It has been suggested that the rotary engine is proned to flooding if started and then turned off immediately ie to move the car a few metres. Apparently once started the engine needs to be warmed up/ run for at least 5 minutes otherwise the very rich mixture which is initially injected will flood the engine.

Any rotorheads wish to confirm this.

rael.t

 

Can't confirm the principle for rotary engines, but it happens the same on my V6 Audi! Not aware of any problems with my car, and fuel consumption is fine. Probably a few conventional engines prone to that.

JH

 

Aparently rose on older engines, and engines with more miles on.

But there is a story about an RX-8 with 3.5k on which was flooded and after 3 days had to be trailered to a dealer for fixing.

There is a startup/ short run/ shutdown procedure in the manual, it does say font start then stop soon after. (5min idle, 20sec 3k rpm , switchoff or something).

New ECU/cat etc make it more difficult to do on renasis than 13b etc.

Whilst it does happen on piston engines, there much quicker to get going again - or so I hear, rotary virging here.

 

My RX-7 has flooded on two occaisions, both times I had to have it recovered. So as not too make people paranoid I must point out that the engine is on its last legs or rotors even (64K miles).

All they do to get it running again is tow/bump start it.

It has never flooded by being run for a short period of time, which I know should not be done but hell the engines on the way out anyway. It was cold weather which added to my problems.

 

You consider 64k miles 'on the way out'?
:O

 

On it's last legs after 64k!!!

I hope this isn't the expected life of a rotary engine as I nearly do that in 2 years - I'd expect at least 3 times that mileage from a new engine. Please tell me that the RENESIS isn't a sub <100k miles engine.

 

Dont worry andy, heard the rotor tips are good for at least 150k miles, as stated by mazda I think.

 

RobDickson is correct the renesis is apparantley far more durable than previous rotary engines!

Mazda would have been mad not to ensure that this was the case espacially with the volume they are producing.

 

RobDickson,

Both times it was recovered they ran a compression test and it was very low, it was given a life expectancy of between 600-6000 miles more before complete failure!

The sooner the better as I still have a warranty!!!

 

If I ever move my Mazda Xedos V6 out of the drive to let my wife out and turn off straight away, it is guaranteed to flood every time.

If I let it tick over for 30 seconds before turning off it's fine.

So this is not just a rotary problem.

 

My old RX7 only flooded a couple of times.
Only once did I have to remove the plugs , dry them off and start over. But that was running a manual carb setup , not a whizzy computer controlled fuelling system like Renesis.

In my experience rotaries do need more cranking over than a conventional engine , so dont expect it to start immediately - it may take a few seconds of cranking....

As for that 64K miles. What the hell ??? That must be one abused engine. You have nothing to worry about with durability.

 

I've never had this problem with a piston and it's something I've done fairly regularly where I start the car and stop it again (usually because we need something for one of the kids before we leave!)

 

... and I never bothered about it on my old one either.
Dont expect it to be a real issue.

 

morganrogers,

No, it has not been overly abused, 3rd generation RX-7 engines have a life expectancy of 60-70k, what generation was yours?

 

My 2d gen RX7 has 215k on it, and I'm beginning to have some hesitation near the redline, so I think the aux ports have become a little clogged. Otherwise it's still been happy motoring!