Richard's Car Blog
So in the absence of an announcement of any release date for the RX Vision, I’ve sold the R3: part-exchanging it for a new Abarth 124 Spider which has now arrived at my dealer.
I’m keeping the personalised registration, so it’s getting transferred over and in the meantime, the RX-8 has been assigned a new registration number and the plates went on today.
So yesterday evening, I went to our company car park to collect my car to discover one of the large bins up against the side of my car and a nice dent on the wheel arch.
Yes, Southwark Council’s waste management operatives had managed to dent my car by wheeling one of their bins into the side of it. Great! So I’m logging a complaint with them now.
Luckily for them it hit mine and not a colleague’s Bentley…
Yes, my RX-8 R3 is coming up to three years old (in a couple of weeks), so last week I took it to Docklands Mazda for them to carry out an MoT test … which it passed with flying colours, even producing 0% carbon monoxide emissions on fast idle and 0.04% carbon monoxide emissions at the natural idle speed.
Mileage? 55,447 miles from new and still going like it should. Plus it still looks great.
So yes, I’m pleased as I tend to hang on to my cars for a few years and there’s frankly nothing I’d want to replace it with at present, especially as Mazda stopped producing them.
I’ve also renewed my tax and insurance for another year, plus I’ll probably extend the Mazda warranty for another year, just in case 😉
Here’s the third shot from the “Dodgy Deal” theme element of the photoshoot Janey and I did with Andrew Appleton: dark and mysterious!
As these sorts of things vanish from manufacturers’ websites and YouTube from time to time, I thought I’d convert and upload the official Johnny Herbert road/track test video:
Here’s the second shot from the “Top Gear” themed element, me with my R3 and Janey with her 40th Anniversary:
Yesterday, Janey and I went out to do a photoshoot featuring the two RX-8s with a great local photographer, Andrew Appleton.
Most of the shots – from three different themes – are being processed now, but in the meantime, here’s me in a casual pose with my R3:
Well Nunns have sorted things out: they arranged for me to bring the batmobile in today to fit a new relay for the rear foglight – it switches to the trailer when the towbar electrics are connected and back to the car’s when it’s disconnected – and a different iPod integration module following Nunns’ discussions wit Mazda Europe.
And lo and behold, it works with my old iPod as well as my new “RexPod”, displaying track number (from the playlist) or artist or track names.
Result!
Today I spent the day tearing around Castle Combe race circuit in Wiltshire on my motorbike, a Kawasaki ZRX1200R.
To get it there, I’d hitched up the trailer to the R3 and “extreme towed” it to Castle Combe yesterday. This took longer than it should have done due to all those mindless morons sitting blocking the middle lane on the M4 – they clearly don’t know (or don’t care) that cars towing trailers aren’t allowed into the outside overtaking lane. Twats!
Anyway, here are some shots of the bike and car after I’d loaded the bike onto the trailer at the end of the day:
Well it seems that all is not well with the R3, so it was back to the dealers today for fettling.
The rear foglight has not been working since I got the car: it turns out that the wiring loom to the towbar fitted by the dealers, Nunns, has a relay that should switch between the foglight on the trailer and the foglight on the car. Whilst the foglight on the trailer works fine, the one on the car doesn’t. Sadly this wasn’t picked up in the PDI when I bought the car. Parts are now on order.
Of equal concern is the (very expensive) iPod integration module that doesn’t seem to actually want to integrate any iPod with the Bose stereo system. Mazda list a whole load of Apple devices that aren’t compatible with the module – which, by the way, cuts off the auxiliary input circuit so you’re completely screwed if it doesn’t integrate – and I found that none of our iPods of varying age worked at all with it. They all connect fine and some can seemingly draw power. All display the Mazda logo. All have their functionality removed from the devices whilst connected. None actually work with the stereo system.
Including the brand spanking new iPod nano I got for my birthday specifically for the car. Ah…
So Nunns will be talking to Mazda over the next few days to try to find out what’s wrong. If they can’t fix it, I’ve already told them I want the auxiliary socket reconnecting and my money back for the horrendously expensive integration module.
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