Mr & Mrs Moglet's cars [Bye bye BMW]

  • Thread starter Moglet
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The drive to the Midlands in it really settled me in to the car, and finally finding a comfortable driving position has helped too. I picked up the winter tyres earlier and discovered that they are all almost brand new Continental WinterContacts :D The garage owner just left me there to grab the tyres off the racking in the workshop while he went to do a test drive with someone!
 
Moglet
The drive to the Midlands in it really settled me in to the car, and finally finding a comfortable driving position has helped too. I picked up the winter tyres earlier and discovered that they are all almost brand new Continental WinterContacts :D The garage owner just left me there to grab the tyres off the racking in the workshop while he went to do a test drive with someone!
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My car is on Yokohama S-Drive summer tyres with are meant for dry Tarmac, so it's pretty useless in the snow.

I've never driven in winters so I don't know how much better your car will feel when you put summers on it but I imagine it will come alive even more.
 
It's on summers at the minute, the fronts are budget tyres (Nexen) but the rears are Continentals which I have no complaints about. The fronts will probably be replaced after winter anyway.
 
Excellent compression results there, Mog 👍

Mine never had any symptoms of poor compression, but I never had the courage to get it done.
 
I was dubious about getting it done, I never had any symptoms and it was £120 but it's given me such peace of mind that it's been worth it. Progress on the subtle mods I want to do is going well, I've just ordered 12x 501 LEDs for various spots around the car so I'm sure my hands will soon be scratched to hell, and then after that I'll be replacing various bits that need doing (coils, possibly engine mounts) before I take care of cosmetic stuff like the glove box and the odd bit of trim. :)

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the passenger seat and floor mat got covered in vomit today, my fiancee has been horribly ill and going to and coming back from the hospital was like something from a comedy film, she was spewing all over the place. Luckily it's all cleaned up well, especially the floor mats as they're the original Kuro ones. I'm glad I've got a leather interior too, trying to clean all of that out of cloth seats would have been a nightmare.
 
That's what you get for driving too fast and making tour passengers feel ill...

:P

Hope she's ok.
 
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Funnily enough it was just after I had beeped it on the dual carriageway. We went round a roundabout and she immediately puked in to her hands. :lol:
 
Already congratulated you in the Infield, but let's make it official.

Very cool ride. Awesome colour scheme 👍

Compression test is always good, than you know where you at...

Sorry about your fiancee accident, I hope it doesn't smell too sour-y in your car now. If someone puked in my car, firstly I would be hyper pissed, and secondly I would chain vomit too so covering the whole car :lol:
👍
 
Ibonibo
Already congratulated you in the Infield, but let's make it official.

Very cool ride. Awesome colour scheme 👍

Compression test is always good, than you know where you at...

Sorry about your fiancee accident, I hope it doesn't smell too sour-y in your car now. If someone puked in my car, firstly I would be hyper pissed, and secondly I would chain vomit too so covering the whole car :lol:
👍
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:lol: Luckily it all came out okay, and the car is now smelling fresh again thanks to my Opie Oils are freshener 👍

Some small mods have been done to the car recently; I ordered some cheap 501 LEDs from eBay and set to work replacing every bulb that was the same fitment. Luckily in the RX8 that's the front 'map reader' lights, the door lights, the number plate lights and the puddle lights. I couldn't access the puddle lights so just did the rest.

As you can see, it makes a big difference to the looks, the standard yellow bulbs look old fashioned. It was a bit daunting pulling this unit out of the roof to do this but it was fairly straightforward to swap them:
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Much better, and they're not actually this blue, it's due to the camera white balance going a bit crazy:
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The door lights are in the very corners of the doors and they light up when you open the door and just give that little extra visibility to anyone driving by in the dark, but they looked a little weird in yellow:
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So out with the old, in with the new:
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I've done the number plate lights but haven't got a photo of them just yet, but this is my next job; replacing these horrible sidelight bulbs with something that matches the HID headlights a little better. The only trouble is that you need to remove the entire front bumper and light unit to access the bulb properly!
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I'll post a photo of the number plate lights when it gets dark. 👍
 
I really what you've done with those 501's mate, so clean, subtle and classy 👍

Keep up the good work, Moglet!
 
The number plate LEDs work well too:

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You can also see my new decals if you look carefully enough :P The car isn't 'stanced' or anything (as seems to be associated with those brands for some reason) but I figured that I like the websites and some of their products so why not show some love?
I've also only just noticed how awful those yellow strips on the number plate look, so they'll be going soon. I might get some new plates made up that look a bit more exciting.
 
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As the car is now approaching 30,000 miles and had never had the coils replaced, I ordered me a set from Mazda Rotary Parts. £260 and a day later, they arrived and I managed to fit them this morning.

For those who don't know; the coils on these cars tend to 'go bad' before 30,000 miles and this is made obvious by seeing white spots on the bottom of the coil. It can cause a lumpy idle, bad performance and a slower startup puts major stress on the engine. My car had been taking 3-4 seconds to fire up and had been making a 'chirping' sound lately, obvious signs of ignition system wear.

