This is an RX-8 experience some of you may relate to ....

I get in my 8 yesterday after work. I need to pick up my daughter at day care and am tight on time but I should be able to make it. For you non-parents out there, it costs money if you are late picking up your kid (the cost increases exponentially over time) and if you are an hour late they call Children's Services. So, no pressure ....

I start the car up, buckle my seat belt and there, on the instrument panel, is a little, red Lincoln Memorial. It is just below the left side of the Oil Pressure "Gauge" glowing steadily. I stare at the light blankly, but it does not go away. I blink several times but is still does not go away. I have never seen this light before. I don't think it's a CEL (not that I would know the CEL icon never having had a CEL problem) but who can tell from all of Mazda's infernal icons? My car has been flawless since I picked it up last July, this is not fair! My mind races through several thousand posts from RX8Forum (none of them good). This can't be happening to me!

Finally, 35 years of driving experience kicks in .... red light on dash - turn off the damn engine! My reflexes immediately cause my right hand to turn the key. The motor goes silent and I sit looking for smoke seeping from under the hood. My brain catches up with my body and says: You probably shouldn't have done that! Can you spell FLOODED ENGINE? Yeah, it had probably been idling for at least 60 seconds before I turned it off. Great, now I have two possible engine catastrophes besides never seeing my daughter again.

With the clock ticking I grab the owners manual. I search and search and search (Index? I don't need no stinkin index!) and finally find the table of warning/indicator lights. I scan one page in the table and its not there. Was it really a Lincoln Memorial ... I think so but the car is off now so I can't be sure. I don't see it listed and panic starts to set in. Finally on the previous page I see it, the Lincoln Memorial beside the text "Engine Coolant Warning Light Page 5-38".

I go to page 5-38 and read. Good news ... check your coolant level and, if it is low just add coolant. Bad news (and I quote), "If the light remains illuminated even after you add engine coolant, have your vehicle towed to an Authorized Mazda Dealer.". Nothing more, just the one sentence stating that you are in "deep weeds". Now this is my baby! I check its fluids weekly. Nothing drips on the garage floor underneath my RX-8. How could the coolant be low? I am going to have to get towed (even if it is not flooded) and I still need to figure out how to pick up my daughter.

I get a grip on myself and I press forward. I get out of the car, into the cold, and raise the hood. Now for those of you who have never checked your coolant level, you are in for a treat. The fluid reservoir is buried (literally) in the plastic trim at the front of the engine compartment. The HIGH/LOW ridges are hard to see through the surrounding hardware and are only about 1/8th inch apart (not much of a distance between heaven and hell). Finally, the tank's material is sufficiently opaque so that not even the bright blue coolant can be easily seen through the side. I peer down at it from 4 or 5 angles and open the top. Looks OK to me. It seems to be full of "blue stuff" so maybe it is time for a tow. My office is literally a half-mile from the Mazda dealer. I could just drive it there except for three things. First it is probably flooded and wont start anyway. Second, the damn owner's manual only has the one sentence "you're screwed" statement about the meaning of the light. If it gave more detail I could judge if it was safe to drive the half-mile. Third, it is about time to change my focus from the car to my daughter. My wife would be real ticked off if Sarah ended up at Children's Services.

As a last ditch effort, I decide to trust in "the force" (or at least in Mazda engineering) and simply add coolant and see what happens. I rush back into the office, grab a (clean) coffee pot and fill it with water. I head back out to my 8 and dribble water into the tank a few teaspoon-fulls at a time. Suddenly I see a blue line appear through the opaque material and rise above the LOW mark on the tank. Apparently it had always been a little low so I never realized I wasn't reading the level correctly.

I put the reservoir tank cap back in place and get in the car to start it up. I sit there for a second thinking about the possibility of being flooded. Should I hold the pedal to the floor while I crank? Should I pull the fuel pump fuse? What about removing the plugs and cleaning them or installing a set of new "hot" plugs? What about using ATF? I say the hell with it, turn the key and she fires right up. I peer intently at the dash .... the Lincoln memorial is gone and does not come back.

Needless to say, the whole crisis took only about 10 minutes. I picked up my daughter with 15 minutes to spare. So, is there a moral to my story? No, not really. You don't need to memorize your instrument icons nor does Mazda need to redesign its reservoir tank or put better problem explanations in the owner's manual. You probably should check your coolant level though, but that's not the point of the story.

The point is that it is a good car and you should trust it. A point that is often missed on this forum.

Enjoyed your post - a fun read.

Made me think NOW is the time to look (once more) at the manual to try to memorize some of the dash icons, and,
more importantly, to better familiarize myself with the location ofthe various check points.

My Mazda dealer is not 1/2 mile away - I do have Auto Club Plus which will (flat bed if you ask) tow me up to 100 miles free - but, what a hassle.

Glad it turned out good....;)

My pet peeve (before this incident) was the lack of organization to the warning lights and gauges. They are all over the place. Some are "informational", some are "warning" and some are "critical". Some have multiple meanings. Who can tell?

Good story/ending, and call on adding water and making it through the rest. So what was the kid-care bill? I am not familar with the exponential rate. At ours it was $1/minute paid directly to the providers that were braving the kid return phase.

Thanks for the fun read. I was wondering what the hell that 'monument' icon was supposed to be- I see it every time I go to start the car (when all the icons light up right before ignition), but my curiousity hasn't gotten to me enough to look at the manual. So it's really an icon of a radiator? Odd choice...

great story
cant believe that all happened in 10 minutes
but thanks for sharing
hope you never have that problem again.

Originally posted by Trx8
So what was the kid-care bill? I am not familar with the exponential rate. At ours it was $1/minute paid directly to the providers that were braving the kid return phase.

