OK, I just wanted a quick reality check here and get an opinion of what the issue might be before randomly pulling and prodding at things.

2005 RX-8, ~47K miles

First off, these issues started roughly after I had my last oil change so I'm not positive if this is a coincidence or the yo-yos did something to the car when I last had it in.

The past couple of weeks I've noticed that when I am sitting at a traffic light idling, the car will almost stall then catch itself and go back on its merry way idling. I could be out driving around for a couple of hours and it will do this maybe once or twice. It has never done this before. It has always idled smoothly.

Also, yesterday when I was gunning it down the street, at somewhere between 6500 and 8000 RPM, it threw a blinking CEL. Only one time. Hasn't done that since, however, also since then it has given me a low coolant light at high RPM once. I checked the coolant level and if anything, it looks over-filled.

I did some research on the forum and it seems like the coolant light might just be a bad sensor. As far as the stumbling at idle and flashing CEL, it seems like it might be that I need new plugs/wires/coils.. but would they fail at 8k miles? That seems a bit crazy to me.

Anyhow, since it threw the CEL, I haven't been driving it because if the stumbling and CEL are all caused by misfire I dont want to make things worse. I've started it up a couple of times since then, however, and let it run.. it's idle'd fine and when I've revved it out, I've not had any CELs or odd sounds. The engine sounds pretty strong to me.

I'm just being cautious because if this is the start of a bigger problem, I'd like to catch it at its infancy.. hopefully it'll be cheaper to fix that way.

Any opinions? Would be welcome. Thanks!

 

I get a stumbling idle every now and then too but it has never stalled on me.

Did you replace plugs coils and wires all at the same time 8k miles ago? The flashing cel should be a misfire but you can go to autozone and get the code pulled to find out.

 

If im not mistaken, a flashing check engine light could be either a bad connection with the ignition or a misfire.

However, it is definitely possible for OEM coils to have issues even at 8k. They are not that great.

 

Thanks for your replies!

@xexok- yes, all replaced at the same time. Only reason I'm concerned is because it didn't start happening until 2 weeks ago. Corresponding to an oil change. Thinking that may just be a coincidence though. Will pop by Autozone.

@Jek- Really? Wow. If that's the issue (bad coils) will do a forum search for better ones and replace them myself. Thanks!

 

The same thing happened to me. Took the car for an oil change and it ran like crap. Check your spark plug wires. They unplugged one of mine and didn't put it back on properly. The car started spitting out codes. Mostly 2nd rotor misfire.

 

Why did they mess with your spark plug wires when they did an oil change only? You don't have to mess or move the spark plug wires when you do an oil change, just curious.