What is the average life of a reman engine
 

So seeing as most of the rx8's have a reman engine including mine, I was curious to know about the quality of the product that was put in my car. I read a few threads where it says that you COULD have a few new parts and you WILL have at least 1 used part out of the 8 that make the engine. The problem is that they have to be within minimum spec. To me, thats not very reassuring.

I read some people got their remans replaced after 5k, others after 25k, some more than a few times. So lets say I got lucky and I got a decent engine. Would it last for the life of the car seeing as im the type of guy who changes the full ignition system once a year regardless of the miles and takes great care of the car? Drive it like its suppose to, change oil earlier than required etc...

My warranty is expired and I doubt that my new "reman" engine will be covered because I change my oil with 5w30 castrol and it says so on my bills. So far the car runs perfect. Should I be worried for the future? Take a chance and drive it? Or cut my losses and sell it now?

What is the general consensus on the life span of a reman?

Cheers

The short answer is that no one can tell you how long your reman will last. All you can do is get concerned and worried about it, and it won't get you anywhere except stress and heartache. I don't mean to say you should ignore it, but treat your reman the way you treat your factory engine. Nothing changes in how you treat them.

As for how long it will last, it is a study of averages. The reman quality in general seems to be higher than it used to be, but you can still get bad apples and you can get fantastic engines. If you want to know how your reman is fairing, there are 2 main things you can do:

1) Get compression tests. Pural. Take them every 10,000 miles or so until you have an idea for how fast it is wearing. If it's staying steady, gratz! Recommend that you use the same dealer, tech, and tester if at all possible.

2) Take regular oil samples for analysis through Blackstone Labs. They are great at keeping track of wear in your engine. I personally don't think it will tell you much about the apex seals or housing wear, due to those particles not getting back into the oil stream, but still, it helps.


If you are paranoid about an engine failure, and/or can't afford to deal with a failure when it happens, it's probably best that you move on to another car.

its hard to say what the life span of a reman will be, it depends.

with the Rx7's the engines mostly die from dumb things, like broken water hoses, so finding one with a reman that is worn out is rare, it usually dies from external causes, or the car gets crashed/stored/parked

secondly the Rx8 engine is CHEAP. i'm not sure what retail would be on one, but its under $2000. so considering you don't have timing belts and valve adjustments, or any of that other piston crap, having to throw an engine in isn't that bad.

The best answer to your question is it all depends on how well you take care of it...seriously.

Im not paranoid. Im curious. I wouldnt wanna be dropping 5k every other year for an engine. Even if I have the means, it is a poor financial decision. Hopefully I got a good reman and it will last me at least 2 more years on which I plan to own the car.

I guess I will be adding a yearly compression test to the list of regular maintenance. Good idea!

I wouldnt worry. Only because after hearing the story with my car I don't put any difference in confidence between the reman engines and factory engines, but that's just my opinion.

My car's factory engine actually had to be replaced with a reman while it was still on the sales lot.

Then it was replaced with another reman at i think about 40-50k miles i cant remember which was on the fax.

Regardless I think its just a mix of luck of the draw and how you treat your car. So just focus on the one of those that you can control and try to keep your mind at ease.

I would just like to throw in that my reman currently has 75k miles, and still has great compression (all 8s at 250rpms)...All you can really do is take care of it and hope for the best.

100000000000000000000000000

Have you looked into having a local shop build you a new motor or use what they can from your current one? Spending 5k on a reman from the dealer seems kind of high but I don't know your prices out there.

There is this, List of Canadian Rotary Shops - RX7Club.com you can try calling them and seeing how much they would charge you for a good engine. You could even get some extra work done to it at the time if you wanted.

Facts are a stubborn thing.
Most RX-8s have one engine and one engine only: the engine they were built with. Most RX-8 owners have never even heard the phrase "reman engine". And never will.
I know it makes for less dramatic reading, but as they say in Brooklyn, demz de facts.

So reman 13bmsp's come with a 1 year warranty.. If I get a reman, have it street ported, would the tech be able to notice it at all and void the warranty? ^-^

Would they notice? Not during compression testing and removal. They would notice when it arrived at the reman facility, and would probably send word back to the dealer that sent it, who could then issue an invoice to you for the engine and labor, probably at full retail. And if you refuse to pay they could put a mechanics lien on your car until you do pay, and if you don't then they could repo the car.

So no, it's not recommended that you attempt to cheat the system.

It seems to me, with the exception of people who got defective engines from the factory, the people who need remanufactured engines are the people who don't take very good care of their engines to begin with. If you're as fastidious about maintenance as you claim to be (and if you're actually maintaining things that *need* to be maintained), then you should have no problem.

Regarding the concern about modifying the remanufactured engine: if it has a one-year warranty, then why wouldn't you wait until the warranty expires before modifying the engine? You should wait a while anyway, just to make sure you're not wasting money on an engine that might be unreliable to start with.

If you're *seriously* considering whether you should cut your losses and sell the car before more problems appear, then you should do it. All cars are "poor debt"; you will never find a car that gets better with age, and if you're tired of dealing with the problems your current car has, your mental health will be improved by getting a different car.

I think that this is a gross injustice to quite a few people. The rotary has it's flaws, and many of the failure methods are ones that the owners have no real control over.

Would you say the same thing of Toyotas that have more than 500,000 miles on the chassis? "The only people with replacement engines at that mileage are ones that people didn't take care of" Well, no, you wouldn't say that. Over time, metal on metal DOES wear itself out.

Stuff wears out faster on a rotary than on a piston engine. Remember that originally Mazda was only confident that the engine would last 60,000 miles. Hence the period of the Drivetrain warranty. The 100k extension is just for PR.

