*cues up Heartbreaker* :D They're the best of times, and the worst of times..

Someone asked earlier if boingers fail.. oh hell yeah they fail. It's the nature of the beast. BMW had a spate of M3 engines a few years back that were lunching themselves. At the same time, their F1 V-10's were letting go, often with a huge steam roostertail of what was your coolant, perfectly framing the huge "BMW Power" logo on the back of the wing. Now that's embarrasing.

It's worse when you do it in your home country, in front of your whole board.

If it happens to BMW, it can happen to any carmaker. They've been making boingers forever. And they still blew it. It happens. :D I"m curious as to how BMW handled the M3. Just too lazy to look it up right now.

 

An f1 fan, a new friend for sure....I live for F1.

BTW, the M3 you are talking about did happen, but the M3 is a very low production car, so far just over 30,000 RX-8's have been sold in the US, in 2004 just 700 M3's were sold and this year so far about 400.

The Baller

 

Regarding the 99-00 Miata engine replacement, I remembered that Mazda replaced the failed engines totally free for original owners or for cars within warranty. It was only second owners with cars out of warranty who had to pay up the labor portion of the bill. Correct me if I'm wrong on that one.

Remember that the warranty is specific in covering manufacturer's defects for the specified miles/months. Mazda would have been on fine LEGAL grounds to tell owners with out-of-warranty broken engines, "Sorry!" I applaud them for stepping up and helping out on everyone's car.

While discussing BMW engine issues, remember the first V8s in the 5-series? Oops, the aluminum blocks didn't like North American fuel too well... That one cost a bundle. And yeah, they took care of their customers.

The RX-8 will be fine when this all gets worked out.

 

I'm just curious. Does anyone out there with an AT have a canscan or a scanalyzer? If anyone does and lives in a hot climate, please let me know what the coolant and oil temperatures are on a drive or sitting in traffic. I just want to know.

 

I don't have the gear, but I do have an AT here in Sacramento, which just finished its hottest July on record. If someone around here has the gear and would like to put the two together, I'm game for a little bit of dime store science.

I'll cross reference this post with the "Regional Forums >West RX-8 Forum > Sacramento Area" thread.

 

Wow. I just read this in the " Engine Problems" thread...

 

It would cost a great deal in shipping and labor, but in the end...when they get the old engines back....they will probably rebuild them. I know that replacing 30,000 engines would be a nightmare, but we can hope they can right it off at the end of the year.

 

"with mucho respect also"

I def think vegas is hotter than DC. But many other cities break the 100 barrier that's all, and thats all lumped into pretty f'n hot in my book.

If something fails, say when its cold, and say for ex you have one running fine at minus 10 degrees, and another failing at minus 20, would you just say "they all break when its cold"? I wouldn't cause they are both f'n cold and one works.

So its hard to just say the renesis fails when its 'hot'. Cause anything over 100 is pretty hot in my book, and many other US cities where in the 100s the past few weeks. I do not doubt in any way Vegas can reach 110, 120, etc, but thats a difference of a couple of degrees. Not sigificant to claim fact, in my opinion.

If you're driving in Hell in an rx8 and it breaks, that's a different story. Then one (as Rob seems to be saying) can claim as FACT that all 8s break in "extreme heat".

That being said, I am not trying to add salt to an open wound. I am sorry Rob and all others have had engine failures, and hope it works out...just sheedding a lighter light on the issue...

 

Cool

 

Thanks for the post Dinhx8


Let me try and be "clear" on what I am saying about the 8's engine and "heat"

I am not saying that ALL 8's will eventually have engine failure.

Depends on where you live and how you drive.

I am not saying that if you drive your 8 and it is HOT outside your engine will fail.

Depends on where you live and how you drive.


What I am saying is that I BELIEVE that we will eventually see a FAILURE % that is MUCH HIGHER than 1%.

The 1% number seems to be the "worst case" scenario # that everyone here seems to be comfortable with.

I believe the # will be much higher than that.

Either more engines will blow OR Mazda will fess up and admit that there is a problem with the seals on this engine and do some sort of a recall.

I believe that the extreme heat we have in Vegas has simply caused this defect to show itself sooner.

It is really hard to argue against that point.

We had 8-10 days here where the temp was above 110 and for many days closer to 114-115

Then suddenly we have 35+ RX's with engine problems.

How else can anyone explain that?

Either way, the affected # will be higher than 1%

How much higher? Who knows.

If Mazda does a recall at some point (and I say THEY WILL) then the # is basically %100 percent at that point.

Rob in Vegas

27 days without my car and counting........

 

sharward the GM genrxr quoted is wrong period.

 

rob i can say with 100% surety that it is NOT the seals failing. i know there are a few MTs. but the majority are ATs. the clue someone drpped in a post yesterday was the quetion and why Ats? what is oil related and different in the ATs. we know that on a few cars they tried a larger volume oil pump which didnt make sense to me- why would they need more oil? well because they are losign compression so they think they arent getting enough oil to the seals? but they didnt like that option -it apparently didnt fix the issue because it appears they have stopped trying it. then we have carbonm lock - thats oil. why?

