The car does NOT like the cold.
I have a feeling the battery is not quite up to the task - 5w20 and all.
Got it started after about 10seconds worth of SLOW cranking.
RPM's shot up to 4K, then went back down to about 1500 or so.
What a STINK! Just like the 2 stroke snowmobile I was playing with earlier.
Plenty of black smoke that eventually dissapaited.
Warmed the thing up for a couple minutes - drove off.

No power. Seat warmers worked though!
Throttle DID not function - CEL on. Would not go past 2K rpm

Humm... pop the hood - remove the cover - get GF to prod the throttle - works!
Threaten the engine with abuse - and she'll give in.

Is it possible the drive by wire is not equipped for cold temperatures?

Now the CEL doesn't turn off.

Fear is the car has to visit SATAN to check the problem.

 

Seems these cars hate the cold; had a similar experience but no CEL. I let it warm till the revs dropped below 1500rpm, took about 5-8 min of warm up in -20 deg C weather and felt very sluggish. Did not fully warm up on my way home from work (20 min of driving at 70-90km/hr). Previous experience with injected cars dating back to 1974; I find they require the use of gas line anti freeze or Sunoco 94 (contains 10% ethanol in Canada) in winter to prevent any icing of injectors and sensors in the intake track on cold days.

 

Sounds like you were knocking. That's probably why the throttle wouldn't go past 2k RPM. If the car runs too lean in the cold before it's warmed up, you'll knock for sure. Not being able to go above 2k RPM is the knock sensor trying to keep you from killing the engine. Did you hear any loud bangs or anything of the sort? If the car detonates out the exhaust ports it "should" be okay. But if you detonated out the intake ports, you may have caused some damage causing the CEL to be on. Would also explain the power loss.

 

I think -26c converts to about -15f?

Wind chill @ 50mph is -52f

I wonder if the coolant flow to the TB ever really got warm?

 

God am I ever glad I live in the south!!!!!!
I froze my gonads off just thinking about -52 degrees!!!!

 

Lol.. 50mph winds.. shouldn't even be outside in those winds, let alone drive regardless of the temp

 

I think the wind effect would apply when you drive 70-90km/hr

How do you engineer ANY vehicle to perform in this extreme environment?

 

Easy.. You put in the owners manual to keep it parked in the garage

 

MAchines dont feel wind chill guys...only wet bodies like us.
Still....when your nose hairs crackle...its time to stay inside with a cup of hot cocoa...screw driving.

 

Actually, any heat producing object will be affected by wind chill including engines, radiators, etc. The air moving past the object (the wind) will increase the removal of heat (the chilling) so that the object "feels" like the air is colder. As long as the object's temperature is above the ambient air temperature, it will experience the wind chill effect. Also, there is not much additional wind chill effect above about 40 mph.

But I agree with your observations that -50F is too F'ing cold for driving.

 

here is my experience with cold...the same temps if not colder then this guy's car experienced for a week...I did not drive it, drove the beater to be safe, I turn the car on and accidently shut it off with in 5 secs...woops
instaflood, problem was the cold made the battery weak, and now I'm cranking like they said

so I do the flood procedure, unfortunately I did not get the updated letter so I was doing it wrong, call Mazda roadside, guy shows up, friend used to have an RX-7 1st gen...so this guy was a pro! after 20 minutes he started it up while jump starter kit kept the battery strong...

then I let it warm up and drove it around for 1/2 hour, rev limiting kick in and gas cut out around 7000 10 minutes into drive (I let it warm up for 20 minutes in idle then drove 10 and cut) I expected this as the I've read how the ECU limits you if the car isn't warm or even more so it will cut out if your battery's voltage is low (this was my case)

don't worry...just make sure in those extreme temperature to start up the car every other day...let it warm up, then rev to 4k and turn off car as a safety measure

oh did I mentioned the heater in the garage died while the 8 was huddling inside while it was -15F out

 

Bad Gas?
I wonder if it is a coincidence that I filled up with SHELL gas - 91 octane before this happened?
Didn't they have a sludge problem up here in Canada with GM vehicles a while back?
As for Gas line freezing? Never had any issues with any of my other cars.
My CEL is still on - will have to get it checked out.

I did let the car idle for a couple minutes before leaving - something I have NEVER done with any piston engine - fuel injected, or carbureted. Did I mention all of the black smoke – just like the 2 stroke snowmobile?

I find it difficult to believe that they would release a renesis engine to climates like Canada, Scandinavia, etc. if there were problems with damage. What do the guys in really cold places do?

They used to use rotaries in snowmobiles – and they still have them in some planes. So temperature can’t be too much of a problem.

The 8 takes a long time to warm up in this cold weather - I noticed -10C or below takes a long time – about 10-15 minutes - contrasting this to my Talon 2L turbo that is warm within a couple blocks – less than 5 minutes - and stays that way.

As for wind chill?? Doesn’t matter. Sure there is a thermodynamic affect of airflow over a surface to get rid of heat due to static air insulating a surface, but wind does NOT cool below ambient. Wind chill is merely a physiological “FEELS LIKE” temperature – similar to “HUMIDEX”.

Knocking? Possible – didn’t notice anything unusual though. Just though I’d share my experience.

I also get the occasional coolant smell as well. I’ll check the levels.

 

Well, the black smoke you saw come out of your exhaust could be some unburnt fuel that made it's way into your exhaust system. I wouldn't worry about that too much unless it's a constant thing.

 

Blue...you have attached the "wind chill" label to the convective cooling process.
Wind chill is the evaporative cooling effect from water laden bodies.
Your science is spot-on for the convective cooling explanation.
Exposed skin has two cooling modes, convective and evaporative.
Convective is a linear with respect to wind speed, evaporative is logarithmic up to the average molecule velocity for the partial pressure of water at that temperature. All in fun eh mate? :D

All that geekspeak to say its F**king cold out there!!!!!!

 

I thought wind chill only applied as a measure of wind on exposed skin. Don't think it applies to equipment or machinery.

 

I know that my RX-8 will cut at 6000 RPM when it is cold out and has run a short period of time. I assume this is for oil flow, but who knows?

One thing I did learn last year is that if you don't keep your car in the highest possible gear in extremely cold weather, it will loose engine heat. I can see the tempurature guage drop when you 6-3 downshift to use engine braking... definitely keep the crusing RPM as low as possible.

 

Your engine cutting at 6k RPM is the knock sensor keeping you from pinging. That has happend to me at exactly 6krpm until the engine was fully warmed up.

 

I've had no problem starting in < -20C weather, many times. Sorry to hear about your dilemna!

 

I find that it is always at 6K that this happens (when freezing outside). If it was the knock sensor, then I would expect that it would be at varying RPM depending upon what fuel I used. Are you sure it's not something else?

 

Yup, I am 99% sure. At the time I had my CZ turned on which made the air/fuel more lean. That's when I knocked at 6krpm. I turn the CZ off and no more hesitation to go past 6krpm. To make sure the CZ was fine, I turned it back on after the engine was warm, no more hesitation.

You must realize that when the engien is warming up, there are no fluids being circulated from the radiator to the engine, so there will be very hot pockets of fluid until all of it warms enough to open the valve to the radiatior, then you get normal cooling. That's why engines are more prone to knocking during cold starts.. someone correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Here in Scandinavia we use motor heaters cause it can be pretty cold sometimes, here's the one for RX-8:
http://www.defa.com/doc/800/2830.pdf

or visit http://www.defa.com/. Don't no the names of other manufacturers, but I'm sure they exist (have been living here in Sweden just over a year :-)


Cheers, Erwin