RX8 Tractor!
 

Greetings! Long time reader, first time posting :)

I have a bone stock 04 RX-8 that is running like a tractor.
It sounds like only one of the two rotors is firing.

I decarbed and replaced the plugs and wires about a month ago and shes been running great, but this just started today. She died at a red light, I fired it back up only to hear what sounded like one rotor firing.

I pulled the codes and its tossing a p0302 (cyl 2 miss fire). I defiantly know one of the rotors is not "running" (prob a bad coil or maybe bad injector?)

I'm hoping its just a dead coil. But before I get my hands dirty, I'm curious which rotor is #2?
With the driver side front wheel off, looking at the plugs, is it the right rotor or the left?

I'm probably going to start with poking a screwdriver in the plug wire socket and see if I'm getting fire, but I would like to start on the funky rotor first :)

I may be mistaken here, but from what I understand, only one of the two (leading and trailing) plugs fires at start and idle. Is this accurate? If so which one is suppose to fire, the leading or the trailing? Do both plugs ever fire, or do they alternate at higher RPM, or something else? I'm pretty much a rotary noob so please bare with me :)

take a video of it i just wanna see what it sounds like

Try searching for "marbles in a can" maybe your engine is going bad...

Tractor sound means there is really something wrong with it. Have it checked out as soon as possible.

apex shitpex
 

So I've finally got off my lazy ass to check things out further! ;)

It looks like the rear rotor is not "running" so to speak, I pulled the plugs out and they were wet (fuel). I hope I can luck out and it just a bad coil or something, but the real concerning find was tiny fragments of metal on/in the plug.....fsck!!!!!!! I'm betting money one or more apex seals have failed, if not completely they have at least cracked or broken into bits and blasted out the exhaust.

When the boss lady gets home, I'm going to have her turn the car over while I check to see if I'm getting fire.
What I need to know here is the firing order on cracking and idle, do both plugs fire at the same time, or does it alternate between leading and trailing, etc?

Let me know and wish me luck, lol :fingersx:

Not sure if this is correct, but from what I've found it is on idle is

Rotor 1 Trailing, then Rotor 1 Leading, then Rotor 2 Trailing, and then Rotor 2 Leading.

Above idle, it flips

Rotor 1 Leading, then Rotor 1 Trailing, then Rotor 2 Leading, and then Rotor 2 Trailing.

On cranking, is the order the same as idle? Or is it something completely different?

On cranking only the lead coils fire

Excellent, thanks!

Am I correct with the order when at idle and then above idle?

damn, my worst fear, the motor is shot. apex seals on the #2 rotor are blown :(
looks like i get to do a motor swap sometime soon. looks pretty easy to pull it from the rear though, so im going to go that route.
wish me luck!

Hey I have the same thing going on. My 8 is making that tractor noise too. Engine just got replaced at 135000 and now the cars at 157000 the reman engine only has 22k kms on it. and the spark plugs were changed with the reman engine. I started feeling powerloss above 7 rpm and then all of a sudden it stalled as I pulled up on my friends driveway. I tried starting it. It wouldn't start. I waited 5 mins and started it again. This time it took atleast 7-8 secs of cranking for it to start but it started making that tractor noise. It drove fine, till Iwas pulling into my street. The noise got louder with higer revs and started making a louder noise each time I let the revs come down. I checked the cels I got p0302 rear rotor misfire and p0171 system running too lean bank 1 and the p2076 (noticed cat was glowing so I gutted it out) so its not the MIAC sound. So p2076 is gonna stay I'm okay with that. I changed my coils yesterday and the noise went down a lot but its still making the tractor sound. So I checked the codes again and now the misfire and lean are both pending codes. I played around with my ssv and that's moving easily. The noise is there in idle and under load. Need help pls.!

Turns out it was an apex seal failure. Need to replace the engine. I determined this by performing a compression test on both rotors. Still have not replaced the engine, debating on selling the car as is, maybe somebody else will want to deal with it :/