 

I don't think anyone can explain it I guess thats my point.....

We had about 8 days where the temp in DC was heat indexed at around 108. I No reports of any busted engines around here, the diff between 108 and 115 to me is rather small to estabilish a credible theory.

Again, just playing devils advocate..Its not that I think your theory is craaazy or over the top, Im just saying there is another side, and this side is just as 'logical' in my opinion. But until you get your car back (sorry about 27 days) maybe, and hopefully 'the other side' will prevail so we can all be happy rex owners.

I do thank you (and all with the problem) for sharing it so we 'lucky ones' are aware of it though....

 

Has anybody tried to see if these cars have anything in common? It might be something simple like the story of the Miata engines were one guy put in thrust bearings in wrong on the same day.

What are the build dates?
Were they re-flashed around the same time?
Did the owners all buy fuel from the same chain / refinery?
Did they get oil changes around the same time from the same dealers?
Bad batch of oil filters?

 

expo1 we dont know alot of that because out of the 40 in vegas there are only 3 on the forum. care to try to answer the questions i posed above? thats the stuff that definetly links them that we know for certain

 

not that my opionion means squat, but I don't think Rob is so far off the point. He's frustrated, sure and thats coming out in his comments - I can understand that. But he does have a point.

Its like those paint tests they do. They take a bunch of different paints, paint the same wood or whatever and put it under a light that simulated time and heat at an accelerated rate to see what the affects of the environment will do to it, to see which one will fail, peel, fade - etc. I think Rob's point is that Vegas is acting like those heat lamps its acclerating a problem that will eventually raise its head, its just doing it quicker.

As a personal example, my car started making sounds that are different than when it had 3000 miles on it. I have had about 15 cars in my life, and unless somthing went wrong with them then never made "new" sounds as they got older.

the fact that their is high heat and high amount of engines affected is a little more than coincidence.

 

my opinion doesn't mean squat either , but 30 isnt a high amount of engines, and there's 'high heat' in a lot of places, and a lot of rexes runnin fine in those places.

I do think he has a good basis for inquiry and question, just not ready to assume any one of our theories is worth jack until we hear something from mazda



i'd love to answer some of zooms questions,which are great ways to link the cars, but unfortunately I don't have them, hopefully through discussion we can reach them, but I'm not ready for any theories yet...

 

Zoom:

There's one big difference between the AT and MT cars, oil-related..

The AT cars have only one oil cooler. But would that account for the big skew? I somehow doubt it, the 12A Rx-7 had a puny oil cooler, teh 13B rx-7 had a much larger unit (about 2 of the 8's coolers put together, and it was 500 bucks.. don't ask how I know.. :D )

Maybe the oil gets too hot? As in exceeding temp limits for that oil weight? *shrug*

 

Sounds to me that Mazda should be doing some Reliability HALT/HASS testing.
(Highly Accelerated Life Test & Highly Accelerated Stress Screening)

You have to imagine they are pounding the $&*^ out of a few engines back at the lab, to try and get to the bottom of this.

 

ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ......... we have the winner -right on the nose. it is so freaking obvious i cant believe we all didnt see it sooner.

 

reverse thinking again- pounding the engines. poundign sounds like thrashing i.e revving the crap out of them. however it seems the opposite is the problem. in the case of the thermal damage recall and this issue it seems more like that NOT pounding on them but but the engines just sitting with no airflow or not revving much with little airflow is causing issues.

 

I've always run 20w50 around here in my other rotaries, and was shocked ((SHOCKED)) when the dealer recomended 10w30 or 5w20... That is way too light of an oil for our climate. They use light oil because of some interaction between the oil weight and getting lower emissions out the tail pipe...

On those hot 117 degree days the temperature 1 foot above the pavement (where the oil coolers are) is sometimes 150F degrees or above (I've measured that myself 20 odd years ago in a 6th grade science project) The temperature is soo hot on the pavement itself that people get 2nd or 3rd degree burns if they lay their bare flesh on the road surface, or walk barefoot on it.

So, with AT's running light weight oil through one oil cooler, I bet the oil is just breaking down too fast, not providing the apex seals and other surfaces proper lubracation. One hack solution is to run 2stroke pre-mix oil in your gas (I do that anyway) but no way would Mazda have that as a solution. The should have had dual oil coolers on the AT's and put heaver weight oil in these cars in this climate.

 

Anyone know if there's anything different about gasoline formulations in Nevada and Texas? Back in the day, I coun't run 87 octane in my '91 Miata without detonation. Supposedly this was due to Texas reformulated gas.
Just a thought.
--Dave.

 

Because of Clark County smog control we run "reformulated gas", and it is different from the rest of the state... and it is different in the winter months than the summer months (May-Nov non oxygenated, rest is oxygenated) We only have 87, 89, and 91 (some Union76 stations have 100) But none of the gasoline that's sold in Nevada is considered federal reformulated gasoline... it doesn't go through the standards like California does.

 

The other would be to approve only "synthetic oil" for use in the USA. I used only Mobil 1 in my RX.