A tech at my dealership told me the date effected is 05/22/05 and newer.

 

I'm don't understand how that can be. What manufacturing process would have been altered so late in the production cycle to result in this "problem"?

My tag simply states it was manufactured 3/05.. no specific date. During my brief underbody observational crawl, I found the muffler installation rather interesting and I think I'll start a new thread regarding this in the main tech forum.

Cheers!

 

Guy, I wonder if this is finally going to be the "mother of all ECU flashes" that we are all waiting for. You know, the 250HP flash... :D :D :D

 

you're dumb.

 

this is really an excellant post!!! What good does it do to run the radiater fan WHEN no fluid is being pushed through the engine? WTF??? If the engine is dead and not pulsing coolant through then how much good is running the fan and cooling down the radiater? Maybe a very small osmatic effect, but cant be worth the batery drain, can it?

 

Have you learned of "convection" in physics101?

 

Forgive the ignoranty question, but if this recall is related to people running their engines at a high RPM while idling, how is this different from someone driving around for an extended period of time (10+ minutes) at a high RPM?

 

This thread seems to have taken on a life of it's own.

 

there's no air movement under the car when you're sitting still like there is when you're driving; the issue is heat buildup underneath the car from the exhaust system

 

If the vehicle is moving there is lots of air moving over the exhaust system. I think that the word 'idling' may be misleading. Idling is at 850 rpm. A better explanation might be reving the engine while standing still.

 

"...if the vehicle is parked and the engine is idled at high RPMs, excessive heat buildup may affect..." sounds to me like "idled at high RPMs" means to hold the RPMs at a higher than normal amount for a long duration. Reving to me is to go up and down in RPMs, not really holding RPMs at any one amount. How high is too high? How long is too long? Dunno. But then, my really good interpreter is on vacation.
I suppose some gee whiz team could chart some 3-D curve with RPMs, time and ambient temp being the variabes which would attain some nasty temperature "t" at some critical point on the surface of the subject wire harness, and come up with some really cool looking 3-D hyperbolic curve for us. Me? I just want the new heat shield and replacements for any damaged items found, that's all.
Oh yeah, and new heater control and fan control *****, cuz one of mine broke Sunday. Thank you Mr. Easter Bunny. :o

 

My take is that folks that run their cars on a dyno quite a bit, or do high rpm 1/4 mi. launches on frequent basis, may fall into the potential problem group. I'd also be a bit worried if I were a Turbo owner. Turbos add even more heat.

 

You are correct.

These are the facts as we know them and I have stated them all earlier in this thread.

The car is being recalled. The recall will occur in August. All RX-8's in North America are subject to this recall. This includes Canada. Any RX-8 built PRIOR to 22 May 05 will need a heatshield fitted, later cars have been done (apparently). All RX-8's will need a reflash.....to "R" or a later flash (not sure yet).

Now....., everyone just take a chill pill and relax. It's all under control . More info will be posted as it comes to hand.

Gomez.

 

BTW, Mazda's electronic broadcast sheet info shows the build date of all cars in their inventory....so they know which cars will need a shield. A simple underbody inspection will determine if one has been fitted at the factory anyway.

 

says the person who constantly whines about his rx-8

 

sounds like a plan, i may as well get my VA safety inspection done (it's due in August) while there for the recall also

it'll all work out just fine :D

 

Yeah, I wondered about that wording too when I read it the first time. To me, "idle" means to allow the engine to run, in neutral or with clutch depressed, at whatever RPM the ECU chooses for it... this can be a higher RPM when, say, the air conditioning compressor is running than it would be normally.

Or, for those who suffer from the weak A/C blowing warmish air when the car is not moving, depressing the accelerator slightly to increase revs often causes the AC to cool a bit more.

SO... today it's 100+ degrees here while I'm running errands and I need to use my cell phone. Being a good girl, I pull into a parking lot to make the call. As I allow my 8 to idle in neutral so I can stay cool by running the A/C, I'm wondering if I'm damaging my car.

