Engine Failure or coils+plus or ?
 

92,000 Miles
2004 Manual

42 days past 8 year warranty (10/2003) build


Was heading home late thanksgiving, cruising onto the highway at about 50mph, was in 4th gear. I believe i experienced a misfire. At around 5k RPMS engine had temporary power loss however acceleration recovered. Check engine light went on.

As it was about 3 am I just finished my drive home (another 20 miles).

Next morning, I go to check the light out, I stopped about .5 miles from my house to get gas. Shut car off, ( was not totally warm, however never been an issue in the past). Realized the station has no 93 octane. Got back in car, starts fine. GO to another gas station 5 miles away, fill up the tank, start out to get the light checked on. I drive around 1 mile and while going approx 60MPH. The car loses all power, I still had power steering and power breaks, just no acceleration at all. I pull over to the side of the road. Car will not start. Just cranks and cranks forever. I manage to start it for about 1 second hit the gas hard, car sounds like shit, shutters, stalls.

I got it towed to the closest Mazda dealership, as I just moved to the area and know of no place that knows anything about rotarys.

They haven't looked at it yet, but they have already said they think plugs and coils. ( note I believe these are the original plugs and coils).

However, that's a pretty expensive guess to try just to find out the engine is blown......

Anyone have any experience with this. I just need the thing to run for a bit. ( was going to trade in, in the coming month :( .. )))

My Cat blew about 5k miles ago, and I replaced that. I haven't experianced any power loss in the past, or loss of power.

Environmental changes are, winter is here and it is now cold.


What do we think?? How do I manage the cost and b/s from the dealership?

I know its way past normal maintenance for the ignition parts, so Do I just give that a try and hope it wasn't an apex seal blowing, and actually engine failure.

Thanks.

Wow original Coils!

Compression test is cheap if not free and will give you a very good indication of the health of the engine.

I would be willing to bet that you need coils at the very least and plugs.

Just ask the dealership for a Compression test first before you do anything.

They will need to pull the lead plugs for that and so they can inspect those while they are in there.

You can buy OEM coils cheaper online than from the dealer and its an easy job to do yourself

are you saying that it's possible the plugs/coils have over 90k miles on them?!
Also, the warranty doesn't start when the car was made. It begins at first sale. So, if the car was sold in Dec 03 or later, you still have warranty (provided all maintenance was done on time...).

Before you consider compression loss, here is a list of things to check:
flooded engine
Plugs/coils
fuel filter
clogged cat converter
fluid/oil levels
air filter and maf/ess sensors

Click the link in my sig, and use the issues I've mentioned as your key words in the search. Good luck...

RX8 Soldier, I have only owned the car for 20k miles or so, I suppose it is possible the original plugs and coils are in it.

Update:


Mazda tech said

Car Needs new coils and plugs and the engine is flooded. They did not do a compression test, and said they don't just do that......
HOWEVER,

my question is, I drove about one mile before the car stalled. Is it possible to do that on a flooded engine? Or is it possible for an engine to flood while going 60mph?

After questioning the service manager on this, he seemed unsure and they are now going back to "look at some more things"


I've done all sorts of searching and reading, that's how I know the little that I do.

Umm, a compression test is a service... They refused you service.... I would leave, I can't stand piss poor customer service...

If your willing to pay for I don't see the problem.

1.3- unfortunately this is the only mazda dealership within 75 miles...

Do you know the answer regarding my flooding question?

""my question is, I drove about one mile before the car stalled. Is it possible to do that on a flooded engine? Or is it possible for an engine to flood while going 60mph?""

I don't think it's likely that it stalled because it flooded. If the engine's running it's pretty hard to flood it. In the old days you could pull the EGI fuse, remove one spark plug crank it over and listen (I suspect you can still do this). Repeat once at a time for the front and rear rotors, and it's probably best to remove the bottom plug. The pulses should sound even. If not there's a problem. You can also take a traditional piston engine compression tester, unscrew the check valve needle and watch as you crank the engine. The needle should show three pulses of the same size.

