I notice my rx8 gets way better mpg when its fully warmed up, it heats up to 175f and stays there.

I feel my engine takes quite a long time to get to that temperature, for example my drive to work today, its 40f outside and my trip to work is 11 miles, driving 45mph the whole way. I completed 8 of the 11 miles untill my engine finally reached its full operating temp

Is this normal or is it possible my thermostat is stuck open a little during the warmup process? or does it just take a long time because of the small size of the engine?

all my previous cars (V6's) would take less then half the time to get to full operating temp

 

The thermostat on the oil coolers doesn't work very well resulting in the oil being overcooled in cold outside temps. Some block the airflow through them (both sides) in winter to speed warmup.

 

its possible the water thermostat is bad/old/arthritic too.

about a year ago i tossed about 5-6 used thermostats in some water, and i learned a couple things.

1. my brother doesn't like rust in his oatmeal.
2. the opening spec in the FSM is the MINIMUM, a new thermostat will open much further.
3. they all pretty much opened at the right temp, but some were slower than others.
4. aftermarket ones are scary.

 

yeah I think I will change the thermostat when I get the chance seems easy enough.

I just got home from work and I kept my eye on the temp

32f - 104f within 2 minutes after leaving work ( I only let my car warm up for about 25 seconds before driving) then it took quite a while to get from 104f -175f, is that normal? or maybe the sign of a messed up thermostat?

from 104f - 140f it took quite a while longer, from 140f - 175f it took even longer, overall probably took about 8 minutes to fully warm up and I was driving at 45mph the whole time, is that maybe normal for the renesis? just seems very off to me especially since I was driving a steady speed the whole time.

 

Yep, stock rx8's take forever to warm up. I have a real oil thermostat and custom cooler setup and it still takes a bit. I cringe when I watch a YouTube video of people revving the **** out of a cold rotary.

Posted From RX8Club.com Android App

 

Well I usually watch my gauges (Prosport) water temp 200F, and oil temp 180F and that pretty much where they peak with normal driving and moderate temps (55F-70F) when its cold out the oil temp sometimes dips back down to 160-170F.

usually takes 10-15 mins.

 

just did another long trip, this time it took forever to get to 150f and stayed there for another 10 minutes of cruising then finally started to crawl its way up to 175f and stayed there, im pretty sure thats not normal

I'll see if a new thermostat will make any difference when I get the chance to install one

 

last time i had the scanner hooked up mine was in the 190's fairly quick, just idling. i had it plugged in for something else though, so i wasn't really timing the warm up

 

it depends on whether you live on Mercury or Pluto

 

it takes longer to warm up @ summer than winter. I wonder why too ?

*facepalm*

 

Put a new thermostat in last week, didn't make a difference at all. I guess it just don't get to full operating temp in freezing temps