nogoer

Car "feels" fine, but i have not had a compression test done on it to know for sure. If it is low compression and i've lost power then i need to re-evaluate my butt dyno. Ive had issues with dealers and records before so i went straight to Mazda NA and got mine. All the recalls were done but besides a few wierd things in its first few months there were no dealer trips for engine or any of the other major issues rx8s have had.

Ill admit i did not know about checking tags. However its entirely possible you had no idea that i didn't already do so and see it's original. There's a big chance that if it was rebuilt privately that it was just pulled, tore down, and rebuilt by someone. Which would mean the tag is still the same as the original from the factory.

Now that i do know i'll search and see what i'm looking for to see if it has been rebuilt. The guy i bought mine from only had it for about 6 months before he went broke and had to sell it (was a contractor who wasn't doing so well). The owner before him was a mechanic which is why i'm thinking private rebuild.

RIWWP

iTrader: (2)

A big factor I'd be interested in would be the average mileage on those engines when they come in. 50% replacement with an average of 30k is quite a bit different than 50% replacement with an average of 60k.

After all, I imagine a poll of all 500,000 mile Fords would probably show a high % of engine replacements. Mileage is a pretty big factor in judging the severity.

nogoer

thats along the same lines as what i mentioned with the cars starting to age out and there needing to be a larger supply of engines. Regardless of the failure rate for mechanical defects you can surely bet the rate will increase the older the model gets. That will also be exacerbated by the faster the mileage gets put on the car regardless of age.

blackenedwings

I'm not even remotely surprised by the number. A 50% failure rate across the total number of cars sold in the country is actually lower than I would have expected considering the 100k mile warranty and reliability problems. I am one of the only people I have ever met in person who owned an RX-8 and hadn't had an engine replaced under reman. Ironic considering the hell my RX-8 went through.

Anybody wondering why Mazda canned rotary production can see the answer right here. They thought returning the engine to natural aspiration would reduce the failures, but I wouldn't be surprised if they lost more money on the MSP engines than the REWs.

9krpmrx8

iTrader: (46)

Yeah in another thread New Yorker said the engine replacements were only a concern here and not in real life, He likes to say that a lot actually and he won't list his mileage so I would bet money his RX-8 is very low mileage.

I know tons of RX-8 owners and I only know of one person who has not had an engine replacement and that is in her 07'. In our group we have had just about every year covered from 04-08 and all of them have had at least one engine replacement and many of them were bone stock and a couple of them have been low mileage 07's. We have had only one member with an 08' 40th and he is no longer around.

Rudolph

Totaling the upper figures = near 70.000 RX-8's and not 50.000.
"In Sept. 2010 the production of the UK-market Mazda RX-8, which has been on sale for seven years, has ended. In that time over 26,000 cars have been sold in the UK, out of a worldwide figure of 186,632 - approximately 14% of total sales." (Mazda RX-8 production ends | Parkers)
April 2012 Mazda had produced a total of 196 RX-8's.
USA total population = 314 kk
UK total population = 64 kk
Assuming that the RX-8 was not much more popular in the UK than it was in the USA the total number for the USA could be theoretically 5 times 26k = 130 k, which I believe it is not (too high); however the 50k resp. 70k could be too little?
In my opinion it is difficult to believe that of the total RX-8 production of 192k units worlwide only 76k resp 96k went to the USA and the UK and the rest all over the world?
That must be 100k for the rest of the world!
I know that sales of the RX-8 in another large market, the whole continent of Europe was very low; their biggest market was Germany where only 8k units (Mazda RX-8: Rotierende Rarität - SPIEGEL ONLINE) have been sold.
(The Netherlands only 0.25k !)

j9fd3s

just to address a few points. like people are saying, there is a bell curve for failures, around here the engine failure rate between 2005-2008, was like .5%, and then when you start to get to the 6-8 year mark, the failure rate goes way up. although i can tell you the dealership i used to work at has actually peaked, they were selling 6-8 Rx8 engines a month for about 18months, but its tapered off. if you want the perspective, we were selling 6-8 FD engines a month, and those cars are much rarer, AND they were out of warranty in the 90's.

