Reoze

Someone mentioned on a BMW forum that you can unscrew the entire piston. Ever since then I visualized it as a threaded rod on both ends. Sounds like they were full of themselves though, they'd be almost impossible to install correctly if that were the case. Glad it just spins on the other end though, that makes me feel a LOT better about this whole situation.

I think I might actually have two separate issues. I did fail to torque down one of the A-arm bolts. Made it about 10 miles before I realized the issue. The bolt was probably another mile from falling out completely. It was hanging there diagonally with the tip lodged against the bushing. Cranked it down pretty good and that's when the squeaking started. The bushing itself (surprisingly) seems to still be in fairly good condition, though I probably wouldn't know a bad bushing if it smacked me in the face.

Is it at all possible I bent my sway bar while the A-Arm was partially connected? It seems odd to me that this issue would only appear after tightening the bolts. Though this could entirely be my ride height. I think I might be a little higher than stock right now. I don't have a tape measure handy or I'd see exactly where I'm at. The adjusters are about an inch from the top.

On the other hand, the thud was there from the beginning. I wrote it off as a stiff suspension at first, but it's clearly not normal. After reading quite a bit, it sounds like the thud/clanking is my failure to tighten the center nut on the top hat properly. Should I lift the car back up before attempting to adjust it?

Edit: I finally found the section regarding ride height in the instructions in between all the german. (I also now feel pretty bad for everyone who has to read directions written primarily in english in their language). Is this stating that there should be between 255-280mm of space between the bottom bolt going into the A arm and the lip of the top of the adjuster? Or from the adjuster to the top of the strut?

Last Edit (and question): With my ride height being so far out of spec and my springs being compressed as a result. Should I be worried about damaging my springs? Or can this wait until tomorrow?

Steve Dallas

Do you have a rubber mallet? The easiest way to find the source of noise in a suspension is to bump everything in every direction with a mallet. Don't be shy. Those parts take a beating on the street.

The top nut torque spec is 34 ft/lb, which is snug, but not tight, by my definition. It is about how tight you would torque an oil drain plug, for example. The top bushing should compress a little and squeeze out about 1 to 2 mm.

The springs are fine. Their purpose in life is to be abused and trashed without ever a thought given to their plight.

Sway bars are basically giant springs. It should be fine too. Just make sure it is not binding, when you get everything installed. If you find you need adjustable end links, and you probably will, look for NC (2006-2015) MX-5 links. They fit RX-8s and are usually cheaper and more abundant. Or, you could buy...

IDK if you know this, but you are supposed to loosen every bolt that has a bushing with the car on the ground, then re-torque them all to factory specs. That can be hard to do with the car actually on the ground. It is much easier on a tray lift or with 3" of lumber under each tire. If you don't do this, your bushings will wear out prematurely, and your ride height will move around as bushings start to fail.

I can't really visualize your spring perch location from your description. The last few pages of the instructions show what is meant in that table. Set your spring perches to the maximums (280 mm or 11" front and 105 mm or 4 1/8" rear). When I have installed these for people in the past, that was low enough for them to look good and work well on the street.

By the way, the thread pitch on the shock bodies is 1.5mm, which is roughly 1/16", which means turning an adjuster 1 turn will move the ride height roughly that much, when the adjusters are within their specified range or close to it.

Finally, Racing Beat's instructions for front and rear shock installation are probably the best. They should make your life much easier. Just ignore the part about modifying bump stops.

Bilstein instructions:




Torque specs for most bolts:

Reoze

I was in fact using the RB instructions. When I was reading the MM DIY I thought "No way in hell I'm doing that". I truly appreciate all the help. You went above and beyond, even digging up all the instructions for me.

I jacked the car up and adjusted the height to within spec (about 265mm, i think this is a little too low for the streets around here, but that's a different story.) Then I did my best to verify the torque on all the bolts. I couldn't quite fit my torque wrench in there for the bolt on the bottom of the strut, but I applied what I think is about the same amount of force (2.75 unga bungas) as I did on the two A-arm bolts.

I attempted to screw the top strut bolt in more, but I almost ripped my hand off trying to torque it down with an allen key locking it. I'm assuming that I need to compress the springs on the front before I'll have enough play to move it? Or should I just remove the shocks from the car again completely?

Still clunking.

