pelucidor

I have been lurking on this board for several weeks now. This is my first post so be kind...

For the last 6 months I have been afflicted by some strange psychological disorder. It seemed to start about the time I wandered into a Honda dealership one lunchtime and accidentally test-drove an S2000 (was looking at CRV for relatives). Two weeks and 3 test-drives later I was obsessed. I bought the S2000 book by Dan Carney and read it twice. I test drove the Z3, the Porshe Boxster, Audi TT etc to see if every roadster (sorry I meant two-seater convertible) was as wonderful (no - and 4-seat convertibles such as BMW 330 really suck in comparison to any 2 seater). I dreamt about the incredible engine and handling and the sweet gear shift every night and babbled about it every day to my wife.

Eventually to get some peace she told me to go ahead and buy it to replace my IS300 next summer when the lease ends - Spa Yellow stook for $30k here I come...

And then a few weeks ago I had some.... wonderful news. We are expecting our first baby. Suddenly a minimalist 2 seater convertible is not the most important thing in the world - the family needs a car with 4 doors and 4 seats. But I NEED the 9k redline (every other car's engine seems so... inadequate now) and I REALLY need the best clutch/gearbox I've ever experienced (as good as the 5-speed Miata I once test-drove).

I resign myself to getting an Infiniti G35 Sedan (wife and I love the testdrive, dealership is wonderful) which is a great $34K vehicle that CAN look good with the right colour and the Sport/Aero package. Certainly a quick and pleasant car with bags of room - perhaps with 6-speed manual next year (but will it be a sweet gearshift?).

And then I remembered reading in a car magazine about some odd vehicle with a very odd 1.3 liter engine. Find the Road & Track preview - impressive. Four doors - check. Four seats - check. Beautiful interior and very nice exterior (some hints of S2000 methinks) - a bonus. But what is a rotary and why is it so small - it has the power and plenty of torque to go with the high redline, but will it be smooth.

So I find myself here - and the more I read the more excited I get. Learn about rotaries and find that they are a vastly more elegant design and SMOOTHER than piston engines - wow. Same gearbox manufacturer as the Miata - wow. Designed as a SPORTS CAR first (with hopefully great handling) and a sedan 2nd - big wow. Photographs of possible matching baby-seat - the wife is sold (designed for families of course!). The only negative is it's not a convertible, but that might not be a good idea from a safety perspective anyway.

So I put it to you - is the RX-8 a good alternative to the S2000 for those that really love to rev, love to change their gears using a clutch, love handling, but also need four seats? On a similar note, I have never experienced a rotary engine (except when playing Sega GT 2002 on my XBOX - the Cosmo Sport is one hell of a vehicle initially). Anybody in the Houston area want to show me what they are about?

pelucidor

I realized I posted this to the wrong forum - I meant to put it in Discussions. I have made a copy of it there - Mods are welcome to delete the thread here in Requests.

Hercules

In regards to your question about the torque curve... words cannot express the delivery of rotary. So we'll use images



The chassis of the car is made with reinforce aluminum and carbon fiber. It's truly what a sports car is meant to be, light and sturdy.

The rear seats give you more room than the current 626 does. The 6 speed as you mentioned, is developed by the same company that made the Miata's, and I've no doubt they improved since then. That gearshift is 5 years old without any retuning.

As per being a convertible... I don't like them and thus the RX-8 is ideal. You got decent trunk space (nothing as capacious as the G35 I'd venture) but nonetheless pretty darn good.

Add to this the fact that Mazda has produced the MP3, Protege, Miata, RX-7... all some of the MOST nimble cars produced. The RX-8's body is stiffer than that of the RX-7's old body, as well as being better balanced. The weight of the car is low, especially for a 4 seater. This only adds to its nimbleness and speed.

Understand, that the RX-8 isn't a drag monster and by reading your post, I can fathom that you're not interested in it for that anyway If you want a good handling, good looking, practical car that has an engine that ASKS YOU to take it to redline on every shift...

Go to the Mazda dealer and give them 500 bucks, and get yourself on the waiting list

pelucidor

In fact I have a print-out of Grimace/PatrickB's HP/Torque curve hanging on my wall - it's one of the things that sold me on the RX-8 (I studied mechanical engineering at university too - but moved into IT and forgot everything when I started work). I DO know the importance of the area under the torque curve (and at high revs is best) - the S has the same 'percieved' torque issues as the RX-8 but to an even greater extent. But I would love to hear/feel a rotary engine as well as see the pictures...

I didn't know about the aluminium/carbon fibre chassis - impressive. Of course adding lightness is critical - if I was still in England I would have had an Elise 5 years ago (when I was still single). Hopefully the light weight of the RX-8 (< 2900 pounds) will not imply fragility - the two don't have to go together (I felt the NA Miata put a huge grin on my face but was too fragile for my tastes).

I don't need to worry about the trunk space - our other vehicle is an Acura MDX Touring (wife+baby+2 giant dogs will mostly use that). I just need to be able to take the wife+baby in 'my' car occasionally (i.e. if MDX is unavailable for any reason) which is why I need 4 seats.

The knowledge displayed by most of the people on this board is very impressive, and the enthusiasm is catching. The more I find out about the RX-8 the more I ask myself how can they build this car for $26k base (i.e. Camry/Accord territory)?

Hercules

The answer to the price is first, because they don't have the name Nissan has.

Nissan can offer their 350Z because they have an advertising budget that will bring in the bucks. Not to mention, their R&D department is 100 times the budget of what Mazda used to create this car.

