Help Needed: Odd Symptoms

Hi All :-)

I have a 2005 RX-8 Manual since a year.. Awesome car!

I live in Mauritius and RX-8 expertise is hard to find! (It is not an 'officially' imported car). I doubt anyone on this small island has the rotary compression tester, is it worth using a standard one?

Issue:

When starting the car from cold it either:
1) Starts on first turn all happy
2) Extremely hard to start (5-10s cranking) including one or more backfire gunshots - Scares neighbors! When this happens the revs climb slowly to 2.3k (2 seconds or so) when the car finally fires
3) I can easily bump start the car first turn @5Km/H on 2nd Gear

Car starts fine when hot :-)

It has a very slight rough idle when hot (Can drop to 780rpm and shake slightly when cold and moist outside)

I have followed the 'Symptoms' thread and 'My Car Wont Start' thread in attempts to find the answer.

Things I have got done so far:

1) New Battery - Existing one was on point of collapse anyways.
2) New Sparks - No Change
3) New K&N Filter - Hard to get the stock filter, so prefer a reusable one
4) New Thermostat - Preventive measure when I bought the car last year
5) Cleaned MAF

Things on the way:

1) New Coils - Want to finish the ignition triad - Shipping to MRU takes time!
2) Upgraded Starter 13 teeth/2kw - I still have the 1.3kw one

Is there something else that can cause such a 'can start fine / hard start' random issue just when cold?

:bowdown:

Help Needed: Odd Symptoms