After this, out of frustration, I brought it to a local shop. Who went and installed the rear shocks for me, verified the torque on the A-arm bolts again, and adjusted the rear ride height so that the car is completely level. *They* told me that the sway bar end links look fine, though I've yet to verify this myself.

At the end of the day, I still have a pretty hideous clunk. The front end bounces a lot more than it should while it's happening and I can only assume it's because of some kind of play on the top nut. The noise happens on both front end shocks, but not the rears that were just installed "professionally".

I attached a picture of the top of the nut on the shock. I'm not expecting much, but maybe someone could tell if it's too loose or too tight based on the amount of threads coming out of the top of the nut. I'll try to upload a video of the clunking in a little bit.

Edit: here's the picture of the center nut.

Angel1985

I recently bought a 2004 rx8! When i bought it the owner said it had some "small" problems so we bought it? It has a problem when it reaches a certain heat level it just dies and wont turn back untill it cold again! We put a new battery and new oil... please help me?

Reoze

Holy crap, something I can actually answer.

A heating problem wouldn't be caused by a bad battery, and your oil would have to be made out molten salt in order to cause that drastic of a heating issue. Have you checked your coolant level? The sensors in these bottles fail pretty often. Though they usually fail in a way that shows a low coolant light when the level is completely fine.

I'm assuming that you are not seeing any coolant leaking from the radiator or associated hoses?

Is the bottom plastic cover installed below the engine? This will cause airflow issues through the radiator if not.

Will the car overheat and die at idle sitting in the driveway? If so, then that would remove most of the air flow issues out of the equation. As the radiator fans are solely responsible for cooling the car at that point. Can you hear the fans turning on? There is a method of testing the fans that involves shorting the terminals below the fan relays. ( https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-tec...g-fans-166524/ )

On the other side of that coin, will the car overheat on the highway with no traffic? I wouldn't recommend trying it just to find out though.

Is your coolant cap correctly installed? When I bought my latest RX8 the entire flange on the coolant bottle was cracked and caused coolant to boil over.

If all of these systems look normal then I would verify that the thermostat is opening. With the car warmed up (t-stat will only open around the 180-190 degree mark) grab the hose i circled in the image below. This should be the outlet from the thermostat housing. The hose should get fairly hot once it opens. If not, then it is likely an issue with the thermostat itself.

With all of that said, I would not allow the car to keep doing this. Overheating is a major cause of premature seal failure in our engines (even just once). I would highly recommend grabbing a $10-$20 bluetooth ODB scanner from amazon to monitor your coolant temperatures while you diagnose this issue. The gauge on the dash is absolutely terrible for this and only works in about 20-40 degree increments. I personally have used this one and it worked great with my laptop and android device, though I've not been able to successfully pair it with my iPhone ( )

Steve Dallas

I can't really troubleshoot it from here, unfortunately. Any clunk in a suspension is generally something loose. It may be a bolt you didn't touch or don't remember touching. I would go over all of it.

It could also be that all the parts are not in the correct order or seated correctly. Are you sure everything was installed exactly according to the instructions?

The top nut is pretty simple. The number of threads you have above the nut looks OK to me, but I would need to have one of the coilovers in my hands to be sure all is right. Those coilovers have basically zero rate helper springs, which means you can compress everything with minimal force and without a spring compressor.

Also check the ball joints on the upper and lower control arms for play, and check the outer and inner tie rod ends for play.

It's too bad you are not local to me. If you were, we could have things sorted out in 1 hour, and it would only cost you a 6 pack of good beer. Alas.

On the subject of end links, I took some bad photos for you.

When the car is on the ground, the rear should sit at an upward angle, approximately halfway between the stuff it might hit. This is truly a bad photo, but it attempts to show the rear sway bar has plenty of clearance from the subframe above it. My car sits really low for track use, so the end link is adjusted as short as it will go.




This front photo is worse. The front bar should sit level with the ground under load. This one does, although it is hard to find a reference in the photo. My front links are adjusted almost as short as they can go to make the bar sit level.



I'll try to remember to take better photos tomorrow.

.

Reoze

For anyone wondering, turned out that someone swapped out the top bushings for something that most likely doesn't belong anywhere near our cars. I had to pop an extra metal bushing out of the bottom of one of them, and everything worked great.

Thanks again Steve for the help.