two, for the first few years they were bringing new engines in from japan, and then they started rebuilding the dead cores.

as a corollary to that, when they need parts they just order them from japan, as its cheaper for them to do that then go hunting in a junkyard. so they get their core supply from the people they sell the reman engine to.

the 2009+ cars aren't on the reman program yet, you get a new engine from japan. although this is due to change.

and corollary to that, just because Mazda's plant isn't making engine assemblies for new cars, doesn't mean they aren't making replacement engines, or engine parts.

all that being said, the 50% number is probably close

9krpmrx8

iTrader: (46)

Rudolph, good catch, it was late when I added, I don't understand the rest of what you typed.

j9fd3s,

I think you are wrong on the 09's, our local guy inquired (he was demanding a new engine) and instead he got a reman, they told him that was all they were required to do and the told him it was coming from the same reman plant. Mazda NA told him the same thing. There was also a thread here from an R3 owner who's story was very similar. They both got remans. I never did see his car though after the engine was replaced because he sold it.

pistonhater

Hey 9K,

What is the reliability of that source you quoted on your opening post?

I'm always curious about websites that quote numbers and figures.

Ideally, I would love to see actual numbers published by mazda.

9krpmrx8

iTrader: (46)

It's a local newspaper where the plant is located. It was an article for local economy news so traditionally the reporter who wrote it would have interviewed someone from the plant. There was no retraction so I assume Mazda deemed it accurate. I doubt Mazda would ever release the figures publicly, this mention was probably missed to be honest.

pistonhater

That makes sense.

Perhaps the "real" are numbers are too scary for mazda to publish now...if ever

nogoer

Dont forget the original RX7 was also NA and rotary. My brother owned one for quite some time and it was bullet proof. Moving to FI for the late model RX7s probably did introduce a lot of reliability issues that they hoped to resolve by going back to NA, but deciding to build an entirely new engine was probably the downfall not it being NA.

The decision to cease rotary production probably had more to do with fuel economy and limits of the design rather than failure rates. Plenty of engines throughout history have been rotary, Wenkel designed this type of engine long before Mazda made use of it. Aircraft like the Corsair during WW2 used a rotary engine, many of which are still running today.

I also don't feel the 50% number is realistic. Maybe it is and i'm off base but anything at or above that number one would think it would be making larger waves than it has. Companies like Toyota and their recalls have been way less than 50% and governments have stepped in. Admittedly Toyotas issues are safety related but consumer issues outside of safety do sometimes end up in the cross hairs of advocates and govts.

I'm not saying you don't have a lot of friends but close circles are like forums. You end up hearing more about things from a smaller cross section. Forums are usually a venting place for troubled owners who come looking for help or decide to air their frustrations. The odds of happy owners who have never replaced engines coming here and saying so aren't very high.

Those low sales numbers for other countries would explain why Mazda chose the US to open a reman plant. I think your data supports my guess that this plant is supplying most if not all of the worlds reman engines. Japan appears to still be the sole supplier of NEW engines, but im sure Mazda has plans to stop that at some point with the car discontinued.

Just going from 50k to 70k reduces the assumed rate from 50% to 35%. theres also stil the thought that just because they are producing 5k remans a month doesn't entirely mean they are actually replacing 5k a month. If it is a global supplier then that means some of the 5k are earmarked for other countries which could help explain the waiting periods, especially if the rate in the US is around 50%.

nogoer

If Mazda was alert enough to catch a random employee posting on forums then im sure they could have found this article.

No matter what the real numbers are i doubt they would actually want to publish them. Even at 10% competitors could potentially pounce on the data and use it against Mazda. Negatives are negatives regardless of how much or why.

The day reporters fully research and confirm their information will be a great day for the world. What's that saying...believe none of what you read and half of what you see or something? Even if the reporter got the numbers right there is still the possibility the person who typed the article transposed information. Yeah i have my tin foil hat on, but the day i believe facts from reporters is the day they report my death.

RIWWP

iTrader: (2)

The reasons are well documented. Largely, the single biggest reason for rotary unreliability is how much power you are pushing through the engine. Higher stress means lower reliability, across the board.

