I'd settle for a lame excuse from Mazda, but instead we get nothing. Just standing around holding our dicks.

 

this isn't good.. Those numbers are essentially the same as the Prelude, 7.1/15.1 as they should be for the 5sp MT 210hp Rx-8 because it's about 100lbs heavier the the 5sp MT 200hp Prelude. BUT the 250ps 6spd should be a lot faster! WTF?!

 

Time to bring over the 210 HP version, drop the price $5k, everyone is happy.

Those times, if done with a high RPM clutch drop, are terrible for the 250ps version.

 

interesting.....

 

I don't know that we're that far off - I had a stoplight race with a friend who has been giving me a bunch of lip about how fast his SAAB Viggen is. His car was 6.7s 0-60, 14.9 1/4 mile stock and he has added a chip to up boost.

I absolutely destroyed him all the way through first and second, he was pretty well keeping the pace after that. Which would seem to fit pretty well with the advertised numbers for our cars.

Of course, that's with traction control off, 6500 rpm clutch drop and spinning tires most of the way through first gear...

Steven

 

Mazda REALLY need to get on top of this situation and fast. The negative publicity that could be generated if they don't do so might destroy the company. This is truly serious and alarming!

 

I used to own a '01 Type SH, and I have to say that the RX-8 is much faster feeling.

 

Maybe they deserved to be destroyed in the first place for sitting on their hands. Any company like this in general shouldn't last long in the playing field.

 

That Japanese car mag did the 1/4 mile run only 0.08 secs slower in the 210Ps car compared to the 250PS RX-8. I don't care if the 210PS vehicle was a 4AT or a 5MT, something is definitely wrong here - that 40PS difference is AWOL...

On the other hand it's good news for the low-power RX-8 owners - better than I expected.

 

Nissan 350z or even 2 seater VX220 turbo sounding even more tempting now

 

Everyone needs to take a breath and take a step back and look at reality for a moment.

1) "Destroy the company"? I don't think so. Most people in the United States don't even know the RX-8 is out, and the percentage of those that do that know of any horsepower issues is infinitesimally small. Think about it, you have to know the RX-8 is out, what its HP numbers are, and the fact that it has dynoed low to date. I would say fully 99% of those Mazda is hoping would buy an RX-8 have no idea what a dyno even is. We here make up perhaps 1% of consumers, if we're lucky; you've got to remember the standard customer is one who will ask the salesperson about the car and will see the salesperson as an expert. I'm sure all of you have received as many "you know more about this car than I do!" responses from salespeople as I have.

2) Mazda does need to respond, but a response likely won't be coming this week or perhaps even this month. Big companies, domestic or foreign just don't work that way. They are likely researching the issue but after they do, they will have to determine exactly what is going on and run any response through legal several times. I'd say we'd be lucky to hear anything from them before October.

In the mean time hopefully a JDM RX-8 will be dynoed to see if it could be a U.S. Emissions issue, and the rotarynews folks will be able to look into the issue in more detail...

 

Hmm.. maybe it's a problem with only certain cars then? Until we get more dyno and 1/4 mile nubers from a drag strip, it's still all speculation.. but it's odd how at least some of the cars, both in NA and Japan are showing similar "missing power" traits.

 

It's a major apologist point of view, but I tend to believe there may be something about the rotary that makes it difficult to characterize on a standard dyno test; that would certainly explain the difference between the numbers and what many feel in the "butt dyno."

 

I don't know if this had been brought up, but did anyone look at the torque perspective? For a high rpm car like RX-8 a small amount of torque could make a big difference in horsepower. For instance using the dyno result of ~180 hp at 8500 rpm that would work out to be about 111 lb-ft of torque. Let's just assume for what ever reason the problem is, green engine, ECU issues, mileage switch, hot climate....etc, we got back 10% of that torque later down the road,

111*1.1*8500 / 5252 = ~197 hp

That's pretty close to what it is suppose to be. Just a thought.

 

Feel free..

 

Just for kicks, I called the Mazda customer service 800 number and asked the fellow about Mazda possibly overstating the HP numbers specified for the RX-8. His answer is: "Those HP numbers are not coming from Mazda. They are based on a US government-mandated test, and not the manufacturer". So I asked him whether the HP number we see on Mazda's own Web site is coming from the US government test and not Mazda? And he says, YES, Mazda does not make tests and so they literally don't know the number. I told him I find it hard to believe that a manufacturer would not know their car's power, but he sticked to his explanation. What BS... this is such a lame response.

 

There has been alot of talk and complaining in regards to the horsepower of the rx8. I am a dealer and I hope I can clear up any bad remors that are going around. From my understanding it has alway been 210 hp in the automatic and 250 hp in the 6 speed. The reason for this is by design the rotory engine is a very high reving engine. Automatic trans. can not handle the high revolutions of the engine. Mazda instead place more torque in the range where the average automatic driver would use it.
Thank you

 

people are complaining because the 6-speed version is only showing up with lots less horsepower.

