KKMmaniac

“Mazda RX8: Most durable and reliable car built, best customer satisfaction due to MNAO’s attention to widely publicized customer feedback! “

This is the kind of thing that would have been nice to read here yesterday. Instead, I take a little break from the club for a few weeks and return, only to find some really bizzare news! One of the reasons I’ve been a little scarce lately is all the negative news of engines and transmissions packing it in, etc. and I decided to just drive and enjoy my car, as it’s been operating fairly trouble-free in its ~35,000 miles.

However, it has issues of its own. Thanks to MnDOT and Mazda’s poor sealing of metal surfaces, after three winters it is showing some surface rust on the inner fender edges and creeping rust from between some of the seams in the underbody panel stampings. Also, when I replaced the spark plugs at about 33,600 miles I found the old ones to be absolutely trashed. Not just the electrodes, but cracked and chipped insulators around the center electrodes on the leading plugs. Anyway, more on this later when I get the film developed. (no digital camera, Luddite that I am)

I didn’t think Mazda would care about these things (“you should have purchased undercoating, we can’t make any conclusions about the plugs since we didn’t remove them”, blahhdy blahh blahh…) but now it sounds like they really don’t have any reason to care.

As for the vacuum test/engine replacement, let me quote a very insightful person’s comments from Feb. 2003:

“True, the car and engine incorporate some technologies that are fairly new, but are certainly not untested. Like wakeech says, Mazda (and Ford) aren't gonna release a car they feel would be a reliability risk. It's also probably true, the RX-8 is not the car for everybody, but I don't think it is trying to be.”

(Here’s the thread: https://www.rx8club.com/rx-8-media-news-11/what-guarantee-buyer-will-have-rx-8-will-not-lemon-2691/ )

Well, I guess we all can’t be right. Maybe the wankel really hasn’t evolved much since the NSU Ro 80! I feel sometimes like I’m driving a ticking carbomb. Unless the dealer can explain in detail how the replacement engine has been improved to allow it to spin happily for 150,000 or more miles without internal malfunctions, I’m not gonna be keen on having my engine replaced by a rebuild if the dealer determines that would be necessary.

And I’m just wondering: have the Mazda Star series Renesis engines had similar issues? All I’ve heard is the reliability and longevity have been excellent overall.

I hate to cave in to the paranoia, but I’m thinking, if Mazda offered a buyback now, at the fair market value the RX8 SHOULD be at, minus the $500.00 “horsepower deficit” rebate, and of course, I’d have to turn in the free service card, (which I haven’t used yet) I’m afraid I’d do it!