I took the old ones off after removing the airbox and the various sensors and tubes behind it and set to work installing the new ones. It was fairly straightforward, the only issue being the engine strut brace getting in the way. Anyway, remember the white spots I told you about? Here they are on mine:

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Having replaced them and done an ECU reset the car now starts immediately, idles beautifully, has much better performance lower in the rev range and it even sounds better too. £260 well spent. 👍
 
Project is coming along very well. Its also nice seeing more members converting to LED. Its a huge improvement in every way using LEDs.
 
A few weekends back I took the '8 to Simply Japanese at Beaulieu Motor Museum with the RX8 Owner's Club. We (me and my fiance) had a good day seeing all the Top Gear cars and meeting club members, and the sun even came out from time to time!
This is where we met, in a car park a few miles away so we could convoy in (there's a video of us all driving by coming at some point) ;

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This is us leaving the show;

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And a photo showing off the paint in the sun, this isn't from the show but it was during another hot day;

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Those stickers go perfect with the paint. 👍

Beautiful RX8, looks so clean. I take it that you've detailed it? :D
 
I haven't fully detailed it just yet as I don't really have the right space for it at my current house, I can just about do a decent wash and dry before the sand blows in from the beach and gets it all gritty. I don't fancy attempting to polish or wax it with all that sand getting in the way!
 
Clean Rexy dude. Whatever you do, don't lower it and put Bentley Rims on it a-la this one:

DSC_7718-copy.jpg
 
I think that car was at Japfest this year, I actually sort of like it but it does go against the spirit of the car. I wish I could have that paint colour though, it's absolutely awesome.
 
Moglet
I think that car was at Japfest this year, I actually sort of like it but it does go against the spirit of the car. I wish I could have that paint colour though, it's absolutely awesome.
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The colors nice, the wheels are pointless imo.
 
Looking good Moglet, still haven't seen a black RX8 with those decals on the road yet, though. :P
I was at the Isle of Wight College's open day on Saturday and there was a black RX8 there with a busted engine, I was worried that your car had given up the ghost! :lol:
 
homeforsummer
Still lookin' good 👍 This one a keeper, then?
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Thanks! I'm still not sure about it being a keeper, it's a great car but the island roads are just awful for it. The rotary doesn't like short journeys which is no good for how I use it, having to warm it up just to move it to clean it is frustrating, and the performance is fantastic but it's niggling me that I could be driving something with the same performance that gets better MPG figures and costs less to tax.

It's also a bit annoying to drive around here simply because you can't use the performance anywhere but a single stretch of dual carriageway. It's got me considering a classic or something a bit 'out there' but then I'm worried I'll miss the performance and the gadgets!
 
Moglet
It's also a bit annoying to drive around here simply because you can't use the performance anywhere but a single stretch of dual carriageway. It's got me considering a classic or something a bit 'out there' but then I'm worried I'll miss the performance and the gadgets!
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I'm having the same struggle. Even modest performance is borderline unusable sometimes so I keep considering classics as a way of translating the driving experience into a different format. At the same time, it's nice to have a bit of extra shove on motorways and the creature comforts on long journeys...
 
I always thought than in the UK you could never needs something with more power to weight than something like a 911 Carrera, and even then that's probably a bit too quick.
 
Clark
I always thought than in the UK you could never needs something with more power to weight than something like a 911 Carrera, and even then that's probably a bit too quick.
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Realistically less than that, I reckon.

The current supermini-based hot hatches with around 200 hp (Clio RS, 208 GTI, Fiesta ST etc) already feel genuinely quick on UK roads and by the time you get to the BMW M135i/Merc A45 AMG range you're looking at cars you can lose your license in given maybe 6 seconds of acceleration from a 30 mph zone.

That's kinda why I like the classic stuff, and I suspect the same reason Moglet is thinking along similar lines. You can enjoy basically all of its potential whatever speed you're doing.
 
homeforsummer
Realistically less than that, I reckon.

The current supermini-based hot hatches with around 200 hp (Clio RS, 208 GTI, Fiesta ST etc) already feel genuinely quick on UK roads and by the time you get to the BMW M135i/Merc A45 AMG range you're looking at cars you can lose your license in given maybe 6 seconds of acceleration from a 30 mph zone.

That's kinda why I like the classic stuff, and I suspect the same reason Moglet is thinking along similar lines. You can enjoy basically all of its potential whatever speed you're doing.
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This. It's nice having the acceleration on tap when needed and I could lose my license very easily by keeping the car above 5k RPM but I very rarely need anywhere near full throttle and I reckon a 0-60mph time of about 8 seconds and a boat load of torque would be a better, more user-friendly combo.

Having said that if Mercedes CL600s were cheaper to maintain I'd have one in a heartbeat.
 

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