Engine Number Three
 

Okay so I took my car in for a stalling issue and they are waiting for warranty approval but basically they told me my coils are shot (which were replaced by the dealer less than a year ago along with the wires and plugs) and that I will need a new engine.

This will be my third engine in 95k. I would just like to say that this second motor got religious 10W30 Castrol GTX oil changes every 3,000 miles and got redlined everyday. My first motor only lasted 22k and only saw 10W30 Mobile 1 with oil changes every 3k. I'm glad I'm getting a new engine at 95k but In my opinion the Renesis is just not up to life in South Texas. I will premix from day one with this third engine but I don't see the point in going with a heavier weight oil. But for shits and giggles I might.

I must state that the second motor running 10W30 Dino did last 50k more than the first engine did but I still think in this day and age a motor with regular oil changes should last at least 150-200k.

wow i cant believe your on your third motor, im a fairly new owner to the RX8 and the more i read these type of post it leads me to believe this is more of an underlying cause...Ive seen many boosted setups runing fine, and many older 13b motors with much work done to them holding strong....

im sorry to hear abou this....can you shed anymore light on maintence of your car

I'm on my 4th engine and presently the car has less than 60K miles. They seem to all die in August.
I've started using 10W40 oil and premixing. It seems like when I premix, I get better gas mileage.

4th engine and the car has less than 60k miles on it? thats 15k a motor sounds like poor driving habits and lack on maintence to me, like i said im very new to the rotary power plant, but the 13b does not seem to be that weak after the research ive done....

Im almost at a loss for words

^You sir are a dumbass.

alnielsen knows what the hell he's doing. He's been around a rotary longer than you probably have been alive.

time to run some synthetic :)

lulz...i know you are against synthetics, but hey...maybe royal purple was right about their claims :)
http://www.royalpurple.com/faqs-rotary.html

Oh ya im a real dumbass huh, the dude went through 4 motors with average life span of 15K....so what i have not been around rotary as long as most of you, i know enough to know that is not right....

You absolutely correct, something isn't right. And, that is why Mazda extended the warranty on the car.
The mode of failure for each of the 3 were different. #1 had a warm start issue. It had a bad apex or corner seal. #2 would sputter when I first started the car in the morning. It was found to have a coolant leak into the second rotor housing. #3 would die at idle after it was warm. It had bad compression on one lobe of one rotor. I suspect a bad side seal. Of course the Mazda dealers don't open the failed engines to give us a complete postmortum, so the exact failure isn't known.
On each of these the oil was changed by the dealer as they supplied me with free service coupons. Now that the car is out of warranty, they don't give them to me anymore. I am putting in a heavier weight oil & premixing in hopes of making this engine last longer.

Thanks for shedding more light on your motors, i find it strange that mazda does not fully strip down they motor to find out the exact cause of failure...How was the process of getting new motors through mazda....did they give you a lot of crap?

They do strip the motors, just at the dealer.... -_-

Well I believe there are a few issues that are all the result of poor design. This particular motor has had religious oil changes with 10W30 Castrol GTX every 3k miles as well as premix with UCL (over the last few months which was probably too late, I admit). I am fanatical about maintenance and check and add oil every fill-up because my consumption on this motor has always been high. I have also done double oil changes on a few occasions to get out dirty oil after hard runs through the hill country.

Since my divorce 1 1/2 years ago my cars daily highway mileage dropped from 80 miles a day to about 10 miles a day but my car gets driven the way it was meant to be driven and it gets redlined daily. The only thing I can think of that I didn't do is premix from day one.

Everyone has opinions but most of them are just people talking out of their asses. I guess on this third motor I will run 10W30 and premix and see how long its lasts. Good thing its paid off.

damn dude this sucks... makin me worried now :(

Damn dude... that really does suck. I am thinking mine is on the way out too.... was noticing some high revs with no power yesterday, hoping it was just the heat.

An observation:
My first three engines got poor gas mileage. This present engine, which should be a rebuild from the new Virginia center, got reasonable mileage for a rotary. I actually achieved 20 mpg in mixed, mostly expressway driving in June. I am presently getting 220+ miles to the tank. Where as before, I was getting 150-180 to the tank. This is with an average 13 gal fill.

Yeah it does suck. Actually my first engine got the best gas mileage (about 22MPG highway) and to be honest the last trip I took on this engine was 170 miles and I averaged 20MPG highway. How hot is it where you are? it has been averaging over 100 here for the last month or two.