Mac91

So.. I was wondering if anyone has come across an issue reconnecting a battery after winter storage.
My rx8 was sitting outside all winter. I removed the battery. When I went to reinstall it a super loud solid horn went off. It wasn't the alarm horn. But the headlights came on. I tried unlocking with the key fob and the key to see if it would stop. No luck.
What do I do??

Rotaryaddict4400

Names Devon just joined im an alaska bering sea fisherman and am in love wit the rotary... just turned 22.. learned about the rotary in prison about a year ago and fell in love.... I own an 04 silver rx8 with black intorior and nav... bought it 4k$ flat 112k miles and I drove the ******* hell out of it... racing first night smashing down the freeway 140+mph I love it... I took care of it like crazy and was planning on an immediate rebuild but I was short money... so I treated her like a queen but I liked to hit them highhhh10k notes daily... and she never failed me... no starting problems nothing... theeen she blew up @ 135k miles... now I have money I have a guy who will work on any car... ANY and do ANYTHING... the mods is what I wanna talk about... I had an idea.. and I asked him about it and he said he was already doing it... but iv never heard of it on any rotary car.. it might be already out there but I dont think so... and I wanna see what people think.. im getting a knew 07 rx8 motor rebuilt with warranty he is bridge porting and porting the exhaust ports AND the normal exhaust ports on the rotor housings.. yes porting the normal iron ports and boreing out the original housing exhaust ports and adding a custom header.. clutch kit AEM red intake light weight pulley coil pack plugs wires radiator full cat back exhaust and custom headers with afternarket exhaust tips and fixed head light for a crazy low price... this guy does insane builds.... any car... all custom if you have the cash... 100k+$ builds huge turbos fat tire little tire welded diffs cages audio WHATEVER... you pay he got you... my main thing here is the porting of the exhaust ports... cause I had that idead and I asked him and he said he was doing it and already making the custom header... any good feed back adding a bridgeport along wit that?HELP

Lile1flesh

I'll ask a serious question. Just bought an 04 RX8 a couple of weeks ago. Power steering went out and we've read lots of info on connections, coolant leaks, etc. I'm trying to help hubby by gathering supplies while he is working. I'm wanting to get the #34 fuse for the EPS, 60 amp for the power steering located near the positive terminal on the battery. I found a 7.5 amp fuse in that area, but am afraid to just start disconnecting things. Here's a couple pics of what I am looking at. Anyone willing to help?

dannobre

iTrader: (3)

bottom picture under the plastic cover that says EPS on it 😎

Lile1flesh

Thanks! My husband had told me NOT to open that because it was something else. I finally just opened it and found it! Fuses were all good. Yesterday we used instructions on this forum to remove the air intake filter box, clean a number of connections including the two near the coolant overflow drain, discovered oil in the intake system, cleaned it out, replaced the air filter, and replaced the battery connections that were loose, and followed the manual to clear instrument panel lights that stayed on because we had disconnected the battery! So far, so good! Power steering is now working and everything else seems good. Time will tell! So thankful for this forum. We are not mechanics. I had no clue that EPS stood for Electronic Power Steering! Between my reading these articles and his limited knowledge of clips and how to use connection cleaner and dielectric grease, we got it done! Thanks for helping to empower us!

Elusi

Hello dear knowledgeable people! Am back with another perhaps silly question

I'll steal this line from someone else who described it so well on another forum (different car, though)

The first indeterminate-but-short-distance of travel in my clutch pedal has almost no resistance.

Like a dead-zone, doesn't seem to happen much from this amount of travel either.

I think.. that my clutch didn't behave like this before. I don't think it's all in my head, I think something as changed lately. How is the clutch set up in an RX8? Is it some wear and tear on a cable and something I should get replaced?

Steve Dallas

How much travel is there with no resistance?

Some travel like that is normal. The distance will grow slightly as the clutch disc wears. You can adjust the pedal to make the engagement happen higher, but you do not want to adjust it to the point of too much tension, where the release bearing rides the pressure plate splines.

Another possibility is that you simply need to bleed the clutch line. The clutch system on the RX-8 is hydraulic, and it shares fluid with the braking system. The line needs to be bled occasionally, just like the brakes do.

40w8

Steve Dallas,

Most all of those end links are adjustable, but not very much shorter.

My car was sitting around 13.5, and end links seemed too long, so I took them to a friends machine shop where he cut out about 1.5 inches, and put pins and sleave on them.

Seem to work great and sway bar seems more level.

I noticed the rubber on them is about shot after about 10 years, so I'll get another pair, and cut 1 inch this time.

