My 8 definitely does not sound like a bridgeported rotary! Overall I consider that to be a good thing, but it would be cool if you could do that "on command" at stop lights. Well...maybe it wouldn't... :D

Btw, I haven't taken off the shifter knob, but on the FD the knob was actually pretty heavy, I think in order to reduce vibrations. Judging by the vibration of the knob in the RX-8, I'm betting this one isn't so heavy. I always thought it was ironic for Mazda to brag about the weight savings in the drilled aluminum pedals, when they added a lot more weight than that in the shift knob for no really good reason.

jds

When does your car rpm hit 600? I've yet to see mine go below 900.

Yep Buckeye, your description of "lope" is pretty much what I was describing.

What you say makes sense, but I also only partially buy the "good NVH isolation" argument, as I can hear the lope as much as anything. No amount of NVH work is going to solve that. I guess what I'm wondering about is why there is no discernable pattern to the lope. In the case of V8 engines (without a radical cam), there is a definite thrum-thrum-thrum. V6's have the same thing to some degree but they come at greater frequency, so they seem to idle smoother. In fact, I've had V6 powered cars that idle so smoothly that you cannot tell they are running without revving it. Even 4 bangers seem to idle with some definite pattern to it. But not the renesis-rotary. I've had 2 RX-7s over the years, and have never noticed this to the same extent that I do in my '8.

I have noticed that if I give it just a tiny bit of gas at idle, enough to raise the RPMs up to 1000-1200, the lope pretty much goes away. So I wonder, "how much more fuel would I burn if my car idled at this RPM?"

It's no big deal, I don't think anything is wrong with the car or anything, it's just something I wonder about when idling at a stoplight.

I have taken mine off, and it is definitely heavy. Feels like it's filled with lead shot or something. FYI.

checked my shift vibration the whole ride home from work . . . at stops and lights and after pulling in the garage and it still purrs smooth and even. Of course if "loping" is defined as any vibration that can be felt when ones hand in on the shift then it lopes and the whole car lopes and I lope when driving . . . but I still would respond that I don't lope . . . smooth and steady idle. Any vibration is minor and even and I can't imagine any car that has NO vibration in the stick. (of course assuming the engine is on). I have drove a five speed Rx7 for 16 years before the Rx8 and also had two other manual tranmission vehicles and none of them ran or idled as smooth as the 8.

My car lopes at idle, I think it's a partial misfire every once in a while, it's almost like the combustion process is not 100% constant at idle. I'm not talking about a huge misfire, just enough to "slow" the crankshaft rotation for a split second. I feel there is some additional small amplitude vibration while at idle due to the engine mount tuning, but the "lope" causes an inconstant low frequency "shake" or higher amplitude side to side shift lever movement.

While I agree with RX8_Buckeye on the engine mounts and the NVH issue, if it was purely engine shaking forces and the vibration tuning of the mount system, the shift lever vibration would be consistent and cyclical all the time for a given RPM. This would be true if the vibration was torsional (as RX8_Buckeye describes) or transnational (shaking as in a piston changing direction). This is assuming that the combustion process was consistent and uniform each time the rotor fires.

From my experience with piston engines, if the EGR (Exhaust Gas Recreation) leaks at idle, you always end up with a loping inconsistent idle. The normal EGR operation on piston engine is to have the system closed off most of the time and once fully warm and at a low engine load then the system allows a small amount of burnt exhaust back into the intake manifold via a valve. This reduce fuel consumption on the highway by "diluting" some of the intake charge. Less "good" air in the engine reduces the amount of fuel needed. Less fuel = less emissions. Works well at moderate RPM, not so good for smooth idling. It's kind of like the "race" cam beachdog talked about where the intake and exhaust timing is causing some "mixing" of the two cycles due to valve timing overlap.

According to Mazda's marketing literature, the Renesis has built a built in "EGR system" by virtue of the side exhaust ports. Some small amount of left over combustion gas is carried from the tip of the rotor into the intake charge of the next cycle. The thing with this EGR layout is that it is "on" all the time even at idle, even when cold.

So in my opinion, the shift lever vibration the you can feel and see is a combination of some small amount of engine vibration / engine mount tuning and some inconsistent firing due to the side port design.

part of the problem is idling at 900 rpms means the rotors are only going at 300rpms. This means low energy storage when combined with a low inertia engine, and add the lean conditions at idle and it makes the engine have to work harder to keep spinning and overcome compression.

also the 300 rpm rotor speed is putting out frequencies very close to the low lying resonance frequencies that all engines have. This is why every car on the market has some shaking involved during start ups and shutdowns of the engine because you have to go through the resonance frequencies - only in those examples you get through the critical frequencies quickly instead of sitting right at them.

