Zoom 7

There are a few of us left. Don't give up hope!

1988 Anniversary Edition turbo in Minnesota that I have had since 1994. Never seen any snow or salt. No rust. Always garaged.

My extensive list of mods: lol
Nice aftermarket stereo
Gold BBS RZII wheels
Racing Beat catback exhaust

Nothing else...rest is all stock.

Running strong at 124k.

RockLobster

iTrader: (7)

I would argue it's the NB miata...the NA cars were good but i like the styling on the NB better.

the NC sport/base/club rag tops are growing on me...the styling is kinda "meh" but they got better as time went on...

Some of the best cars were made in the early 00s by many of the manufacturers, before the government started requiring more emissions and safety crap... the fact that i have to carry in wheels to buy tires for an 09 or newer car to avoid having to buy those stupid TPMS sensors makes me want to hit someone.

06-07 silverado HD is one of the best tow vehicles ever made. I love my 06 tundra and my 06 speed6. I like the e46 cars but yeah, i sure do see them break a lot at the track. Hell even the civic was good as a potential track car when it had the double wishbone front and was a lighter car. The cayman is an excellent platform but has it's own reliability quirks. This is also when the NB miata was made of course and because of the FD cues is one of the best looking mazda sports cars in my opinion. It's simple, light, looks good, is reliable as hell and is about the easiest thing to go fast in on the track.

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

the NB cars aren't as reliable as the early cars, also tall people need to open the door to shift, so the NB is good, but it doesn't quite have the same mix of fun, practical and reliable that the NA has, or the GSL-SE had.

the FC is practical (you can fit a full sized refrigerator in it), but it was never reliable, and its not as fun. the FD isn't any of the three.
the Rx8 is very practical, and quite fun, but they missed the reliability (although its not as bad as its reputation)
the NC miata, isn't fun, so i don't care if its reliable or practical.

the Subaru's are funny, everyone i know with a WRX/STI went through like 3 engines, and then sold em, so while there were everywhere when they came out, you hardly see one now.

this is all my opinion BTW, i like certain things in a car

RockLobster

iTrader: (7)

I don't recall mentioning a subaru...but ok

What makes you say the NC miata isn't fun? It's like a lighter RX-8 with less power, better gas mileage and better reliability...lol

It's weird, contrary to some people's experience, my FCs (once i sorted out all the issues from previous owner neglect) have been 2nd in reliability only to the toyota trucks ive owned. They simply work, all the time, especially on the track, as long as i got the cooling right.

My turbo II has had the same engine since 2005, built by pineapple, and iv'e never had mechanical issues with it. Ive probably put 5,000 track miles and maybe 10,000 street miles on it. It still has 110 on all faces.

Any failures ive had with my RX-7s i can directly relate to my own mistakes or aftermarket parts that were substandard.

I blew up one motor in my race car on the track because the cooling was wrong and i let it run for an hour of an enduro at 230-240°F water temp (amazing it lasted as long as it did).

Also other than the factory coil packs (which mazda updated) ive rarely even heard of anything breaking on an NB miata.

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

i know, on paper its great, but have you driven one? they just don't have the same magic that the older miatas do.

yeah once you sort em, the FC's do ok, but the older guys at the dealership tell me how the FC's were flooded right off the showroom floor, then the logicon, headlight switches caught on fire, etc etc

sorting the FC just takes a lot more work than any of the others

at the dealership every car is broken. we were doing transmissions on the NB's on day 3, the engine bearings fail regularly, the windows fell out of the tops, the window regulators break. in CA we get a precat that needs replacing fortnightly. the CEL is always on for something….

diabolical1

iTrader: (3)

i'm already there. to be honest, it's just stubbornness and an inexplicable loyalty to the Gen I that makes me still rate it over the Rx-8 as "whole car". actually, let me take that back ... the Gen I does have a head-n-shoulders advantage over the Rx-8. Simplicity! so in terms of a daily driver, the ONLY thing the Rx-8 has over it in my eyes is better seating - front and back.