Steve Dallas

Outside of DIY, these end links for the NC MX-5 are the correct length and work great. The price is right, too.

https://www.flyinmiata.com/nc-and-nd-end-link.html

https://www.flyinmiata.com/nb-and-nc-end-link.html

Reoze

Here's another dumb question. At idle, with the A/C on, my trailing ignition timing is pretty much all over the place. There's a 20-30 degree variation over the course of a second. Is this normal? I would've expected it to be relatively stable. Even after the initial shock of the increased load it still swings up and down pretty drastically.

Which would lead me to my next question. What is my engine trying to compensate for by jacking the timing all over the place like that? My AFR's look very stable (14.8). MAF input looks stable. There's a slight RPM variation (30-50), is it trying to subtly control engine speed without changing the throttle input?

Elusi

Thanks for your reply! About one inch I'd imagine but reading up some more I realise I have to measure this more carefully. Thing is when I disengage the pedal I can feel it springing back all loose-like and it didn't use to do that so it's really spooking my muscle memory.

I think the line was bled along with much else during my last visit to the shop but I'll double-check.

I found that adjusting as described in this thread helps but am vary of the warnings in there, that this isn't a proper adjustment apparently. Though I'm confused by that a bit since when I look in the workshop manual it seems they are describing the very same procedure in there anyway.

mikebrow74

I think I remember a Mazda recall for the clutch pedal mounting bracket failure on some of the early RX-8s. Have you searched for that?

Elusi

I had completely missed that. Thanks for the pointer!

However the issue has deteriorated further, much further, to the point that if I *don't* adjust the nut as described here, the pedal doesn't work at all anymore. It gets stuck further down than normal and the dead zone is humongous.

I've called the mechanic and am having it towed there next week. But I'll ask them to check if the clutch mounting bracket replacement has been done on mine.

Reoze

The way these clutch pedals were built, they're almost guaranteed to snap. Adjusting the pedal travel is only going to mask the issue, and potentially accelerate the wear on your clutch. When I had my pedal snap in my 04 I drove it around until it broke off completely. Within 2 weeks I needed a new clutch.

BHR and Raceroots sell a reinforced clutch pedal. I picked up the RR one back in the day for my 04 and it worked perfectly. The pedal was a bit stiffer but you get used to it.

If you have a ratchet, and a friend to hold the master cylinder in. The whole job takes about an hour.

Get down under your dash with a flashlight and grab the pedal itself. Try yanking it and wiggling it back and forth. If the bracket is in fact snapped you should be able to see it and feel it pretty easily.

Grace_Excel

iTrader: (5)

In the subject of "clutch", is this a sign of a failed master cylinder? Just a few days ago, I started to have a hard time changing gears, pedal feels spongy and drops to the floor when the engine is cool. But once warmed up, the pedal goes up; however, to engadge into gear requires me to depress the pedal all the way to the floor until two days ago when I couldn't shift gears anymore. I first tried to drain the fluid and put new one in. But the odd thing is, when I vacuum bled from the bleeder it wouldn't hold a tight seal. Then I went under to adjust the push rod and noticed the leak. If that's the cause of air entering the system, am I right to say that the master cylinder has failed? Here is a picture.

Reoze

While I don't know if this is specifically your issue, this again sounds exactly like what happened when my pedal snapped. Minus it getting better when warm. Even down to the part where I was blaming the master cylinder. I do remember seeing some liquid dribbling down the firewall when it first started, and was pretty convinced it was the master, not the pedal. I didn't order the new pedal until after it snapped right off while driving one day.

Grace_Excel

iTrader: (5)

I know what it feels when the pedal snapped, happened to me five years ago. But yeah, it isn't the pedal breaking this time. All points are still intact and shows no sign of cracking, and no side-to-side play.

I hope it's the master, wohld be easier; instead of the slave, which was dry around the area and did not show some leaks before I bled the lines. I did the "pump-pump-pump, hold pedal down, open valve then close", there was a steady stream then air... And the flow stopped like the whole time the is open, I did not get steady stream as you normally would when bleeding the line of air.

Reoze

When you say the bleeder wasn't holding a seal, was that because the air wasn't getting out of the system, or because you saw or heard a leak?

The leak out of the master definitely does not look normal. Though the lack of fluid coming out of the bleeder doesn't sound like it's solely the master at fault, to me anyway.