Take any engine you want, say a common 2.0L 4-banger. Put it out there making 100hp and it's going to last a hell of a lot longer than if it made 200hp. The Renesis is at least twice the N/A power of the first 13b rotaries, and that means heat, stress, etc... All of the specific reasons for failure are a result of either trying to get this kind of power and/or failing to address the heat control properly.

9krpmrx8

iTrader: (46)

Nogoer,

You are getting your rotary engines mixed up. Rotary engines in WW2 planes are only similar to ours in name only.

Also, building a reman plant in the U.S. to supply engines for the entire world market makes no sense since they could have built the plant elsewhere much cheaper I am sure. They built it here because the rebuilt engines are for this market. Do you have any idea what it costs to ship a crated engine overseas? There is no way they are doing that on a larger scale.

Also, Mazda doesn't offer complete new engines, only new parts. If you wanted to build a new engine, it would cost twice as much as a reman in parts alone.

Oh, and NA SA and FB RX-7's were not bulletproof by any means. And I am sure someone at Mazda is aware of the article, but either they don't care or someone didn't think it was a big deal.

paimon.soror

iTrader: (15)

Although commonly referred to as a 'rotary' engine, the engine is actually called a Radial Engine. I work for the company that powered the Corsair, we actually have a demo of the twin row wasp on display in the lobby of our building

Rotary is a concept ; Wankel / Radial, those are the implementations. Two totally different implementations at that.

nogoer

I.E. design limitations, although i admit i originally meant rotary in general not renesis specifically. Mazda will never get the kind of performance from a rotary like they can from a piston engine and still have it cost effective.

Honestly i don't know enough about rotaries to understand why mazda even kept them around as long as they did. With the failures i'm sure they asked themselves the same question though. It'd be interesting to have seen what the RX8 would have been like had they opted for a FI piston engine instead. Maybe if the Rx series comes back we'll get to see just that.

ken-x8

The WWII engines he's thinking of were radial, not rotary.

There were rotary engines in WWI, but they were different from Wankels. They were radials where the crankshaft was fixed while the block and cylinders rotated. IMHO way more fun than other engines, but a real bitch to set valve lash at idle.

Ken

RIWWP

iTrader: (2)

Also significant torque steer!

paimon.soror

iTrader: (15)

Rotaries are FAR more efficient than piston engines and FAR more reliable when implemented correctly. Today's failures are a credit to the increase in government regulations on emissions.

hoss -05

iTrader: (4)

It would not be a RX if it had anything other then a rotory.

nogoer

They already had plants in japan so why build one in the US as building a new plant no matter how cheap still costs more than using or retooling what you already have.

My basis for that argument was having it in the US means its easier and cheaper to supply your largest market which is why i think they opted for it here even if they could have built it cheaper elsewhere. Building here and then building in the UK or Canada as well just adds to the cost instead of just shipping them out from the US.

Point is they aren't going to build a plant in every country they need to supply remans for. Someone needs to supply the global demand even if it's shared. The failure rate being whatever it is can't possibly be a burden only the US cars have. Maybe japan is supplying the rest of the world maybe they aren't. Maybe they have secret plants built all over supplying supply for the plants we know of so they can secretly control the perceived rate of failures. We all know japan has fooled us once before.

Fug me, you're both absolutely right. I consider myself an airplane nut and i let myself spout that nonsense. I also then proceeded to misspell the mans name.

RIWWP

iTrader: (2)

An "RX" named model with a piston engine is like saying it's a "gasoline engine that runs on diesel only".

A sports car with a piston engine in it would be named something other than an RX, perhaps something like "Cayman", "Corvette", "BRZ", etc...

paimon.soror

iTrader: (15)

I should clarify:

My comment is in regards to use in general, not just automotive applications. I.e. aircraft, industrial machine, etc.

Btw:

Yes there are wankel engines used in some aircraft. Have been and still are.

ken-x8

Mazda believed in rotaries. It was almost a religion for them. There was no option for a piston engine for the RX-8. It was their latest altar for a Wankel. When they wanted to build a piston-engined sports car they developed the Miata.

Ken