Fire!!! underneath the car
 

So something totally freaky happened tonight, my rx8 was on fire. Here is what happened:

The past few days the engine been acting up a bit. Sometimes it has totally no power and it takes a while for it to start moving, feels like one of the rotors might not be firing. BUt this was only temporary and the engine would run properly after a minute or so.

Tonight was different. It started acting up just as i was nearing home so i decided to take it out on the highway to try to get the engine to run properly again. I woud say i drove for about 4 miles on the highway and it didn't get better so I made a loop back home. I saw some smoke in the back but figured its probably some oil burning up and thats why it ran like crap. At the intersection I see more smoke and I figure something must be really wrong but I ws about 1 minute away from my house. All of a sudden a car pulls in the back of me and the dude is yelling "The bottom of your car is on fire!!!"

I jumped out the car and looked under and indeed I was smokin. The guy gives me a little bottle of water but there really wasn't much I could do with that. So I jumped in the car and drove the next 30 seconds to my house, scared like crazy, just imagining this fucker is going to blow soon with me in it. Smoke was everywhere by then.

I thought we had a fire extinguisher at home so I frantically ran through the house looking for it, but i couldn't find ii and i jumped into my folks bedroom and woke them up with these words "My car is on fire! where the hell is the fire extinguisher?" This was about midnight. I still feel bad.... I can remember my parents faces when they woke up.

So turns out we no longer had the f'n fire extinguisher, no wonder why i couldn't find it. my dad helped me drag out the water hose and I started dosing the bottom of the car.

I'm not quite sure what happened here tonight. I'm hoping to get some suggestions from you guys. It looked to me that the fire was inside the exhaust somewhere. Thinking back i'm not sure If i saw flames or only metal that was glowing orange. Is it possible for gas to get into the exaust and catch on fire? This all happened next to or in the cat.

SO..........
1. Why did the engine run like crap, no power, very shaky, ???
and
2. how did that contribute the the fire?
3. what do i have to fix?

Damn. Almost definitely you had a clogged catalytic converter. If that happens they get extremely hot, and cause drastic reduction in power. Seems to fit with what you told us... Havn't heard of one catching on fire though...

How many miles on the car?? A clogged cat is most likely at higher mileage. Good news is that if you have less than 80,000 miles the cat is warrantied until then. In which case you should bring it into mazda and have them look at it and confirm that's the problem.

^^^^Im 99% sure he is correct.

Your cat was probably clogged which is why you had the power loss and you just didnt know and it just got to the point where it got way to hot. Normally if your cat is clogged and you just notice the power loss (before the fire), and you look underneath the car at the cat you will see it glowing red hot! That is probably what yours looked like before it started the fire

Yepperz, that cat is the issue. Our cats have viking blood in them and prefer a fiery death. If you're under warranty get it replaced. If you're out of warranty either get a high flow replacement or go catless.

If funds are tight you can always look up the DIY on how to gut your own cat.

after doing some research i totally agree with everyone here. The cat is bad. hehe.

Funds are extremely tight so I was extremely delighted to see a DIY on how to gut the bad cat.

OVer the past few months I did notice that the rx8 no longer had that power when i stepped on the gad pedal. That should have already signaled something was going bad.

Do you think i should be also replacing the coils and spark plugs? Will that make a difference in power? The car right now is just under 70K.

Go for the coils \plugs and gut\replace your cat :) Get BHR's coil system if possible, you'll save money in the long run.
There are cheap sports catalyzers out there (Davesport and others) that could help you save some money.

a couple of your coils died. because of this unburned gasoline was flowing into your cat where it burned causing your CAT to over heat and catch the car on fire. An clogged/overheated cat induced fire is not an uncommon thing to happen with ANY car. less nowadays but it still happens quite often.

Cat fires are no joke. Next time your car is on fire STOP DRIVING IT. you endangered everyone around you by continuing to drive it.


There was a recall a few years ago for RX-8s that added a thermal blanket protection over the gas tanks so that over heated cats wouldnt warp the tank and set the fuel on fire. It had happened two or 3 times in the states when the recall was announced. It also added some idiot protection software that wont allow the car to sit still and rev higher than idle for long periods

Damn.....glad to hear you are ok. That stuff is no joke. I'm glad I changed mine out, thats the last thing I would want to happen. So did it damage anything under the car?

did you buy a fire extinguisher yet?
:FIREdevil

https://www.rx8club.com/showthread.p...highlight=Fire

do you really wnt this?

http://www.break.com/pictures/ride-on-fire490581.html

^^^ That's a smokin' hot Velocity Red! :uhh:

Wow zoom, never saw that shot before. A movie quote comes to mind..."Tom Cruise! Use the witchcraft to get the flames off me! I'm on fire!"

So i finally gutted the cat today and put it back on. Car sill runs like crap. no balls, extremely shaky on low rpm's. And I think i flooded my engine again when moving to the garage, which is very wierd since it isn't even cold out. took a while for it to start up again.

Anyway, it still runs like crap.. i'm guessing the coils and spark plugs should be next.

red glowing cat
 

Ok so I've posted a few things here (https://www.rx8club.com/search.php?searchid=6234591 ) lately about intake mods and spark plugs and what not, But on my way home tonight, the revs stopped at precicely 9k in 2nd about a mile from home. When I got there, I remembered reading on here about checking the CAT right after hard driving, so I did just that and found it to be glowing orange on the hot side. My buddy looked at it as I redlined it and said it got a little brighter when I did that. Tomorrow i will call a local dealership to inquire about the 80k CAT warranty. If that doesn't pan out, my buddy has a couple high flow CATs from his 2nd generation rx7 drift car. Any quick suggestions b4 I call the dealer in the morning? Dont' want to go up in flames.... :SHOCKED:

call the dealer, then go from there :)