Yeah it's been super hot in Houston as well (my parents said it's been triple digits for ever haha) Its about 80 here and have been averaging 21mpg 90% fwy on 1st engine. I need to start premixing even though its too late to make a significant difference :/

After reading why you had to have them all replaced. It looks like it was mostly due to poor installation and crappy parts... not so much the engine. Like the coolant and the apex seals.

Seems like they would have figured out how to swap an engine, after all they do it a lot...

May/June has varied. 60/70 for a high one day, mid-90's for the next. Today should be in the mid-80's.

I would have to dissagree. The failures were internal to the engine. I don't see as to how it was a engine installation issue.

At one point last year there was a bad lot of coolant seals floating around rebuild shops. Ask Eric Meyer of Meyer Motorsports and Adam Whitener of ROAR Racing. And the main culprit in my opinion is the excessive heat that is built up due to the side port configuration. We'll see how things go in the 09+ models with the addition of a modified OMP and a 3rd oil injector.

My first motor died around 36k, it never got anything above 22mpg...this rebuild I have now has over 40k on it and I get 25+mpg on my long trips with conservative driving. I have always had rough idle issue and now it's a little sluggish before 4k, but I think I might just have clogged primary injectors.

There is a lot of speculation and to be honest I have not heard of a daily driven engine that spent its life in a hot climate make it to 100k. To me its just sad since I have owned boosted cars with twice the WHP that have lasted 100k on a rebuild.

I love the rotary feel, power curve, etc. But damn this car makes it hard to love. Owning and RX-8 is like dating Jessica Simpson, damns he is fine but you just wanna punch her in the damn face sometimes.

9k, sorry about another engine.

but in my opinion, the main cause for all these "engine deaths" came from the light weight oil they recommend. 2nd is the whack OMP injection nozzle location.

I got my 7 for almost a month and I've been researching it day after day, that's why I wasnt on the 8club that often.

and the "common" knowledge on the 7club is most people use at least 10w40 lots of ppl use 20w50. RotaryGod probably knows that.

Im not sure about the FD but for FC's owner's manual, they dont really "recommend" you to go for one oil only, they give you a chart and you will decide whats best for you.

https://www.rx8club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1246896948

I know they have something like that in the 8's manual too, but the point is that most people just "too ignorant to think whats best for their cars, they always want a free lunch or "simple" way out, Mazda knows that, so to shut them up, they have to just "recommend the customers with something", and in 8's case, its 5w20"

Look at the chart, 20w50 gives you the "widest" range of protection for different weather. not to mention if any of the 8 owners look closely to the oil's sheer rate, as the temp increase, thinner oil is getting weaker and weaker. 5w20 has enough protection MY ASS!

Great for EPA/CAFE, not so great for ANY engines.

And most people might said "hey I use 5w20 and my engine still works !" Thats good isn't it? I know my engine having problems, last sept I did a compression check outa my pocket, it was still within spec. so ? I still got all kinds of random stalling. 1/2 year later the compression dropped from 7 range to 5. Butt Dyno never really noticed anything, it did feel slower, but I (even Kevin) wasnt' expecting the comp. numbers drop so fast in just a few months.

some might say "so what, you used heavy oil ur shit still failed, so it has nothing to do with it"

Well, how about this, if I didnt change my shit to something heavier, my engine could've gone "kabooooom" way before that?

OMP design + feeding 4 cycle oil was an uber failure, but its a failure that Mazda HAS to make, this engine would NEVER sell if U gotta tell the buyers that oh yeah, you gotta fill that Tank with 2 cycle oil every 1K miles or so. Most users have zero clue about what kind of car they're getting, how could Mazda expect them to know wtf is 2 cycle oil ?

Thats all I gotta say for now, my grandfather passed away this morning and I have to take care a lot of shit with my father. *sigh*

Good luck with your replacement 9K. peace.

Yeah according to that chart even my 10W30 is not up to the task. I guess maybe 20W50 then? I really don't wanna mess with it but maybe even the SOHN adapter.

b4 I leave the house

you are in Texas, u never have to worry about freezing weather, so just go for 20w50.

even Im thinking I can probably live with 20w50 in NYC, might try it this year. and u know Im a synthetic ass and synthetic can withstand cold weather better than dino.

okay so now they are telling me that they need to get the 02 code cleared and replace the coils (which are less than a year old) before they can get the engine replacement approved. Which of course because of the mid pipe the code won't clear for long so.... I'm guessing I need to swap the stock cat back in.

I use Shell rotella synthetic 5w40 for my mazda and I don't have any issues. Granted, I have a 626, I don't see if there's any difference using the same oil for the 8's