Haven't heard too many complaints about the automatic other than the one fellow who thinks it is slow.

You run into the "slow" problem with lots of automatics though, especially turbocharged cars, or vehicles with some variation of valve timing (or peripheral ports). can't dump the clutch and the gearing is too broad, too much load on the engine in the low-horsepower areas, etc, etc. not a problem with any of the cars, just something to live with in exchange for the convenience.

blah blah

my .02

 

NOT just for kicks, on 8/2, I wrote the following to Mazda from their web site where owners can submit a question (you must include your VIN# as well as personal particulars):

---------
"I bought my RX-8 7/18/03 and I am generally happy with it although I have only 450 miles so far. However, I read with increasing concern the growing controversy concerning the fact that several owners to date have not been able to dyno any car to exceed approx 185 rear wheel horsepower. This is nowhere near the advertised HP of 247 unless there is an approximate 25% drive train loss.

In any case, whatever the cause, as this situation develops, something seems to be wrong here, the only question is what, and why this is occurring, and what is the appropriate remedy. Mazda's recent experience with the Miata's falsely stated HP rating should have heightened Mazda's engineers attention to such detail, one would like to believe, so I wanted to get your opinion on what EXACTLY is going on in this situation with the RX-8 and apparent low HP output? Can you please comment? "
---------

On 8/2 I received an automated reply, saying they are closed on weekends, but with a promise of a response "as quickly as possible".

Will post when I get that real reply. I think we owners should be individually asking 'what's up' to Mazda so they know there are those who do care about what they paid their money for, and aren't particularly happy with this coming to light from owners, rather than from Mazda themselves.

I find it IMPROBABLE if not IMPOSSIBLE that Mazda Japan does not know what we are just finding out on our own. ***Research an answer my foot!*** They've had this engine (and car) under development for several YEARS, yet a few lay enthusiasts can determine WITHIN DAYS some anomoly that makes all officaldom that is willing to speak offer a collective 'Really???"

Let's get real here! Still lovin my car ... but Sheezzz!

 

I agree! We should be flooding Mazda with letters, not posting "alleged" issues with the car on the internet for all eyes to see.

 

I called the 800 number yesterday and the person gave me their extension number so I could check back with them specifically at the end of this week since his boss told him that Mazda was looking into this and knew about the concerns. This rep had actually read some of the posts on this forum and was eager to find out what (if anything) the issue is also.

I submitted a question per email last week and got this response today:

"Thank you for contacting Mazda North American Operations. I appreciate
the opportunity to respond to you.

In regards to your inquiry, please understand that the tests that you
referred to were not conducted by Mazda and we can not substantiate the
claims of independent testing, although we are looking into this
matter. Currently, the information that we have supplied remains. No
engine-break in has been noted."

 

You completely missed the point. The 6-speed version is dynoing out about 20 HP below where it should be if it had 250 HP at the crank. Where are those missing horsies?

 

anyone considered the effect the weight of the 18'' wheels might have? I say this because mazda's claim of 247 would be from the crank, not taking the wheels into account. Now, the wheels don't explain such a massive precieved loss in HP, but I'm wondering what they weigh in at.

In addition, it would appear Mazda was testing and tweaking the car to the very end, hence all the pre-production literature says 250 HP with a "*" and a comment stating 250 was the target HP. In the end, they ended up rating it 247, which is pretty specific, I mean, if the car has dyno'd out fine and they'd left the stat at 250, I doubt anyone would have noticed. So it makes me think that something else must be going on.

 

I imagine the difference in the first 2 gears was due to RWD versus FWD on the Viggen. Once traction no longer became a factor, power to weight ratio of the Viggen seemed to be close to the 8 (not considering aerodynamic drag). What's the curb weight & hp of a chipped Viggen?

 

Actually, it's 0.9863hp I remember because bwob said that the 280PS "target" engine was the 250HP with the difference being PS to HP and DIN HP to SAE HP conversion. I spent some time checking before saying he was wrong:
SAE(US) = kW * 1.341 (american) @ 25 deg C, 99kPa)
STP(US - dyno) = 1.341 @ 15.5 degC, 103,3kPa) [approx 4% higher than SAE]
DIN = kW * 1.360 (german) @ 20 deg C 101.3kPa
ECE = kW * 1.360 @ 25 deg C, 99kPa
JIS (metric adopted from SI) = kW * 1.333 (defined as 0.75kW)

But nevertheless he posted on miata.net recently that the reason he stopped posting on rx8forum.com was because people here said he was wrong

-pete