that's the one point of yours that i could not bring myself to agree with you on - the "its easier to work on"-point. i'm a dinosaur. i love EFI, but i love it when it's just bare bones minimal. so while i do think of the FC as much more complex than the FB, there is still a familiarity with it. if something goes wrong, i don't think twice about jumping in there with my tools and pulling the whole damn thing apart. with my Rx-8, it psychs me out. like ... REALLY psychs me out! basically, i have to play mental games with myself just in order to start any work that goes beyond maintenance or installing upgrade parts. i think i've gotten better especially in the last 4 years or so, but it still intimidates me with that goddamn Can-BUS **** crap.

not what i want to hear considering i have a couple of Germans on my short list for my next REAL car.

diabolical1

iTrader: (3)

you started in '99 ... let's see, then if you and i had crossed paths back then, then i would have told you what you were in for. i came to THAT conclusion ... had to be sometime in or around 1992-93-ish. i'll never forget it, my brother (who at the time was a mechanic by trade, and had rotary experience going back to the mid-70s) and i worked on a Gen II for this guy. i did it solely for the hands on experience and that was fairly common of me back then. i liked helping my brother because it helped me get experience, sometimes he threw me a few bucks, but that simply wasn't the point for me.

anyway, we did an engine swap because the guy had cooked the original 13B. however, i guess in his mind, we should have been able to "fix" his original engine. bottomline, he gave enough money to buy the replacement engine and a few other things. we fixed the car. he picked it up and then flat-out refused to pay my brother the remaining balance. it incensed me so that i seriously considered doing some VERY bad things to the guy (because i know where he lived) - i was younger, hotter headed and much more impulsive - however, my brother convinced me to do the right thing.

anyway, my point is ... that was probably the key experience that led me to realize just how easily you can hate your hobby if you do it as a JOB! i'd seen some dumb stuff before and lord knows i've seen some dumb **** since, but i think that was the moment for me.

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

well i do have a soft spot for a first gen, they are great, so i can't argue there, they are just old.

with the Rx8 think of the can bus not as some super smart 21st century NSA spy box, but as two more wires in the harness, they just need to be plugged back in. the Rx8 is really just super simple, most of it is built like a lego.

with the german stuff, my dad switches cars almost as much as me, and he's had a variety of stuff, most of it german, and after owning german cars trouble free, the last 6-8 years have seen him get bit a few times.

first one, 2003 Audi A6, the passenger door stopped locking with the remote, in 2007. the fix? the $1300 door lock module. car got sold

car got replaced with a 2007 A6, @18,000 miles the check engine light came on, they reflashed it. at 20,000miles it came on again, and they took the engine apart to clean it. no warranty extension, so when it needs it again @40,000 miles its customer pay. car was sold.

he then bought a boxster, about the same time i bought my FC vert, and while i had to do nothing more than resolder everything on the whole car, his spent the summer at the dealership trying to get it to crank when you turn the key. the car is an 03, but it had like 12,000miles on it, and the window sticker came framed, so the previous owner was a psycho, but took care of it. i like the boxster, but even with all the german engineering, that's been impeccably maintained, they STILL can't get it to work as well as a Mazda we found in a field….

the other week, the 2010 5 series he has, left its own lights on (they are automatic), killing the battery. the intelligent battery sensor (which isn't smart enough to save the battery), needs to be programmed, so the battery replacement is $700, parts and labor.

actually i have a friend with a VW EOS, and in 40,000miles he's on transmission #3, and again, first one was warranty, second one was customer pay, and since its a VW it was $6500.

RotaryResurrection

iTrader: (8)

...which was?

I consider myself to have mellowed slightly as well, however I still think that he would have never been allowed to take that car out of my possession without

1) him paying
2) him bringing the cops to help him recover his car without paying, resulting in me placing a mechanic's lein
3) him bringing the cops to help him recover his car without paying, resulting in me filing a small claims case
or
4) me taking it out of his ***.

I had a situation once where a guy wanted me to work on his car after years of neglect by him. He was to pay me hourly rate for my diagnostics and repairs. He traded me a couple of old junk *** core engines as partial credit toward his bill. Eventually I get to the point of trying to start it, and it keeps taking more and more coolant. Eventually it comes out that the engine block is cracked due to sitting outside without antifreeze in the block, and water is going into the oil. At that point, I stopped with the repairs and modifications because more work would be pointless and I expected that he would not pay me to continue to work on the car.

