Always check the oil when it is warm, if you have just changed the oil let it run for a few minutes then check it.

and the reason being? (Thanks by the way)

So this is what I don't get. By warm does it mean after the engine gets warmed up, shut the engine down, wait 5 minutes and check it, or check it while the engine is still running?

It feels like every minute passing by after the engine shuts down the oil level changes a little bit. Maybe I am just panaroid.

The reason behind it is because thats what the manual states.

When you get back from a drive turn the engine off wait 5mins then check the level. Keep it right below full.

Thermal expansion.

Oil level changes after you shutdown because every surface of the engine has an oil film on it and all the passages are full. After a few minutes most of this oil returns to the pan. If you run large equipment you will see quite a difference in oil level between when you shut it off and 15 minutes later.

Update: I sprayed out and soak the oil injectors last night, and the check valves are all passing now. So, for the sake of experimentation, I'm only changing the lines. My lines have darkened quite a bit, and I can't tell the difference from the outside if oil is in them or not.

I'll give it a few thousand miles and see if they remain unstuck. If so, that could save a lot of money for other people in the future.

My RX is used only in autox and fun now, so a couple thousand miles may be this fall.

have you ever checked the oil level with the engine running vs after its been shut down for a few minutes?

i haven't tried it on the Rx8, but its a good parlor trick on the older rotaries, as the oil level is the same....

I haven't with this engine, but working with big diesels it's an obvious difference. On most piston engines it's a half quart or so difference.

In this case, wouldn't checking the oil level after it sits for a long time to yield a more consistent result? ie all the oil that should return to the oil pan has returned to the oil pan.

That is what I observed as well. Every minute after the engine shuts down the oil level increases a little. Checking the engine oil in the morning after the car has not been running for so long gives me a more consistent result, but that is not what the manual says.

Keep doing it your way Maxchao,you can't get a better reading any other time.Ask any professional truck driver, machine operator . They always dip the oil before first start up.It's called preventative maintenance.

the RX8 dipstick has a 1.5 qt range so any minor variation is basically irrelevant

just to prove the point, I've raced on it with 1 extra qt over the max mark and down near the min mark without issue

I thought I read it somewhere filling over the max mark is going to have oil sucked into the intake manifold and dirty the valves inside? or am I dreaming again?

I check oil probably every few hundred miles just to make sure the engine is still burning oil, since it is very critical that it does. So at 1qt/1k miles we are talking about maybe 0.5 qt here...which seems to be around where the engine oil level difference is between warm and cold engine.

Also if people don't mind me start another heated discussion...if the OMP is indeed positive displacement pump, then how can the nozzle get clogged...? The oil has to go somewhere no?

Back to original thread, I just rebuilt an 04 with 96k. Internals were in great shape with minimal wear. All 4 oil injectors were clean with working check valves. Only things wrong with the engine were weak side seal springs and the side seal gaps were huge (all greater than 20thou some much wider). I think it was assembled by Mazda on a Monday, no it was not a remain.

Ok it is very interesting because something similar happened to me.

After changing oil I am pretty sure that with hot engine the oil level was exactly at max indication. Since then I was heavily premixing and I found out that the oil level is not going down ! I used to see 100ml oil consumption every 200kms with my driving habits but to my surprise oil level at the dipstick was constant !

I started to suspect clogged OMP injectors/lines but that was not the case after a check that was conducted. To make matters worse , sometimes while measuring the oil I saw oil level increased ! I started measuring the oil level on a dead cold engine at the morning. After that I suspected antifreeze or fuel mixing with my oil but again that was not the case because antifreeze level was constant and the oil appearance was not indicating fuel mixing.

Finally, the oil level started decreasing after 1300kms which is too slow concerning my driving habits.

You can say that there was too much oil at the beginning after the oil change but I guess not because there were times in the past that had overfilled oil pan with oil and never had NO OIL CONSUMPTION and OIL INCREASE LEVEL !!!!

