I am new here and definetly new to being the owner of a RX-8 and in some desperate need of some advice!!
i have had my rx-8 for about 5 months now, bought second hand with 45000 mile.
about a month ago now i was driving along and i had a dramatic loss of power, the engine managment light came on, managed to get home, probably not even 1/4 of a mile.
The next time i started the car there was no managment light on but i took car to garage and they said i needed new cat and 2 new lambda sensors, got this done, when i went to collect the car i was told there was somthing much worse wrong, that i am needing a new engine!!
i took the car home and it sat there for about 2 weeks as i really cant afford to get a new engine at the moment!
i started my rx8, started first time, had some white smoke coming from exhaust for about 30 seconds, this stopped, appeared to be running okay but i think there was a slight difference in the sound.
drove for about a mile round trip back to house maybe running for about 5 minutes and there was the same loss of power again once the car got up to temperature and when i looked under the car the cat was glowing red!!

Whats the chances of my new cat be fried aswell??

can this be right?

or is there a possibility that its not quite such a huge problem as needing a new engine?

Thanks for reading hope to get some possitive replies lol

Oh yeah, im in the UK

 

Well, I see two other people in here that are probably typing at the same time, so I'll let them take it, but "yes" it would appear your CAT is clogged again.....question is why?
When you had the check engine light come on, did you or anyone ever read the codes?

I think we are all going to say that you have a clogged CAT and most likely caused by unburnt fuel dumping in there due to bad plugs and/or coils, but don't know for sure yet. Not enough data from you yet.

YOu could be suffering from a lack of compression, but right now it doesn't really sound like it. It sounds like a bad CAT to me.

 

I was about to type up a long response but Mazurfer is here so you're in good hands. Listen to him and you'll be in good shape.

 

No Jorge, I gotta run out!

Please take it!!!!!!

Or you Rev!!!!! I see you in here!

 

Rev will handle this, I'm leaving the office for the day.
Thanks Rev, you da man.

 

When the car was taken to the garage to start with the guy said he had plugged it into the diagnostics machine, and i just pressumed thats how he got to the conclusion that i needed the new cat n sensors, dont know the codes, didnt really think to ask, well to be hoest didnt really have a clue!!
New cat and sensors were fitted and not too cheap haha

 

Pity you didn't ditch the cat when you had the chance . Anyway , there is a strong possibility that it's not the engine so it's worth perservering with it till you know for sure .

If you are not capable a working on the car yourself the best we can do is make suggestions about what to get your garage to do when you take it in there .


It could be going into limp mode for some reason which would explain the dramatic loss in power . So the first thing to do would be to get the cel codes read and report back .


My next suggestion would be to get a compression test done . This will tell you straight away whether the engine is toast or some other gremlin is present .

Maybe get both of those things done at once ...