Seal Failure
 

This is my first post. I visited this site because of a conversation today with an european motors mechanic. He stated that he had owned 2 rotaries and would not own another. He has rarely seen a rotary last past 80K miles. The root cause has been failure of the apex seal. I have been very excited and pleased with my RX8, until now have had no regrets... Any experiences to share?

Go to rx7club and ask. They have more miles on their cars than we do...

1st, welcome. 2nd, somebody is FOS. I've owned 5 RX-7s and an RX-8. The 7's all had 125-150K and were running fine when I sold them. Properly cared for n/a 7's would run over 200K no problem. Like any new product, the 8's are too new to tell their longevity. Maybe your mechanic should stick to European cars if he can't get a rotary to go past 80K.

there are a ton of misconceptions about the rotary engine. The early ones did have issues, until Mazda got ahold of it.

the 1st and 2nd gen RX7's were fairly bullet proof provided you cared for the engine. the 3rd gens earned the rotary a bad rap when in reality it was the heat from turbos that killed most of the engines, but the PR damage was done.

I for one have no real worries.

I put over 135000 on my 1st gen RX-7 and the engine was running fine when I sold it.

As someone stated, the 3rd gen RX-7s really had a variety of problems but the engine itself wasn't usually the problem.

Don't worry, Mazda will handle the first 50,000 miles anyway.