I'm on my way to Mississippi right now, and my Rx-8 has had low compression for 4 months now. I haven't had money to fix it yet but am going to soon.

Anyway, I'm on a road trip, and when I get off the interstate, my car is very down on power, and at WOT I hear metal rattling and grinding. Please help I'm in the middle of my trip and I don't know what this is. I can still drive it fine, beside from these issues!

 

Gun it to 88mph, if your flux capacitor is working, then you'll be able to go back in time to a point your engine wasn't blown.

and that's the power of love!

 

You might want to turn around and get back home... Taking a car with a known failed engine on a road trip isn't exactly a smart move.

 

Is this the end? My compression has been low, but it has run fine until now. So is this a blown engine for sure?

 

Have it towed home and get a rental car. You're not doing yourself any favors driving it like that.

 

I don't really know that answer. You haven't given us enough information to work with. But yes, metal grinding noises in the engine, in an engine that was already known to be failing, is probably bits of seals chewing everything to bits. A rotary can continuing running long after it's official failure point, but that doesn't eman that it will run forever. Worn seals are still worn seals, and are just getting thinner and thinner faster and faster as combustion gasses eat away at the seal edges in the ever-widening gaps. You have been on borrowed time already.

 

Great scott Marty, take it home

 

Maybe clogged cat?

 

I'd hate to be the one to say it (not really cause I am anyways), but you're being stubborn and ignorant (in my opinion at least).

1) Never take a failing car on a road trip. If you cannot afford a rental car for the trip, then you definitely cannot afford the costs associated with your motor chewing seals partway through your trip.

2) Stop trying to point at other possibilities expecting a miracle when you know whatever is about to happen to your car won't be pretty.

Bottom line is GO HOME. Be prepared for repairs costing more than what your road trip would've been. (Think cost of motor for rebuild as you already admitted its bad. A catalytic if that is also toast. Ignition tune up which you should do either way. As well as other odds and ends that WILL come up amongst all those repairs)

 

where are you now?

 

Ignition is new. I know I shouldn't have taken it, but I managed to make it here. Making it home is the tricky part. I don't really need to hear how much of a mistake it was to bring my car, I realize that, but I'm more focused on what I need to do now than what I should've done earlier. All in all, thanks for the replies.

 

Congratulations on your Darwin Award ....

https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-tro...5k-rpm-252257/

 

so you knew of multiple issues with the car before, you even posted a video of a strange noise a few days ago and think its urgent to ask for help now? Smh

 

Listen: stop trying to tell me that I've made a mistake. I appreciate all of you taking the time to reply, but if you have no way of helping me, then please don't. I came here to get quick answers because I was in the middle of the interstate. If I was at home I wouldn't be as desperate. I love my car more that the average person, so I'm way more concerned about it, than myself making a mistake bringing it here. If I had the money to fix the engine, I would've done it MONTHS ago, believe me. But since it is my daily driver and all I have, I didn't have a choice but wait for myself to scrounge together enough money.

With that said, I'm going to restate the issues I was having now that I'm not stranded in the middle of god-knows-where alabama. Basically, while I was driving on the interstate, I could tell it was a little less powerful, but the real trouble happened when I actually had to accelerate again. I was accelerating in first gear, and it seemed "ok". Second gear, same thing. But in third to fourth to fifth, I had barely any power, the only real way to accelerate was by barely pushing the pedal and letting the revs build up slowly. When I pushed the pedal to the floor, it was terrible. No power, and a metal grinding noise as well as a metallic ratting noise. That would go away if I didn't floor it. But at all RPM's it was still wayyy too sluggish. I tried to listen to where the sound was coming from and it was very hard to tell. If anything I'd say somewhere in the engine bay, which tells me engine, which doesn't surprise me. So now that I've given more details on the issue I hope this will open your minds a little as to what exactly is going on.
Thanks

 

Thank you, you seem to be the only one helping me name this issue, rather than slapping my hand with a ruler.

 

check the oil if you see any metal in it. Without being there its hard to say exactly what it is but it seems like a clutch issue to me. Did the rpms go up on acceleration with barely any momentum? Was the noise there only in gear on accel or was the noise also present when you rev'd the engine in neutral ?

You also have to expect the answers you're getting b/c you said it was urgent but yet you knew of the issues days before

 

thom,

Do you still have a cat installed? From that description, it's possible that your dying engine is just slagging your cat at the moment. The power loss at higher loads fits. Complete loss of compression would tend to have bigger problems at low RPM and feel more fine at higher RPM, regardless of load.

Euro,
Shredded seals will not make it to the oil on a rotary, and there isn't an easy way to "check the oil for metal" on a trip anyway. It would require something like a magnetic drain plug and draining the oil to check. The only metal that could get to the oil from a failure would be a bearing failure, but that doesn't match his symptoms.

 

The issues the day before were WAY less severe. It just had a slight metallic sound, this is completely different, and it would hardly accelerate, whereas before it was completely driveable and nothing compared to this, and I was in the middle of nowhere, which is why I said it was urgent this time.

Anyway, I just checked the oil, and it looks fine, no metal or anything. I even put a magnet against it but nothing. I also banged against the cat and after I hit it it made a sort of vibrating noise, I don't know if that's normal or anything, but I thought I'd add that. Also the clutch is fine, I could shift normally but I haven't tried to rev it up to see if I hear the same sound, but I'm pretty certain it's not the clutch. The RPM's had trouble going up with acceleration

 

See if you can find a local mechanic or muffler shop and try to inspect your cat.
If it's bad you may be able to persuade ($) them to gut it, that might help.

 

If the converter if failing/failed, wouldnt the CEL come on? And also from what i read about these cars, the carpet would be melted with a bad converter, no?

 

I'm assuming since the OP knows he has bad compression then most likely it has had a CEL.
But since he is desperate to try to drive it home I thought it would be worth a shot.
My cat was clogged & didn't melt the carpet, but I parked it when it started running bad until I could put my midpipe on it. I had one bad coil & plug that killed it.
I'm thinking it only gets that hot with more than one bad, or when the cat is extremely clogged, but I couldn't say for sure.
Mine had the whole front half break up & clog the back half, but it only ran bad at high RPM, so it's possible for it to get a lot worse & still run decently for someone who doesn't drive hard.

 

No. When my cat clogged badly enough to cripple my top speed to around 50mph and damage both O2 sensors and my engine, I never got a CEL until I got a misfire right at the end. I've never seen a report of a clogged cat producing a CEL other than a misfire, and usually not even that. My carpet also suffered no harm, likely because I still had my heat shields in good condition. I've only seen reports of carpet melting occasionally, far less frequently than clogged cats.

 

Yes I still have a cat on there. I hit it with a metal rod and after I hit it it made a little bit of a vibration type noise. Don't know if that means anything. But anyway, I'm definitely not driving it home. I'm getting it towed to Kevin at Rotary Resurrection this week to get my engine rebuilt. As far as the cat goes, I called muffler shops around here and none of them can get me in there until next week, which I'll already be gone, as well as my car. First priority is the engine, and if it still had the same symptoms when I get it back I'll assume it's the catalytic converter. All I know right now is my engine DEFINITELY needs a rebuild, so I'm going to go ahead and do that anyway first.

 

Thats very scary to know a faulty converter on these cars dont throw a code.

I see p0420 codes all the time at work for a faulty converters. Of course that code can be due to a faulty rear oxygen sensor but after its checks out good, on to a new converter.

 

They will know if its a bad converter once they take it down as you can see inside of it