The coils might have finally give up, or enough of them that it did not run. Trying to start it, with out enough coil to do the job, would flood it.

If you tried to continuously crank the engine forever when it won't start then this would cause it to flood.

Oringial coils at 90 something k miles? I think you deserves an engine failure

You realize the 8 year/100,000 mile warranty does not start on the date of build. But on the date of first purchase by a consumer.

Right, I suspect I flooded it after the fact trying to restart the car.

After a lot of searching on the forum,,, I am confused.

Can coil and plug failure stall the car while driving? It seems the more common cause has been engine failure, when folks have lost all power on the highway.

Thoughts?

edit** that wasn't build date, I mis typed the dealership quoted me that date as the 1st purchase date

nycgps: sorry

Your heart can fail or stop beating at anytime, the healthier ur heart is, the lesser the chance.

Get it?

please no analogies, im in a crummy spot with a vehicle I do not often drive. Thus it has suffered neglect. The dealership has been nothing but difficult and lacking in knowledge... Mazda with another fine showing....

The health of the car seemed perfect, no CEL lights until the suspected misfire. I have seen members on the forum go this long on the original ignition system.

My main concern is just getting into an endless 'lets try this' game with the dealership. As they don't seem to have a clue.

More time now..

Whatever shape the coils, plugs, wires or even fuel system is in, the computer will try to adjust things to make it all work. Right up until it cannot adjust any more, or one of the weak parts just dies. Everything goes to hell after that. I do not know what killed you heading down the road. Could have been a coil finally failed, or a plug fouled, or a little dirt in the fuel. Whatever it was, the computer could not make it run any more, so it stopped. Then it could not start.

Another option, after re-reading initial post, is that whatever happened happened over 2 days and the end result was that the engine finally got into a state where it could not run. Or, you picked up some water with the fuel fill up, that stopped you (this fuel system does not recirculate, so water in the fuel rail will stay in the fuel rail until all gone). Car runs like crap on water.

If it were my car, I would probably cringe and have the dealer do the coils. Once good spark is flowing, it may start, even with bad plugs. If that gets it running, take her home and buy her new plugs, wires, and oil. A can of dry gas may not be a bad idea either.

If the dealership is close to the house, tow it home and do the work there instead.

That help?

It lasted that long? Is it a BHR...lol

I can not answer your question as to why it failed while driving, but now that you have it at the shop, tell them to do a compression test, do not ask. If it passes the compression test, then you can begin doing the recommended work. What is the point of buying parts for an engine that may be dead? If it fails then you can weigh your options.

Yes. When my coils blew, I first got a flashing CEL, then loss of power, then stalling. I was able to restart it, though, and keep it running by giving it more throttle.

I agree with everyone else about needing to do a compression test before investing in parts. Back in the days of tuneups, it was standard practice to start off with a compression test to see if there was anything worth tuning.

Ken

No people here need to pull their heads out of their butts and learn that while the OE coils can fail there is no set mileage like the 30k miles BS that keeps getting spread around and there is also an easy way to test them under load effectively rather than just swapping them out blindly. The ignition coil test procedure in the factory manual is useless though. One bad or failing trailing coil will cause starting, idling, and stalling issues. One bad or failing leading coil can cause mileage and power loss issues. A $15 HEI spark load tester tool to properly diagnose this per my DIY makes more sense than spending hundreds of dollars guessing.

What you have happened just happened to me. Diognostics at dealer read bad coils and clogged cat converter. Compression is fine. Clogged cat is common when coils fail. They quoted me a large amount of $ to replace all that and sprk plugs too. So, I said no, brought it home and installed 4 new coils I had ordered from advance auto for $125 the week before, 3 were still on backorder and I had just picked them up. The car fired up fine runs better than ever, no misfires, no engine light. accelerated hard to redline. Has not run this good for awhile. I'm going to replace the plugs and have an emision test done. I'll bet the cat is still good cause it runs so good. So feel good. You probably only need to replace the coils which is easy to do and takes less than an hour. You will Save yourself $600 if you do it yourself,and avoid the dealer.