Very true on waiting >.>
I had figured it might be easier to port it when the motor is out.

I agree in general, though this part of your quote isn't quite true.

One of these (but in poorer condition) was sitting in my neighbor's garage until yesterday, when someone came over to get it running and take it away. Bought it for $1,500.
http://www.dyna.co.za/cars/MG_TD_50_Green.jpg

I'd bet that it's going to gain some value....

consider the early flashes our cars had with low omp settings and such. i think most of the needed remans were early on. mine was replaced at 26k iirc. i bought it at 47k and it now has 77k. my car runs great and put down 190hp on the dyno this past summer. i take care of all the maintance and my car is pretty modded. all in all its a crap shoot

Certainly will be, but you would have to have the dealer get it shipped in, then hand it to you before putting it in? They might notice that part :)

Although I am aware of a dealer out there where 2 techs are pretty die hard RX-7 guys, and they street ported an RX-8 reman before installing it.... No idea on if the warranty was continued or if they even officially reported it, so I'm not saying who or where to avoid getting them in trouble.

so much of this is about how your perspective lets you perceive things. i worked at a Mazda dealership from 2005-2008, and in that time period we replaced 1 Rx8 engine. in that same period we were changing the Mazda 6 V6 engines* at the rate of about 1 a MONTH.

that is about a 30/1 ratio! i will also point out that Mazda has a series of diagnostic steps before they send you the Rx8 engine, with the V6 changing the engine was step 1!

so to ME i think the Renesis is fine, and i think i would rather stick a fork in my eye than pay money for a ford with a v6 in it.

the fact that the Renesis doesn't last 200,000 miles isn't important, i'm not going to drive it that far. secondly i know it will happily run without touching it between services. third the remans are inexpensive, i paid more for my T2 engine in 1999 than the Rx8 motor two months ago, and both are less than half of the Ford V6

but if you didn't sit in my seat in 2005-2008, you'd think the other way. i will grant you now that the average Rx8 is in the 60-80k range most engines are worn out, but most piston engines are too, we just don't care

*somehow, and only ford or bmw could achieve this, the precats come apart and the pieces get into the engine and ruin it.

Interesting j9...

I know other dealers that have replaced so many RX-8 engines that they keep a reman on hand at all times to ensure fast customer turn-around, so there are definite differences based on...something. Regional? general ambient temp? Number of RX-8s within it's area of coverage? etc... not stuff we can put down as facts.

But definitely interesting. I didn't know that about the V6. Did some digging and found plenty that suggests confirmation of what you are saying... (of course, internet stats are what they are)

well i find that the rotaries SEEM to fail on a bell curve by time, and they mostly fail in the 6-8 year time frame, which the Rx8 is in now. the dealership i worked at was doing 6-8 Rx8 engines a month in the last year or so , but like i said 2004-2008, it was 1.

the FD was similar, except we did more of those in the first 3 years, and more of those in the 6-8 year span. we also were doing 6-8 FD engines a month, and the FD is much much rarer than the Rx8. (~15,000 FD's in the US vs ??? Rx8's?)

and internet stats is right! there was an engine mount recall on the 2007 Mazdaspeed 3, that required the dealerships to stop selling the car while we waited for them to design and ship an updated part, do you know how many cars were affected by the defective older engine mount?

one.

it happened to be posted all over the internet so it SEEMED like a really huge problem, but there was one car with the problem. although it does seem like Mazda had some inkling that there might be a problem, because the new mounts were pretty quick to show up. it probably helped that the symptom of the bad mount was the engine falling out of the car....

there does seem to be some kind of climate influence on the Rx8 engine that we just don't see in california

Hoping to bring back some input to this thread.

I'm on the Reman from October 2011, only 40,000km on it because I work overseas 6 months of the year and live in Nova Scotia. Anyways, engine just died on me on the highway a few weeks ago and we were not able to restart it before I left for work on July 17th. Tech is busy, hasn't done a compr test yet but I think its toasty toast. Casually shifted from 6th to 4th around 5200RPM and she bogged down and I coasted to the nearest exist, display lights all lit up. No smoke, no unusual noise from engine other than the bbbbboooogggggggg.

Did the full break in procedure for first 4000k, performed oil changes every 500km during the break in period and every 3000km ever since with 5w20 conventional. Initially premixed but found that the premix was turning into a goo and blocking the intake filter in the fuel pump causing it to fail. So, this reman saw premix for its initial breakin and then possibly another 15000km then I stopped. Had a fuel pressure guage installed and at no point did the fuel pressure drop below 56. My RB cluster for temp and pressure all were normal.

Pretty much got the full monty but a Turbo. RB RENV.2 comp upgrade, stainless header and midpipe, HKS intake and dual exhaust, Stage 2 HD clutch, RB oil kit,original owner, bought her in Oct. 2003. Needless to say, I do my best to take care of her. In nova scotia, every road is like a race track, no cops so its pretty much redline %70 of the time. Never had an issue ever with startup or flooding other than a bad battery once or twice. Never had a sticky valve to my knowledge either.

My mechanic is not convinced yet the engine is blown because of no misfire codes, infact he's persuing an immobilizer/ignition code related diagnosis.

However, this experience has me convinced to buy another engine and send this one for a reman if indeed it fails the comp test if we do it.

So, 24,487 miles before this issue for the record. Car has a total of only +/-78,000 miles.

All this speculation and no compression test.

:icon_no2:

Yeah plenty of failed engines don't misfire (or throw misfire codes anyway because all engines misfire on a regular basis). But this type of thing is about what I expect from 95% of mechanics and why I work on my own cars.