Why recalls can be a bad thing.

[twistedwankel]

So my 14 year old RX8 had yet two more recalls for free this week.

New lower control arms and a new fuel pump. The fuel pump sucks as I had one put in only 3 years ago when the high speed boost quit boosting @ 5k rpm. Hopefully they will reimburse me for that as I saved all my receipts to the tune of $471 outside of Mazda.

Now the BAD. The dealer/lady service mgr. refused to do a performance alignment using Dealer BS and didn't give me a final alignment spec sheet so I didn't know where it was at. So I had a free alignment left for Tire Kingdom. They did a before and after printout. As I assumed the Dealer did the computer factory spec of -1* front and -1.8* rear camber. So the Kingdom tech gave me max negative camber that sadly is now -0.5* less on both sides Front than before. That really sucks. It took me years to bend those arms and wear those bushings. I had a lot of help from others too. No one ever complained.

Some times old stuff is just plain better than new stuff. Have to start all over again.

[Native]

Homer-Simpson-wingnuts-doh.gif (18.44 KiB) Viewed 4886 times

[twistedwankel]

Good giant logo. Don't count on me putting up $10 again. I pretty much know the result.

[aw614]

phillip and I can help out in shaking down the mazda

what was the recall on the control arms that made it a safety issue? excessive wear from phillp going off course

[twistedwankel]

Dirt. I think. Andrew you are smiling way too much!! I was advised that with some kind of preload I could get back the camber. Life after Farm Truck and Andrew? Andrew you are so far ahead of Farm Truck that it's like Dumb and Dumber.

[aw614]

I think I read about that before too for too. I believe it involved jacking the control arms while its in the air and then tightening the bushings to spec. Not sure how its done though. Maybe someone else knows.

[twistedwankel]

I found this on RX8 forum. Another pro uses jack stands and a jack. Tightening the arm bolt bushings with the weight of the car on it seems to be the ticket after shaking it down loose. Of course then you'd want to check the alignment yet again....moan.

"It's pretty easy to preload with 2 jacks;
Jack up car,
Remove tire
Loosen bolts
Use 2nd jack to lift from arm just enough to take weight off first jack
Tighten arm bolts
Remove 2nd jack
Put on tire
Lower car
Move to next corner."

Or this method:

"Even the people who think they know how, don't.

It has to be on jackstands with all four wheels up in the air.

you have to have at least one swaybar endlink end taken loose on each swaybar.

Once this is done you can jack any corner up into compression easily and then retighten the suspension arm bolts

it can be done on the ground rather than on jackstands, but the suspension needs to be settled first which means driving it around some withe everything loose and it's more of a PITA to reach in and around to tighten everything. Using the jackstand method above allows you to compress the suspension to whatever position you want, including almost full compression, before retightening it easily."