RX8 MPG Vs ?!?
 

Hiya,

Basically wanted to see if all you fountains of knowledge out there could help me out. Basically as some of you may know, i have a black 8 on order (Final 30 days now), but have a few Recently rising worries to quash!

The first - Other choices of car were a CLK 320 - and wanted to know how the mpg (real MPG, none of the brochure rubbish) fared against it, Or what other cars with the same MPG levels were?

2nd- Whats the issue with the oil? Something about having to change it far too often??

Lastly any other issues?

Other than that i LOVE this car.. enuff to make me leave a string of Mercs...(at least they both start with M)

:confused:

clk's are extremely expensive but got good looks

i'd say the mpg is a little better than the rx-8

18-19, it's heavier but not rotary

My MPG is 13-15 on a routine basis.
I just got the M flash. I doubt it will help. I tend to drive the car in a "spirited" manner.

I get 16/10 highway/city, but I don't know what flash I have. I think the car was built in November, and I bought it in March. I plan to go in next week for the M flash, which I've heard brings the MPG up to 20/16 or so.

My car was made in Dec, on dealer lot in feb, and I bought it this month.

I was getting around 17 for my first two tanks (unsure what version it came with), and my first tank with M flash got 18.7.

I'm not driving around like mad either - but I do shift around 5-6k rpm.

You don't have to change the oil more often, but you do need to check it more. The design of the rotary causes some oil to be burned. Try the search feature if you want more depth.

Burning some oil is an inherent part of the rotary's design and is completely normal for the rotary. How much more oil it uses than a piston engine depends on your driving style. If you cruise on the freeways a lot and occasionally redline the car, like I do, then you may not need to add any oil after 3000 miles or just one quart after 6000 miles (the manual says oil changes should be done every 7500 miles but many owners get oil changes after 3000 miles). Some of the folks here who redline all the time add more frequently (I don't remember how much and frequently they add but you can do a search for threads), but even for these people, adding oil is completely normal.

Somewhere above someone mentioned CHECKING the oil dipstick, which doesn't mean you have to add more oil. The manual even suggests you check the oil dipstick every other gas stop, which seems inconvenient. But based on how I drive, I've come to know that I don't need to check the oil dipstick nearly that often. Instead, I check it about once every eight or so fill-ups (2400 miles), which is not inconvenient at all.

Why would the manual tell owners to check the oil dipstick so often even though there is an oil gauge inside the car? Because the oil gauge is a "dummy" gauge. It doesn't move gradually as oil is used up; instead, it sits there frozen until the oil is seriously depleted. So that's why you can't rely on the oil gauge inside the car and must check the actual oil dipstick. The experts around here have explained in various threads that running out of oil is extremely bad for the rotary, more so than for a piston engine.

Why did they have to do that with the oil gauge? Was it that much harder to put in a real one? I guess they needed to put something in that last display opening, but it's kind of annoying that there's a gauge there to do the job of an LED.

A lot of people have wondered.

As for the mileage question, you should check the three recent threads (although there are a lot more) in the Discussion forum, including two started by me.

You may be pleasantly surprised.

For mileage, I've been averaging 17-19 in suburban driving, and 21-24 on the highway. My ONLY complaint is that my cheek muscles hurt from smiling so much!

You all do realize that, while it is true that the oil guage is a "dummy" guage, it is still an oil PRESSURE gauge. It wouldn't tell you if you were low on oil regardless of whether it was a real gauge or not. It would tell you if you have oil pressure problems, but as long as there is oil pumping through the system there would be pressure. Regardless of whether it was real or not it wouldn't drop abnormally until the system began sucking air out of the pan, at which point you're indeed screwed anyway.

However, you DO HAVE, a low oil warning indicator which should sever the purpose of telling you to check your oil level very well and will alert you of a potential drop in levels long before you start to suck in air.

I get an average of 19-21mpg with ~70% highway miles (mostly traffic) and a few redlines to knock the dust off the rotors. As for changing oil, do it every 3k as normal but check the level perhaps every 500. Oil consumption by the motor is normally about 1 quart per 1500 miles (more or less depending how hard you drive) as the engine has a direct oiling system to lubricate the internals of the combustion chamber.