Well this old guy just WILL NOT believe that his precious car needs an engine. He thinks I'm trying to drum up a rebuild job from him that is not really needed. He also gets mad that I won't pay him several hundred bucks each for those junk *** cores which were just regular old tired S4 NA engines that only yielded 2 or 3 usable components each. He insists that I should continue repairs and modifications even though the engine is known bad. I tell him I'm not doing any more work on it until he pays me for what's been done already.

So he keeps putting me off about coming to pick up the car, giving me various excuses, etc. Several weeks go by and the car is still sitting here. This is holding me up from taking in other car repairs because I have limited storage space.

Eventually I give him an ultimatum to come pick up the car, but he does not respond. So I wrote up the invoice of credits and charges, took his expensive car cd player and subs/amp out of the car and put them in my truck, loaded the car up on my trailer, and took it to his damn house. He was acting all buddy buddy and confused as to why I'm there, why I'm mad at him, etc. I unload it and as he checks out the car, he notices his **** is gone. I tell him here is your invoice, I am holding your car stereo as collateral until you pay me. Here is a written statement signed by me stating such. Call me when you have the money.

Well THAT got his attention. He threatened to call the cops, and I told him to go ahead...they'd see it as a civil matter and would not do anything to help him. So suddenly he wants to negotiate. He goes inside his house to "look for the money". By now it is dark, and I've got better **** to be doing. He never came back outside. After about 30 minutes, I got annoyed and left. Immediately the guy starts blowing up my phone, and claims to have "found" the money he owes me. So I stop at a gas station and make him come meet me with the money to get his stereo **** back.

Bottom line? The cars NEVER leave without a legal written lein, collateral of equal or greater value, or payment for the work.

diabolical1

iTrader: (3)

lol ... yeah, he made me promise to let it be. my initial reaction was to get a few of my old crew and basically do your option #4 there was more to that plan, but i'll leave it at that. when he (my brother) started pleading/negotiating with me, my plan B was to basically go over to his house one night and drain his vitals (oil and antifreeze) and let nature take it's course from there. cops were not an option ... it just wasn't something i did back then.

i think a few weeks later he said the guy gave him some more money, but i honestly don't know if it happened or if he was just telling me that it happened. (i was PISSED!)

anyway, you are/were clearly more business-minded than my brother - there's little hope for him now and i say that with all the love in the world. he has a pretty soft heart in that regard. MOST people he deals with have some integrity, but it really chafes my *** to see the *********** take advantage of him (and he's my OLDER brother, by the way). in his defense, he does/did a lot of side work in the streets - so no formal contracts, invoices, etc. - i don't know who's side the formal laws would come down on.

i mean no offense whatsoever, but something tells things work a bit different in TN than how they worked where we're from (NYC).

scrapp

iTrader: (1)

In Texas we just feed antifreeze to their dogs late at night.


(yes, I've met some total wackjob people in my life. The scary part is successfully detaching yourself from them)

diabolical1

iTrader: (3)

they simply will not be denied.

actually, i don't think of it as the super smart spy. spies actually do constructive work. i think of it more like the bloody bureaucrat that controls the spy ... tells him what to do most of the time, but when he gets pissy, will disavow all knowledge of the spy and leave him for dead.

i quoted these simply to say ... OUCH!

i'm somewhat peripherally familiar with the quips and quirks of some German cars. my sister's 2006 A4 has the well-documented headlight/ballast issue. i forgot how much the replacements cost, but the part that got me was that even if they get replaced, it was still no guarantee that it would fix the lights. absolute madness ....

i've loved rotary Mazdas and Audis since the 80s, if that doesn't scream masochist, i don't know what does.

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

i learned to drive in an Audi 100, and the family has had a ton since, most of them have a fatal flaw

Brian_TII

I wouldn't worry about it too much. I was paranoid when I bought my e90 3 years ago with no warranty. I have no regrets and will probably stay With BMW. The battery registration thing is true but you can buy a cable and software package to work on all of it easily. It's far less of an issue. Also the bmw batteries tend to last a lot longer. I got 6+ years on my original from the factory.