Luckily it turned out I wasn't late, so no extra dollars. I just looked it up tonight and it turns out their policy has changed over time. Not quite as steep a ramp as it used to be. They now charge $20 for the first 15 minutes and then an additional $10 for each 5 minute period there after. No indication how the money is split between the center and the staff putting in the extra time. When we first enrolled her it was like $10 for the first 5 minutes, $20 for the next 5, etc.

See, it pays to read your manual!
Look, it was right there all the time:

Damn... apparently the AT owners get something a little bit smaller:

Looks like the national monument/historical icon is geographically chosen?

Here's an excerpt from the Australian owner's manual:

I had a similar dilemma with my tire pressure indicator. On a (relatively) cold night in Texas (36 F), that light was on upon startup. I didn't have my manual in the car, and had no idea what that indicator was for. I figured if it was bad, it would have been red, so I drove the short trip home and checked the manual.

Sure enough, my tires were only at about 25 psi.

The oil level light works too, so I don't really check my oil, just wait for the light. It pretty consistently comes on at 1600-2000 miles,. when I am a quart low.

One thing I liked about the FC rx7 was that the 'important' idiot lights (like low oil level, low coolant level) also sounded a buzzer. This way you couldn't miss them coming on, since geneally either of those things is a serious condition. The FD still had the buzzer on the low coolant light, but not on the oil level. Taking a right-hand corner would let you know if the oil level was getting low since it would slosh away from the sensor and give you a breif flash/buzz.

I also miss that (on the US spec cars) there is no washer-fluid level... I've run out before at night and I was left with a very smudgey windshield, I had to pull over and put some bottled water in the reservior to clean it up.

or this

You guys are silly.

One of the best posts I've seen here!

Funny, mine says:

WAHAHAHAHAHA

after reading this thread, I decided what the hell I'll check my coolant level as well. and what do you know, my level was right AT "low" as well!!! I just had my car serviced 3000kms ago... is this normal??? I add some coolant/water back to the full level

Originally posted by Rotary Titus
after reading this thread, I decided what the hell I'll check my coolant level as well. and what do you know, my level was right AT "low" as well!!! I just had my car serviced 3000kms ago... is this normal??? I add some coolant/water back to the full level

The manual just says it should be between the F and L marks when the engine is cool. My problem was that when it is just below the L, it is real hard to see.

Originally posted by msrecant
The manual just says it should be between the F and L marks when the engine is cool. My problem was that when it is just below the L, it is real hard to see.

yea I barely made out the blue coolant line even when I shoved my surefire in there... think the container plastic's a bit too thick

Those pics are great.

One of the best posts I've seen here!

I'll take credit for asking what I considered a "silly" question. Point here to ALL is, if someone ask a question instead of beating them up and telling them to "search" just anwser the question, you never know where iy might go. Besides if everyones time is so important we would not be on the computer, we would be driving our rx-8s. :)

I'll take credit for asking what I considered a "silly" question. Point here to ALL is, if someone ask a question instead of beating them up and telling them to "search" just anwser the question, you never know where iy might go. Besides if everyones time is so important we would not be on the computer, we would be driving our rx-8s. :)

Hope you didn't take my reference to this thread as criticism (Hey, do a search!). It was meant as an entertaining side note to your perplexity on the "red house", a situation that I once also experienced.

Also, your question wasn't silly (those icons are a bitch) and I agree that answering is a better way to respond than just saying "do a search". My experience is that searching for an answer is difficult and many times is not productive due to the volume of info on this forum.

I got spooked by the same light a few weeks ago. I was headed somewhere one evening, and as I climbed a small overpass and descended the other side, there gleamed this warning signal under the oil pressure indicator. Now at my age, when the light is low and I have to look at something close-up, I can't really make it out that well. I swear that light looked like the roman forum. So here I am, at night, experiencing my first warning light, trying to determine what the engineers at Mazda would mean by showing me a red representation of the roman forum! Fortunately the light went off when I was on level ground, so I figured I wasn't endangering the car by continuing to operate it.
I checked the manual the next day to find that the roman forum was actually the lincoln memorial. Go figure!

That's a nice post! glad you were able to make it!...

a bit harsh on the 350 tho mazdamaniac :p

Funny, mine says:

Somebody set up the bomb... :)

Ah, memories. The year really flew by. MazdaManiac threw down a challenge, and I was up half the night looking for that darn photo of the Jefferson Memorial! Thanks for bringing the thread back to life, Leigh44. Funny thing is, I still love this car as much, a year later.

On topic, I had what I was sure was a brake light a few months back and took it in for service -- it turned out that it wasn't the brake, but the TPS sensor warning triggered by a change in the outdoor air temperature. Interesting icons...

My coolant is green....did I miss something here?

Hope you didn't take my reference to this thread as criticism (Hey, do a search!). It was meant as an entertaining side note to your perplexity on the "red house", a situation that I once also experienced.

Also, your question wasn't silly (those icons are a bitch) and I agree that answering is a better way to respond than just saying "do a search". My experience is that searching for an answer is difficult and many times is not productive due to the volume of info on this forum.

No, I did not take it as criticism. Actually it wasn't directed at anyone, just a general statement that to often people are VERY short with others when to them it may be relavent. Has not happened to me but I do see it. Anyway great story, great site, awesome car.
Ps. love the "car seat" reference in your sig..........That's awesome

just a general statement that to often people are VERY short with others

Yeah, people are often pretty harsh on this forum. The only thing I can say is that they are nowhere near as harsh as the prople on the "open source" software forums. They set the gold standard rudeness to noobs.

Where I come from there is no such thing as a "dumb" question. Besides, I have actually been impressed at the sophisticated level of the "average" questions on this forum. What they should do is have a "newbie" section of the forum where people can be comfortable asking anything, and not getting flamed, and the "old pros" can show off what they know. Everyone wins! :D