thing. First you have to convert your manual speed sensor into a electrical pulse signal read by the tcm, and then from that point it has to convert into a digital static pulse that is read by the ecm and then translated by the computer module inside the gauge cluster. Its actually feasable but in order to make it happen you will have to run additional sensors designed for the rx8 seperately but still along side your regular sensor so that your engine computer will still function properly. Then those sensors will have to attatch to the ecm and the tcm snipping the wire for the check engine so that you wont see it on all the time. With all the work required it makes more sense to do the entire swap after a rebuild and a turbo. Belive me the rx8 is nothing but lacking power and honestly disgraces the "real" Wankel Rotory. None the less, it is a great swap if your looking to modernize the SA.