I think I just got a pretty good deal on a 93 Touring automatic. I paid $10,500 for a car with a rebuilt engine. In fact I found out after I purchased the car that the previous owner had it only 3 months and bought it from a dealer for $795 with the bad engine. I guess he made a pretty hefty profit. The car runs great. My question is 1) what would be the best reliability upgrade to start with? and 2) What would the cost of total repaint of the car? It has a tiny door ding in the drivers side door and paint chips on hood and a couple down the sides. The Mazda dealer quoted me $4500 which seemed very high?

 

The number one reliability mod you can make right now is to get a downpipe. I think this would probably benefit the car for the long run, however, since you're not the one that had the engine installed, it might be worth your while to take it in and have a rotary specialist have a look at it to make sure that nothing's wrong with it. If you're all clear in that department, the downpipe is probably a good way to go (less underhood heat, better component life, etc.).

Following that, I'd go for a vacuum hose replacement (assuming they weren't already done w/ the engine) as well as a tie wrap job for them. Less chance of stupid boost leaks as a result of popped off hoses or cracked, old hoses.

Now, repaints vary a lot in cost depending on how good of a job you want done as well as what your budget is. A show quality paint job will run you around $4-5k. You can get a killer one for $3k, and so on down the line until you get to Earl Scheib's $99 special. Get the best one you can afford, becase the paint has got to last for a *long* time.

As far as that dealer quote...is that for the whole repaint or just fixing the damage you mentioned? Either way, I think you could probably do without going to the dealer. Remember that dealers sell new cars...once they're gone, the amount that they know about or care about the cars is a lot less. I'd suggest finding a paint/body shop in your area that does show cars. If there are none, go somewhere and find one or two. You can make almost no worse investment than in a poor quality paint job...you'll just end up having to do it over again, at added expense.

 

yep, downpipe first,

but also read this for other stuff,
http://rx7.voodoobox.net/infofaq/bguide3g/bguide3g.html

and it's probably not a good idea to take it to a mazda dealer
for servicing, heard lots of bad stuff about em.

find someone or someplace, that specializes in rotaries.

 

Thanks for the advice. Anybody know a good place that specializes in rotaries in Dayton or Ohio in general?