Why couldn't they have figured this out in, say, February??

 

Idle at high rpm means just that...ie, racing the engine with the car stationary. I can't specify a rev range because Mazda haven't, but it's definitely not idle with the aircond on. Or even just above idle.

 

Before seeing this thread, I'd been fast idling my 8 to actuate the A/C when picking my son up from school on hot days. Guess I'll have to "cool it" by not cooling the cabin when parked on 90F+ days! All this doesn't really make the 8 any less of a fantastic set of wheels, tho.

 

See, this is the kind of thing that makes no sense to most of us.

They (apparently) find the design flaw some time prior to May 22, 2005 and craft a fix (the heatshield) and start putting it on the cars in production. Then you would THINK that they would build a bunch of extra shields and get them along with instructions in the hands of the dealers and THEN do a recall. Instead it looks like they sit on it and then order a halt to sales without any parts or instructions so the dealers can sell cars. I can understand if they JUST found the problem in the field and need time to craft a fix, produce the fixes, and get them to the dealers. But your statement tells us they knew about the problem and made a running production change to fix it - and then I guess hoped they could do nothing for the cars already produced?

Anyway, I am not worried about it - it just seems so typical for a car maker to take this "logical" move. I mean they have this great car that they can't seem to sell, now literally the dealers can't sell the car

Dennis

 

I've actually never whined about my rx8...show me some quotes of me "whining"? I love my rx8

 

Keep in mind, it's probably cheaper to get the heat shield installed in the new cars because it would be only a minor change in the production flow (and by minor I mean adding new workers, making space for them and the required parts and tools on already very busy assembly line). This also means that they could continue to sell cars, which will offset some of the costs involved with the recall of existing cars.

They would also have taken their time on the recall due to getting the infrastructure and distribution plan set up. With most TSBs, not every car will need the part/service (also, not every owner will know or bother to get it fixed), so the dealers can just order the parts as needed.

With a recall, they have to make sure they have enough parts for everyone effected, and the procedures setup and distributed. Plus they have to identify those who are effected. I'd rather they took a little time to get this all into place before just acting and then thinking "huh, guess we should have planned better".

So relax...

 

'cause there wasn't 100+ degrees in February?

 

There's a lot of bureaucracy in the automotive world. Things can take time. Personally I believe they're doing this remarkably quickly and were doing anything but sitting on it.

Engineers noted the problem and so they crafted a fix for it for the newer production vehicles.

But that's only the heatshield delivered to the line which prevents the problem from ever occuring. That's the easy part.

Mazda then needed to figure out how to go about fixing all the cars its' already sold. It's one thing to make parts for a monthly production of 2,000 units -- it's another entirely to produce some 50,000 units in 60 days time. And that's just the heatshield. Mazda would also have to turn to the suppliers of all the parts that may be affected, negotiate contracts, and bump up production to deal with the heightened and immediate increase in demand for wire harnesses, fuel tanks, and any other components that are likely to be damaged. And those are large and expensive items so Mazda would want to research just how many cars are likely to need those repairs so its' not stuck with a shortage that could take months to remedy or a surplus which would cost more than the recall is already.

Legal and Safety gets involved determining whether or not they can continue selling the car and what needs to be done to limit liability and reduce the downtime as much as possible. Public Relations devises plans to deal with the fall-out as does Dealer Relations.

That's probably where they got some news that they didn't want to hear either -- in order to keep their liability down they needed to halt sales of the car immediately to deal with the problem. They were obviously shooting for a notice sometime in August to have the parts on-hand, not a mid-July one before the parts were ready.

Problem is that between getting initial parts production started on the heatshields only until they had to announce sales would stop was only like 6 weeks. That's not a long time to do all the work needed to produce all the necessary parts, ship them to the US (which can take weeks itself), have MNAO divide the shipment up by dealer, and have the initial parts go out by the truck-load.

 

This car was introduced in July of 2003 in North America, and has been operated globally through three full summer seasons that I can count. It DOES get over 100 degrees F in Australia in February, y'know.