my temp gague never reaches the halfway point
 

ive had it for a year now and it never reaches the halfway point. ever. diven 135 in 90 degree heat. ive read from many places that the car is not truely warm until five minutes after it reaches halfway, but id say at best ill get to 45%. anyone else have this problem and should i be worried?

Mine behaves exactly the same way. Further, I've noticed that virtually every photograph of the RX-8 dash showing the temperature gauge of a running 8 shows it at slightly below halfway. Don't worry about it. That is the normal operating temperature.

Agreed it is so normal. Just think - You have a HOT car that keeps it's COOL! :D

I'd only worry if it crept into the 'hot' zone........

Mine doesn't either on any day. As long as it is always hitting the same point and stays there, all is right with the world.

the temp gauge is just another idiot light designed to look like a legit gauge. my defi read 101c, while the factory read the cozy less-than-half.

the 'oil p.' works the same.

.........RD...... :)

I don't know.

The oil light pretty much just tells you that there is oil somewhere nearby the oil pump. Any pressure and that thing is right at its "Normal" reading.

The temp gauge will tell you if the car is running cold or hot. I know this because when it gets down into the single digits, the thing always runs cold kind of wavering between the bottom and somewhere near the middle but never quite there. If the engine were to be hot, then I am pretty sure that it would show me that the car is running hot. That's a functional gauge.

I agree that the scale on the temp gauge has absolutely no correlation to any actual temperature. If it's near the middle and steady then all is normal and right with the world.

The thing with the oil pressure gauge is that no matter what pressure your car is pushing though the system from 5PSI to 45PSI, that thing will read at its normal position in the middle. That's why it really really sucks.

There is a thermostat sensor that regulates the flow of coolant based on temperature. Less coolant on start-up to promote quicker warm up then adjusting to maintain predetermined temperature. That's why all our temp gauges would read the same.

if u still worry about it..!! u can consider about to install some aftermarket temp sensors.

I'm not so sure its that simple. The temperature "gauge" on the FD appeared to the untrained eye to be a "normal" analog-style gauge. The only problem was that it had a huge dead spot around "normal" operating temps. By the time the gauge showed anything above normal it was almost too late to do anything about it. Lots of damaged o-rings (translation: rebuild within six months) resulted from this.

jds

I know the oil pressure gauge is not really legit, but you all say it sits right in the middle for you, while mine is always offset a bit to the right of the middle. am i alone on this?

you are not alone my friend......mine reads the same.......it never reads anything different, no matter how hard i drive.......rd........

my oil pressure gauge always sits a few clicks to the right of centre as well. figure it's normal.

A Theory...
 

I suspect that Mazda engineered the coolant temperatuve gauge to read slightly below "halfway" and the oil pressure to read slightly above "halfway" purposely. This prevents obsessive owners from complaining that their cars are running "hot" unless the car is truly malfunctioning and, likewise, complaining that their oil pressure is "low" unless there is a real problem. In short, the gauges are calibrated to present what a driver would consider to be a "healthy" condition.

This reminds me that I had a Mazda 626 Turbo that I repeatedly complained was running hot in my first few months of ownership. The dealer discounted my concerns until the car was towed in with smoke pouring out from under the hood. Several weeks later I had a new engine courtesy of Mazda and the service manager of the dealership had a new job...or at least he no longer had his old job.

I reckon the temp gauge is another idiot light like the oil pressure gauge.
I just grafted in a water temp sensor for an aftermarket gauge. I know I lost some coolant so I topped it off and went through the rev procedure and I could tell the car was hot by the third cycle as the all the fans were on but the gauge didn't move past the slightly below halfway mark. I haven't got the aftermarket gauge wired up yet so I can't check to see what's happening yet but I reckon it has a wide :eek: dead-band around warm.

I wouldn't worry about the temperature guage staying near the middle. Most new cars are like this. All of my cars from the last few years have guages that stay to the left of center. I drove them in steamy Arizona heat up steep hills with the A/C running full, and none of them overheated. I think newer cars are getting pretty good at disipating heat.

For final verification, exactly how long is long enough before shutting off engine from a Cold Start??
Standard line is 5 minutes, followed by a few seconds of revving up to 3,000 rpms, is adequate for shutting down w/o flooding the plugs...
More detailed reports state the engine should have been running at least 10 minutes all together before you can shut down after a cold start.
Any suggestions???

If anyone wants to dig for proof that it's a real guage, they can dig up the track videos posted by the girl from Italy some months back. Her temp was above halfway as she battled her friend in the S2000.

So, in short...has anyone ever seen the temperature guage go above the normal indication? I have driven many cars and on really hot days (90+) the guage will go up slightly and then the thermostat opens uip and it goes back to normal. I have never seen this on the 8.

Its a dummy gauge.

My Oil Gauge almost always stays hmm around a little bit more than 1/2 way.

I consider that gauge to be "useless", I have Blitz's monitor now. but I think Im going to get a Defi Gauge soon.

i watched mine climb rapidly to the top and then slowly creep back down when i overheated on the dyno.

So I did the requisite search and found this thread (old though it may be).

I had my engine replaced recently at 46,000 miles due to low compression. Since the replacement my engine temperature gauge doesn't behave the way it used to.

1) The gauge never reaches half-way even when fully warmed up. It gets to about 3/8 or slightly higher. It always used to reach the half-way point.

2) It takes forever to get fully warmed up. I can drive 35-45 mph in stop and go traffic for 5-7 miles and the gauge will only be at the 1/3 point.

My first guess was that Mazda service left out the thermostat during the engine replacement. I took it back and they confirmed that there was one there and replaced it with a new one. Supposedly the new engine came with a new thermostat. The replacement thermostat didn't make any difference at all.

Any ideas?

My mechanic used to test my engine temp with a laser thermometer to see if the engine is reaching operating temperature. I would see if you could get somebody to do that. If the engine temp is normal then I would think that the sender got damaged in the switch over. If it is the engine, then I really can't say.

Does your heater work normally? If the engine were really running that cold, the heater would be very cold too.

Just a place to start.

It would probably be best to troubleshoot after you get accurate data. If you have a laptop or android phone (using the Torque app) you can pick up an OBD2 bluetooth dongle (they also have usb based ones) on eBay. That way you can see what your coolant temps really are rather than relying on the position of the stock dummy gauge.