FodderMan

Hello to everyone!

I'm a long-ish time member, but not a poster. I've learned a lot from this forum about my car, but I've never needed to ask a question...until now.

First, the car: I purchased my 2005 6 port MT RX8 a couple of years old with just over 50k miles on it - around 7k miles on the Mazda swapped rebuild. It's now mostly stock with 93,000 miles. I say "mostly" because I had to replace the radiator and opted for an aluminum racing one over the plastic OEM one. I went ahead and replaced almost all of the cooling system while I was at it - new water pump, new thermostat (one that opens at a slightly lower temp), new coolant tank and new hoses. The only thing I didn't replace was the two smaller lines that feed to the heater core, which was cleaned and re-used...I was on a time schedule and I couldn't get them fast enough.

Now...fast forward two years to last week and I had - you guessed it - a small coolant leak at the firewall. I'm a contract engineer and I'm traveling at the moment without most of my tools so I made an appointment with the local dealer to fix that and what appeared to be a slight leak at the oil pan gasket.

Of course, the coolant leak ended up being one of those damn hoses that I re-used. Oh well. I got two more years out of them, and at least it wasn't the heater core.

BUT. The oil leak was in two places - the oil pan gasket and the oil filler tube. The dealer mentioned the TSB to swap out the filler tube (TSB #01-050/06 ), which also fixes the white foamy gunk in the dipstick at low temps. That gunk always kinda irritated me because it's cold where I normally live about half the year and it makes it kind of a pain to check the oil, so I decided to go ahead and have that TSB done. Two birds, one stone.
I always had kicked around the idea of doing the TSB anyway and this pushed my in the right direction.

Picked up the car, no leaks. I'm a relatively spirited driver - the car encourages that behavior - so I go around a cloverleaf entrance ramp and drop a couple of gears to prepare for an acceleration to merge while cornering...and I get a GIANT CLOUD of white smoke out the exhaust. What the hell. I finish my merge at a more leisurely pace and start to experiment...low gear, high gear, hard acceleration, light acceleration...NO MORE SMOKE. I write it off as spilled oil or something during the repair.

To make an already long post a little shorter, It's been a week. I'm still having intermittent problems with clouds of white smoke, but ONLY when pulling some G's turning right. ONLY right. Doesn't seem to matter whether I'm accelerating hard or just keeping the RPM level in preparation to merge. Any other time or any other condition and things are fine. However, I can consistently generate a smoke screen when I'm pulling G's on an entrance ramp and the excess oil can impact performance during those turns - the engine will lose power and bog down until the cloud clears.

My question is this: What could cause this behavior? I definitely did NOT have this problem prior to last week and I assume that something in the TSB surgery was missed / messed up / or a new part is bad. However, I'd like to be armed with a little information before I go back to the dealer and if this is a known behavior and truly a coincidence, then I need to know that as well.

Any input would be greatly appreciated and if i've left out some crucial information, let me know.

Thanks,

Fodderman

Loki

iTrader: (1)

Take apart the intake and see if there's oil in it. Just the accordion part is enough

dannobre

iTrader: (3)

If the oil level is overfilled the vent can get oil into it when you turn hard right. Like Loki said check the intake cause it will puke in there

FodderMan

Thanks for the quick reply! I did think about the oil possibly being overfilled, but I checked the level first thing when I got home the first night...Was slightly below full when I checked it.

Nevertheless, I'll perform a little minor surgery and get back to you.

FodderMan

Ok, here's what I see (pictures attaached)

The thumbnail pics are rotated 90 degrees, but you can see a little film of oil coming from the vent tube in the accordion...doesn't seem like enough to matter in this case? Some of the pics I've seen showed oil filling the ridges, which seems extreme. My intake, although a little dirty, doesn't seem that bad?

The third pic also shows the coolant hose that the dealership mechanic didn't clamp back on, but doesn't show the other hose that is also not clamped...grrrrrr.

At any rate, I checked the oil level again today and it is right at the first dot - half a quart low. So surely I will not be able to generate an on-demand smoke cloud tomorrow if the problem was related to an over fill.

Which raises another question. It's certainly possible that I made a mistake in reading the dipstick last week when I checked the oil level after I picked up the car, but I could have SWORN it was at just under the full line. If that's true, then I've used 1/2 guart of oil in seven days and at most 120 miles. The car has NEVER used that much oil. I'll have to keep an eye on it.

Any other thoughts?

FodderMan

Update...with the oil level at the first dot below the line I was not having any trouble - no more smoke clouds. This last weekend I topped off to just below the fill line using a funnel, as usual, to prevent oil from seeping into the line that attaches to the intake. Today, when I drove the car to work...I had more smoke on hard right turns.

Now, I've had this car for more than ten years and have never had an issue with oil dumping into the intake before. But now that I've had this TSB done, I'm having significant trouble. It appears that if I fill the oil over the first dot below the full line then I'm guaranteed to dump oil into the rotors on hard right turns. (Although really..not even that hard a turn...) I go through that first 1/2 quart pretty quickly (1 week / 120 miles) and then consumption slows down to more-or-less normal.

Does anyone know if TSB (#01-050/06) is known to cause this type of behavior, or is there something else going on? I guess the 06 and on have a similar oil vent routing? Is it really that common a problem on newer eights?

I guess a catch can is in order...

Loki

iTrader: (1)

It's really not a common issue, but it does happen in cars with excessive crankcase pressure from blowby. So.. there's that.
Have you brought it back to the dealer to discuss? I mean it's their recall, their work..

FodderMan

I’m getting ready to take it back in. I just wanted to tap the collective wisdom of the forum before I go back.

I guess the thing that puzzles me is that it happened so quickly and dramatically after the work was done. It seems like if it was a compression issue then It would have manifested itaelf over time and I would be showing other symptoms.

On the other hand, i read through the TSB and it just doesnt seem like something that would cause these kind of symptoms...oil filler tube change, updated solenoids and new vacuum hose routings seem only loosely related at first blush.