If he cared about the car, he should did his research way before hand, NOT after problem arises.

I did research for all my car, including my sonata hybrid which is only 3 months old, it shouldnt have problems right? But it actually had a known issue which might kill the whole hybrid system. And i went to update and ask the dealer to order parts for me before the dealership people even heard of the problem.

People like op should have got a civic, as much as we laugh about vtec y0, but they are really much more reliable than rx8

And i guess u forgot the original coils came with rx8 was completely garbage, i was shocked it actually last that long but i guess people like op never paid attention to the car anyway and yea it finally died and took some expensive parts to go with it.

Nycgps why so much anger? Get a grip.

Your right, I don't really care that much about the car. It's 8 years old . It has almost 100000 mile on it. Heck I paid like 8 grand for it .

It isn't my daily drive . It isn't even my 2nd car. Just something to run around a little . Maybe 2 years ago when I bought it I cared . But one great life situation later it just isn't anywhere near my list of "care"



Thank you to all who have offered help an advice . Very kind of you to take time out to help me .

I think coils probably do last longer than 30 or 40k, but a majority of people do seem to end up changing them. I don't think its really an argument about "bad coils" but rather the coils slowly degrading and providing less spark/performance/whatever over the years of use. I know I recently replaced my coils + wires and there was a noticeable difference in how the car performed and I was at 35k miles. Maybe I am wrong and the coils never degrade and work 100% until suddenly they completely break, but what I said above makes more sense to me.

You might be replacing a few bad or going out coils and a few working ones at a time, but is it not better to have all the coils at the same state(100% new, or a year old or whatever)? Spending ~$120(or whatever cheap coils are for a set) even every 2 years is not breaking the bank to try and keep your car 100% healthy in that aspect.

NewbZILLLA spending 8k on a car in my eyes is still a pretty big investment. Maybe it is not to some people but buying my rx8 at 17k was a HUGE deal for me, if I had bought an older one for 8k it would have still been a big deal.

Sorry about the underline text, this thing refuses to let me turn it off since I copied your name and pasted it here.

Agreed. And yes, I know I'm one of the ones commonly stating "change 'em at 30k".

Individual coils likely have a lifespan quite a bit longer than 30,000 miles, but the odds of you ending up with at least 1 coil of the 4 that is only around 30k are apparently pretty damn good. One thing I've noticed over the years though, is getting someone to replace parts is far easier than getting them to buy a tool to do self diagnostics. Is it something I agree with? Hell no. How about diagnosing the 1, replacing the 1...then 10,000 miles later "having to go back through it", etc...

Anyone who is mentally equipped to be able to reason out that they might only have 1 to 3 coils failing instead of all 4, search for the information on how to figure out which, and get the tool needed to do so, isn't the one posting "my 8 is at 90k on original ignition and I can't figure out why it keeps having trouble." Or the one posting: "Mazda just billed me $900 for coils and plug wires and my car runs great now!"

Clearly these people do not have the mental capacity to figure this out. One doesn't want to do anything, especially work, the other would rather just shovel money at it.

Replacing all 4 every 30k gives the lazy guy a quick option, and the money guy a cheaper option.


Smart guys have more options.

To end this story :

Picked the car up..... Seems to be rubbing fine, all ignition parts were replaced

BUT

Turns out the fuel on my tank was 90 percent water.... Filled her up with about 13.5 gallons right before it stalled.

So was the ignition system really ruined beforehand ? Probably not , but I did do a number on it trying to start it after the fact .

Thanks to all who helped.
I have a sample of the gas , the tech report , and the dealership willing to speak on my behalf . So possibly I'll be able to get some money from the station if I can find the time .

Thanks !