I like the low-inertial-mass theory. Makes sense that that would make any momentary bumps more noticeable. Mine feels like a missed or partial combustion that happens every couple of seconds or so. Not big misses - fairly subtle. purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr(bump)purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrrr(bump)purrrrrrrrrr(bump)purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrrrrrr

The engine by itself does not have natural frequencies anywhere close to 300 rpm (5 Hz). The "low lying resonance frequencies" that you refer to are the natural frequencies of the spring-mass system that is created when the engine is mounted to the vehicle. Engineers carefully design the mounts so that these natural frequencies are not aligned with the excitation frequencies of the engine at idle or other natural frequencies of the vehicle--such as suspension modes and body modes. As you stated, there is no way to avoid exciting these resonances during engine start up or shut down. However, it is highly unlikely that the Mazda engineers would design a mounting system that has a natural frequency aligned with rotor speed at idle if it could be avoided. Maybe, however, it is difficult to manufacture a mount with such a low stiffness that meets durability requirements.

So I guess we've decided there isn't anything that can be done about this?

if it's not broke..

My AT lopes at idle. As somebody else mentioned, it almost feels like an occasional misfire.

Yeah, there really isn't a "solution" because there really isn't a problem.
Its just a feature!:p

I found it odd myself when i got my 8. My first gen (83 GSL Limited) was so smooth and quiet at idle I would often think i had stalled it when sitting at a light. I expected the renesis to be as smooth but it is not. It's as smooth everywhere else. Just not idle

Nothing like being on a date and cranking the starter on an already running car.

You guys spend far too much time idling and not driving ;)

Mine behaves just like Nubo's (though I think his RX-8 is bee powered!). I put it down to an intermittent misfire. It's worse in protracted stop go traffic and was definitely worse prior to PCM rev "L" and "M" when it would foul the plugs so badly it was prone to stall.

I'd be very interested if anyone has an RX-8 that doesn't have the Nubo behavior. I'd also like to know how your cars with lightened flywheels behave. My guess is that the effect would be exaggerated.

Listen to the injectors. They cycle. In a perfect world, an idling engine's injectors would be operating in a constant rythm. As Mazdamaniac stated, the poor idle is a result of the design. The injectors can handle a lot more fuel than we are using, even at full load full throttle we see only around 30-40% duty cycle. What this means is one injector pulse will be too much fuel for idle, so the PCM shuts them off, then uses them, then shuts them off... etc. We saw the same thing with the 3rd gen RX-7 when owners replaced the injectors with much larger units (to handle higher boost and larger turbos). Their solution was to bump the idle up.

We've also seen the different flashes affect the idle. The current one (M) sometimes idles rough, other times smooth. We haven't been able to correlate it to anything yet.

MY old Rx7 did it and the new 8 does as well.. its just the way it is.. like algabra...

I don't spend time idling by choice. Bumper to bumper traffic makes for a lot of idle.

I'm not complaining either. As long as it doesn't idle itself into a stall, I don't care how rough it runs.

I have the same simptoms but I have noticed that reving to 1000 Rpms gets rid of 90% of the bad idle issue. I would love to see Mazda addressing this issue on their next PCM upgrade. I do not know if this will ever happen due to emmissions but it is a wish.

Hi guys, I notice that no-one from Oz has responded to this thread and it's probably 'cos we have not experienced this problem down under. All our cars are hi power, and we have a different flash on our PCM's.....My 8 came from the factory with the "F" flash in Jan04, the "G" flash has just been released. The guy's who have had the reflash are reporting a slightly smoother idle and better economy, these guy's have reflashed their 2003 models which had "E" from the factory.

Just another theory to throw into the mix.....

Regards Gomez.

Actually it just started doing that about two weeks ago. When it drops that low it really sounds like it is going to stall but it always pulls out of it. There doesn't seem to be a definable pattern. I'm just guessing that it is initiated by misfires happening in too quick succession.

I'm keeping a log until I can get to the dealer. I don't want them to say "no non-conformance". Clearly this is a new behavior wich didn't exist previously, so, it is a non-conformance.

My 8 definitely idles differently since the "M" flash. I have an August build and went from the stock flash right to the "M". Upon starting the car I get exactly 2 misfires and then it settles down, that was there before and after the "M". Before the "M" I had a rough idle which only disappeared after some real hard high speed driving. Also the car loped sort of like:
chirp - chirp - chirp - lope - chirp - chirp - chirp - lope
Now after the "M" flash it is more like:
chirp - chirp - chirp - chirp - chirp - Loooooope - chirp - chirp - chirp - chirp - chirp - Loooooope

Again, thanks Omicron for the word "lope" or this post would not have been possible

Which fuel injectors fire at idle speed? If the injectors were smaller, would that fix the idle issue? I understand the need for larger one's if your going FI, but it would seem that smaller injectors (for the ones that control idle) would allow for better precision fuel management.

Now that this thread's already been dug out of the grave....

In this whole discussion nobody mentioned that the plugs fire in reverse order (trailing/leading) at idle, as I've read somewhere on here. That's probably a contributing factor as well.

Also, I'd describe it as more of a 'miss' than a 'lope'. A 'lope' is what a Harley sounds like, or a Continental IO-550 on a Beechcraft, at idle. :D

Well, it depends on what weight you define heavy as. The stock shift knob is really quite heavy, at least in my (subjective) opinion. I have an all-aluminum Voodoo shift knob, and it probably weighs about 1/4 as much as the OEM knob. I haven't put either on a scale -- again, just speaking subjectively here -- but if I had to guess, I'd say that the OEM knob weighs in around 2 pounds.

Bill