Have you noticed this in the Owner's Manual?
To protect the engine, when the engine coolant temperature is low, the engine does not run at high speeds. The fuel supply will be cut at an rpm lower than the red zone.
And yes it does just that. When it's cool outside (<= 15C) and you only warm up the engine for 10 seconds or so (as recommended in the manual) the rev limit is set to about 6000.

Something to keep in mind if you have to pull out from your driveway onto a busy street.

(The cool, wet weather here has brought up a couple (http://www.rx8club.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12843) of tech issues.)

There may be a hard limit set at 6k, but the manual also says - according to other posts here; I don't have one yet to check - to avoid going above 3k when the engine is cold.

I've been reading that during WW2, the Germans on the Eastern front used to light fires under the engines of their tanks to stop them from siezing up in the cold - sometimes with spectacular results. I hope your '8 doesn't require such drastic measures this winter. :)

I hope so too. There's nowhere to plug in a block heater where I park.

[edit] I can't find where in the manual it says to keep below 3000 rpm until it warms up. That's not real easy to do with a 9000 rpm engine!

Originally posted by Len
There's nowhere to plug in a block heater where I park.

Doesn't matter - there's no block heater to install in an RX-8 anyway! :mad:

;)

Common practice for bush pilots in the far North was to drain the oil from their plane's engine after landing, and take the pail of oil inside with them. When going to start the next day's trip the following morning, first order of duty was to put the warm oil back into the -50F engine!!

Regards,
Gordon

I'm not gonna do that either! :D Fortunately it only goes down to about -35 here.

AH! That explains it then!

Last week sometime I left work and stabbed the gas leaving the parking space in the lot and wham like a brick wall acceleration stopped.

I thought I had remembered reading about a cutoff when the engine was cool but then I tried it again and well it went all the way up to 9000! Hmmm.

Interesting though.

The S2k won't let you rev past 6000 either (vtec) until you get 3 bars on your temp guage.

The RX-8 seems to allow revving quite soon, before the temp gauge registers much of anything. So far, at least; we'll have to see what happens in the winter.

With my old Prelude I had to double-clutch into second for the first few minutes in cold weather.

Some of you guys must be fairly new to rotaries! :) You HAVE to warm then up. Taking it to redline after it's only been running for 10 seconds is going to be disastrous!!! Your engine life will be severely reduced......

Personally, when it's stone cold I give it at least a minute of idling, then drive very easily until it's at operating temp. :)

It's not just rotaries, my 2000 Celica GT-S would net let you rev very high until it was warmed up, it would feel just like you hit a brick wall. It really isn't a good idea to 'get on it' with any engine that isn't up to operating temperature. Fortunately the Renesis heats up very quick.

Originally posted by RotaryPower3
Some of you guys must be fairly new to rotaries! :) You HAVE to warm then up. Taking it to redline after it's only been running for 10 seconds is going to be disastrous!!! Your engine life will be severely reduced......

Personally, when it's stone cold I give it at least a minute of idling, then drive very easily until it's at operating temp. :)

Agreed.

I warm mine up past the first three lines and then i take it up to operating temp too. I would not run it before unless the world was comming to an end. This engine if treated right should last a long time before a rebuild. If treated poorley it may get ugly fast.

I've done it and I didn't hit any rev limiter... I was expecting it but it never came on :confused:



What can I say, the road in front of my house if a 55mph zone and a big ass tractor trailor was in no mood to slow down that morning :(

You need to rev it to get past a tractor+trailer? Oh dear, I guess the torque problem was even worse than I'd heard :)

Originally posted by lurcher
You need to rev it to get past a tractor+trailer? Oh dear, I guess the torque problem was even worse than I'd heard :)

... obviously you never experienced doing 10mph and looking out your rear view mirror and seeing a tractor trailer doing probably 65mph comming down a hill right behind you :eek:



:cool:

Heh, okay looks like I got completely the wrong end of the stick on that one. ;)

65mph tractors, if only...