Also regarding why Mazda discontinued the rotary... It's simple. It's not competitive in the marketplace on any factor the consumers measure:

1) it's less reliable than most piston engines
2) it burns more fuel for the power output
3) it lacks torque

I have owned a rotary car since 1996 and frankly I chose not to buy an rx8 because it was a rotary. It would have been an awesome car had they fit a nice v6 or turbo 4 cylinder. Instead it got horrible gas milage and broke far too frequently all while making less power than other competing cars on the market... It drove great... But the 50k - 100k mile engine replacement is just crazy. My Lexus has well over 200k miles and has needed a radiator. My BMW has 78k miles and has needed an aluminum bolt replaced... These aren't major things... New engines are. My BMW gets 29.5mpg with cruise set at 80 in 6th gear and makes it's published horsepower of 255hp and the engine blocks never fail. Sensors and accessories fail, but the engines don't. The problem here isn't that the rotary is bad... It's just weak compared to the very mature market that it must compete in. When you are making a choice for r&d things like skyaciv are selling and making money. I can only assume that Mazda doesn't believe it is in a position to address the issues hampering the rotarys success. It's a business decision and I believe it's likely a smart one.

RockLobster

iTrader: (7)

Terrible story...lots of respect for your efforts. I know at some point along your history I would have quit.

RotaryResurrection

iTrader: (8)

Oh, I have no doubt whatsoever about that. You can get by with quite a bit here, honestly, and you don't have to worry a lot about violent crime from the people you deal with. The cops also really don't give a **** unless you are 1) speeding, 2) drunk, or 3) involved with pills or weed.

RotaryEvolution

iTrader: (30)

luckily the only issue i ever had knock on wood was the one ******** who posted about me in the bag guy section.

after days lost setting everything up i wound up refunding him the whole amount, regardless of my time wasted.

RotaryResurrection

iTrader: (8)

I should post some more stories, you would **** bricks at the shitty things rotary enthusiasts do to the only person within hundreds of miles who can accurately diagnose or repair their car. Usually for no other reason than to be dicks.

RotaryEvolution

iTrader: (30)

you run into all types of people out there, unfortunately some of the cheapest own rotary cars.

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

lol we need beer for that, i've got a bunch of dealership stories too. its the best place to work, and the worst place to work, but its always ALWAYS entertaining.

RotaryEvolution

iTrader: (30)

once i got away from being a factory service tech i never missed it.

looking at the rediculous factory warranty times, the favoritism by the dispatchers to give certain people the 'money' jobs and the necessity to cut corners to get paid wasn't anything i would wish upon anyone.

the days of getting paid by the hour are long gone for the automotive service field. and even the dealers around here are hard pressed to offer a tech what they're worth, most are probably getting paid $15/hour flate rate. when i left over 10 years ago i was making $25/hour flate rate(the majority of the work was warranty, so the average hourly rate was closer to $20/hr), what is wrong with this picture?

when a tech with over 25 years of wrenching experience is making less now than they were a decade ago something is seriously wrong. this is one of the main driving factors why even on my worst days i still come in here and spin rotors. i don't recall ever making $700+ a day as a factory tech, although i have done it here, those days are few and far between.

tuning sessions are actually the big money maker(you could possibly make $1000 a day or more with 5 cars per day, $2000 if you can schedule 10 over 2 days), the downside is the possibility of blowing up an engine and the massive migraine at the end of the day. sorting out some of the ghetto cars is also a problem, most tuners won't even diagnose a problem but i hate to see someone leave disappointed. diagnosing a car with very little time on your side isn't an easy thing to do.

slitherz90gxl

I've bought cars that had pennies and quarters used as block-off plates; mixed with jb-weld of course.

diabolical1

iTrader: (3)

no worries. believe me, i'm a lot less shook up about it than i make it sound. it is what it is and i already made my peace with that. everything else, i'll leave to time.

diabolical1

iTrader: (3)

my hat's off to you, sir. well done.

RockLobster

iTrader: (7)

I'm really surprised by this because up here i can't think of a dealership that charges less than $110 an hour for service. Yeah some jobs are a flat rate but they are not cheap. Cost me $150 to have the rear drums on my truck turned at my last dealership visit. I know dealers and shops in general have a lot of overhead but $95?