Why? Because the Mazda engineers who worked on the RX-8 and the Renesis worked a lot on their OWN TIME. After putting in a full day of work, they'd return to the workbench and create what we know now as the Renesis engine, then persuade the top Mazda brass/Ford brass to produce a car that was the vision of the company.

I think given the fact that Mazda has for some time been a sub-par company in comparison to the Hondas, Toyotas, and Nissans of the world, that we only benefit from their cost cutting. Let's also not forget, that they have saved a lot of money by producing the rotary over the piston engine in actual production costs. The R&D is negligible because as I mentioned... the Renesis was almost wholly created outside of Mazda's hands.

That alone makes me believe that the car is going to be great, because the engineers that produced it worked for the sheer love of it, instead of releasing "the next wave because marketing thought it would sell", ala Nissan and the Z.

Quick_lude

I have a question about the torque curve. What is the suspected torque figure again? How much of that will be lost to the wheels on a rotary engine? I'd like to comapre these numbers to my Prelude which weighs virtually the same.
My numbers are
156 ft-lbs at 5250rpm.
From my dyno
125 ft-lbs at 2500rpm which is about 90% of max 140 ft-lbs at 5250rpm and then it falls off to 125 ft-lbs at 7000 rpm.

The thing I love about the Renesis is that the torque curve is going UP until 7.5K rpm.. and is still at 90% at 9K rpm. :D
Gearing will be crucial also.

Hercules

Nobody knows the Dyno numbers yet... time will tell on that.

Quick_lude

Yeah I know.. but there is a torque number out there.. so from all the previous rotaries there should be a percentage loss trend right? We can safely assume that this trend will continue with the Renesis, give or take a couple of points.

pelucidor

Reminds of some developers in my old company many years ago:

The head of development said it would be technically impossible and unnecessary from a sales perspective to add full web-functionality to our flagship client-server product that was still in development (this was about 4-5 years back). It was a pretty complex product that would sell for $500K - $2M per site.

Three developers (who didn't like him to start with) spent every night and weekend for 4 months learning about and then building exactly what he said couldn't be built (I helped little with user requirements and testing - as I was in sales/operations I knew how big this could be). We finally presented the prototype to the CEO and eventually this became THE user-interface to the product (of course it needed another 6 months of full-time development to finish off).

Request to Mazda - people who are passionate enough to work for free in their own time don't come along every day. Don't disapoint them.

Sputnik

Hey folks, if you do that, don't start adding additional threads in the other forums. Just report it to the moderator, and ask him/her to move it for ya, no biggie. Ahhh... grasshopper is one of us, even if he doesn't know it yet...

Forgit all of the torque/hp numbers. Sumbody in Houston just needs to school him to the smoothness of a rotary.

Ya know, I would suggest that you go to a dealership that is selling a used FC (In RX7 talk, thats a 2nd Gen RX7, '86-'91), or FD ('93-'95), or even FB ('79-'85), and take a test drive. An NA (non-turbo) would be preferencial, because you're not looking to see how much power the darn thing puts out (that will change with the RX8), but so that you can get the feel of an NA rotary, how smooth it is, how it reacts, etc. Even if the car isn't in the greatest of shape, you should get an idea of what you'll be in fer.

I would suggest test driving an FC, though, because it has gooood ergonomics for such a relatively simple car.

---jps

Grimace

As of April 2002, peak torque was reported by R&T to be 162 lb-ft @7500 RPM. Weight was reported to be 2970 lbs.

In the March 2001, R&T, peak torque was reported as 153 lb-ft. Weight was given as 3500 lbs.

By the time the car gets here, following this trend, it should weigh around 2400 lbs and put out 171 lb-ft of torque. :D :D Just kidding.

Welcome to the forum Pelucidor! If I had to name a car that was as close to a hard-top 4 seater S2000 as you could get, the RX-8 would be it.

If you liked the S2k's engine, you'll go nuts over the Renesis rotary. And Aisin (maker's of the 6 speed found in the RX-8 and Miata) make world class transmissions with some of the best shift feel possible. Right up there with the S2k.

pelucidor

Look forward to hanging around this forum. It's painful that any reviews on a PRODUCTION car are at least 5 months away.

I am still new to the idea of rotaries unlike many of you. In fact the first time I heard about it was on s2ki.com a few months back. Those who knew about such things were very complimentary, and pointed newbies to http://www.howstuffworks.com/rotary-engine5.htm which I think is a great primer (although I am sure you've all seen it).

I must say the engineer in me is impressed with the S2000 engine for doing the almost impossible (with a 100k mile warranty for some extra cash), but the mathematician in me is hynotized by the sheer elegance of the rotary. It's a shame it wasn't developed more by all car manufacturers over the last 40 years...

wakeech

naw, there's lots of people on the forum that are new to rotaries, and some (like me) who know and love 'em, and have yet to experience the full potential (never had the chance to drive the shiznat out of a 7 yet...)

oh, if you want something with a bit of more advanced theory, dig:
Rotary Engine Illustrated.com

kicks *** :D

the animations there are untouchable in quality... (and competely based on the Mazda design, of course... even has the fricken' bath tub!!)

adn teh reason it wasn't developped by more companies is 'cause they (Mercedes, GM... others, many others...) just couldn't get the sealing right... Mazda did first, and they gave up. :p

Grimace

And again, many of the engineer's back then (in the 60's) worked extra hours to get the design to the point where it was useable. I shudder to think how many man hours were spent on trial and error testing for the materials used for the apex seals. But I'm glad they did it!

pelucidor

Sounds like Edison and the light bulb...