You can even say that I do not know to measure the oil level correctly BUT It would sound strange not knowing to measure oil level after 196.000Km with the same car !

if you drive the car hard, the oil will get diluted with gasoline and oil level will go up.

??? I drive the fuck out of this car and my oil level only drops....

how is this possible ?

This thread is all over the place.

Update: Put new lines on. New gaskets and washers on as well. Buttoned it all up and started it. Watched oil slowly come up all 4 lines from the OMP.

Now, I have an autox 200 miles away 1 way Saturday, so we'll see if this translates into oil consumption. I will still be premixing.

i stopped premix for 2 tanks and instead added 1oz per gallon of Marvel Mystery Oil....

the car seems to prefer this to 2cycle oil.... with a noticible improvement in starting/accelleration/etc..... *(mpg stays at a constant 14mpg... **(damn you right foot!!))

fuel get past the oil control rings into the sump... its pretty well documented, and actually easy to find, pull dipstick and smell it, if it smells like gasoline...

This thread is hilarious.

Obviously the quart of oil your engine is supposed to use in 500 miles is replaced with fuel and oil in those 500 miles. In some cases more fluid goes into the oil pan than what is actually used!!!

HOW???

SCIENCE!!!

Seriously guys? Come on...

?? elves???
their plan..
step 1... add oil at night while owner sleeping..
step 2... ????
step 3... PROFIT!!

Compression leakage past the side seals and oil control rings is very common. Change oil on a low compression engine and you will smell the gasoline in the oil easily. It's not that big a deal, but it is a good reason to change your oil regularly.

Hows the bhr ignition working thinking about
Upgrading mine.

I have my engine oil tested........there is no fuel and no water dilution.........this makes me believe that with heavy premixing some 2 stroke oil is getting resolved into the 4 stroke engine oil as reported in my previous posts; as well as reported by fellow-Rexdrivers and rotary aviation pilots .........

I have seen enough instances of unexplained lack of oil consumption on this forum to think ........................ you are really onto something here .

Agreed, it happens in other platforms too.

I watched my OMP lines fill, watched air bubbles travel down the lines. Yet, crank case oil level remains approx the same.

just removed my omp injectors and threw them into an ultrasonic cleaner as well as cleaned the lines by flushing them out with wd40, going to remove the whole omp unit itself and clean in there while adding the sohn adapter.

but while removing the omp injectors, i found that one of them was not torqued down enough and i could unscrew it with my fingers, didnt need to break it loose which was very scary for me.

hopefully with the sohn i can actually see the oil consumption and have some peace of mind.

thanks for this thread or i may have had a broken rex and an empty bank account. (if this does fix the problem)

Rud, do you happen to know what method of fuel/water dilution testing your lab is doing? Here we have 1 major lab that does a calculation based upon oil shear while many smaller ones actualy test for fuel and water product/byproduct. That will make a difference in validating the accuracy of the tests.

For me Blackstone consistantly shows little or now fuel at <.5%, but they use the calculation method. Polaris and whoever Dyson uses actually tests for fuel and they usually come back around 2-2.5% and I know Im getting plenty hot to burn most that off.

Hi Iluvrevs,
It was not a test from a lab but a simple/indicative selftest as announced in my previous post #741. I believe that the test with an oil drop on a testpaper is probabely doubtful, however I could not find any extreme negative experiences.
http://www.ipmsolutionsbv.nl/docs/mo...st_english.pdf
http://www.ipmsolutionsbv.nl/motoran...ranalyser.html
Here in Europe oiltests from labs are very expensive and very devious; actually only for industrial users and not for consumers.
For me it was sufficient to know whether there was fuel dilution in my 4-stroke oil yes or no.

Firstly, I'm posting here because I can't find a specific enough thread, and am too new to start a new one. But I'm curious that oil lines my have something to do with it.

