Flooding (the water kind!)
 

I know I'm not the first to mention this, but be careful driving through puddles! One of the members here previously said he had to have his engine replaced as a result of sucking up some of the contents of a puddle.

In my case, (keeping that situation in mind) today I came to a stop sign with a reasonably large puddle in front of it. It certainly didn't look like it should be any problem, but I slowly drove through the puddle and stopped at the sign. (I don't know how deep it was; I didn't get out to measure it!) but when I started to move away from the stop, the engine stumbled once.

Paranoid individual that I am, I had to wonder if the engine actually sucked any water. (it seemed to run fine after the stumble)

When I got home, I took a look at where the air intake snorkels are, I knew they were low, but man! About a foot from the ground for the main one? What the hell! Wouldn't a cool area in a more protected and higher cavity have worked about as well to get the air supply from?

i'm glad to finally stumble across a thread that meantions this problem. i've tried researching this problem through every search engine on the web i could find. i'm not rotary expert but i think an aftermarket intake could solve that problem from happening. just look in some other threads for pics. otherwise...hope you're enjoying the car...it's a beauty!:)

Good info, where is the intake, post pics if you can!

Re: Flooding (the water kind!)
 

Man - your cars must be entirely different to ours! But I know they are not :)

The air intakes are in behind the front bumper at about headlight level. I think you might be mistaken for the snorkels that hang down in the airstream and feed cool air to the "computer room"

Cheers,
Hymee.

Hymee: I was typing up the following just as you caught my stupid mistake!:

Ummm, ahhh...oops! I thought I'd better check in this morning after doing more research, as my analysis above is totally wrong, and there has been enough misinformation written about the RX8 already. I don't want to worry anyone else unnecessarily!

I was thinking, the snorkels I mentioned above couldn't possibly have enough air flow to feed the engine. (maybe a moped engine!) So, today I removed the plastic panel just under the front edge or the hood, (6 clips) and found the engine does pull its air from a cool dead air space in a cavity covered by that panel. A large plenum running to the right side of the car supplies most of the air, and in the high-power engine, an opening near the front of the air box is uncovered (via actuator) that allows more air to rush in above 5500 RPM. (I know this has all been discussed, but I'd forgotten where the physical components of this system are located) It looks like it would be extremely difficult, short of fording a 14" deep river at a decent speed, for water to get sucked into the air intake.

The snorkels I was referring to (visible underneath the grille and toward the right of the car) supply cooling air to the electronic control unit for the engine and other systems, which is located in a plastic housing to the right of the battery. (I don't have access to good photos, but the dealer promotional CD somebody posted in the media section long ago explains this all very well)

Sorry I took up all this space for this little fiasco. I still don't know why my engine stumbled though.

No worries mate.

This is a gr-8 place for learning!

Cheers,
Hymee.

You made it stumble using your awesome mind powers... woooooo ;)