I'm chasing down a p0300 in my 2009 R3. I've done everything relating to the misfire resolution thread. Symptom wise, it acts like a coolant seal failure. Cold start, it randomly misfires, seemingly burning off whatever has collected in my engine and then settles and it practically unnoticeable after it is a little warm. This has persisted for almost a year now, with no real decline. Problem one is that it really doesn't seem like it's burning coolant. It smells fairly distinctly like oil, but the fact that the CAT has long since failed and was thus gutted, makes the smell test a little harder to decipher, as it would smell more foul anyway. But would you still be able to smell coolant among the other collected nasty that is escaping from my engine?

What is really odd, is that after an oil change and the one time I seafoamed to attempt a fix, I had a grace period of 3-5 days, where there was no issues on start up, until gradually it degraded back into the normal slump of random misfires every cold start. If it were a coolant leak all along, why would and oil change or seafoam affect it at all? What may or may not factor into this is that I have not been using genuine oil filters, which depending on who you ask, makes a difference. Charles at BHR says that ASH8's theory about the pressure differential on non genuine filters causing basically the oil system to by pass the filter all together is wrong (I'm paraphrasing and probably misquoting). But if true could that have clogged my oil lines causing excess back pressure in my lines ultimately causing the injectors to leak into my engine when left for too long?

I'm so F-ing confused. My nearest Mazda Dealership basically said that they didn't have working compression testers so I can't check that until they have new ones. Beyond that, is there anything else I should do other than pressure testing the coolant, oil and or fuel system?

I greatly appreciate any advise and I'm sorry if I'm too noob and haven't posted in the correct spot.

Missed this post. Charles is right, Ash8 is incorrect. You have an S2 which means a totally different oil metering system so this thread does not apply to you. There is a cycle on the S1 RX-8's that injects a little bit of oil into the combustion chamber upon shutdown. I suppose that on an S2 there could be a similar process and that too much oil could be being injected and thus causing your issues until it is burnt off. But this is just a guess and we would need more info to fully address your issue. I suggest starting a thread in the S2 subforum and then we can go from there.

Thank you very much! :icon_tup:

Thread revival
 

Ancient thread revival. Hopefully I didn't break any forum rules by posting here. I have read this thread with interest a couple of times, and now have a 2007 186000 mile s1 engine apart in my garage that was was well maintained by its owner, used GTX 5w-20 as long as he had it, who had the car from about 11000 miles till I picked it up at 186000. From what I have seen so far in this engine, and I will post pictures and start a new thread when I can since I am a noob, and the forum will not allow me to start one yet, the side seals in this daily driver car were not the main source of ultimate failure. The rotor housings showed pronounced wear, but no flaking, and the apex seals bore the brunt of the wear and were the source of the majority of compression loss as far as I can see. There were no signs of overheating in this engine, either localized (the sparkplug area cracks) or overall It also appeared than a chronic lack of top-end (to use a piston term) lubrication afflicts these engines in stock form, even with updated factory flashes. As others have stated elsewhere, the part-throttle low load oil map is inadequate in my opinion, and the whole oil injection system is designed for emissions reduction primarily and owner convenience second- long engine life and well-being were deemed a tertiary concern. However, I think the map at high load high rpm (beyond where normal emissions testing is done) is what "saves" the engine from quicker death in certain circumstances; (a redline a day, etc) not just from carbon blowoff, but also accessing the factory high load oil map regularly keeps a more advantageous level of lubricant in the top end- temporarily and sporadically at least.
( Like the Racing Beat comment on their site about increased HP coming with increased oil introduction, and then slowly going away after returning to stock levels, which has been documented to occur in 2 stroke piston engines as well. Probably occurs from both better sealing and lower friction, which from what I see in my engine, lower friction and less metal-metal contact in the chamber would be a very good thing.)

I am adding to this thread because I found it interesting and largely helpful prior to this teardown. But, the info here shows that the Renesis fails differently in a racing environment than my engine did in long term "normal" street use. This may have been covered before in the forum, but I was unable to find a long-term high mileage original engine teardown post. I thought you guys will find it interesting. Will have pics and a fresh teardown post up as soon as I get all the pictures together.