Did they get the rotary to be usable? I thought even at its best, it was finicky and temperamental. I have never owned or driven one, just doing some idle reading online, so asking this as a serious question.
Lots of torque, lots of pep, though from what I heard, the US version (mine) had substantial increases in pollution controls which hobbled the car. Always first off the line when I wanted to be.
Yes, it burned oil by design. I'd add a half-quart of non synthetic 5W-20 maybe every 1000 miles. The rear bumper required additional car washes, as it'd get a black film, no doubt from cold starts. That wasn't much of a problem.
The big issue it had was flooding the engine. To trigger the condition, turn on engine, let it run for less than 1 minute, and turn it off (like pulling it in or out of a garage). Unless you floored it in neutral before shutting it off, the car would end up near-bricked.
The fix was to have it towed to the dealer where they'd clean out the engine for a few hundred dollars. Later I learned you could tow-start it if you could get it up past 20mph. It'd put all kinds of foul smoke out the back when you did that but in terms of hassle, it was much better.
The car had a POS OEM fuel pump under the rear seat. On hot days you'd get a vapor lock. Not the rotary's fault. Took years to find that problem, and didn't get very long with the fixed version before the stork came and the rotary had to leave.
> The fix was to have it towed to the dealer where they'd clean out the engine for a few hundred dollars. Later I learned you could tow-start it if you could get it up past 20mph. It'd put all kinds of foul smoke out the back when you did that but in terms of hassle, it was much better.
You don't need to do all that. You can just pull the EGI INJ & EGI COMP fuse, crank it for a few seconds, replace and start it up. Many folks put a bypass switch inside the car so they don't have to get out and do it. Works great.
On the RX8 at least, if you hold the gas pedal to the floor while cranking, it disables the fuel injectors. No need to pull fuses.
* Foot to floor, crank for 10 sec,
* let it rest for 30 sec to cool off the starter,
* foot to floor and start to crank, pull your foot off the gas pedal.
Mazda sort of assumed their drivers would read the manual and drive the car properly. I think this workaround was figured out at some point in the 90s anyway.
First off, I agree that the backseat was exceptionally roomy for a 4-door coupe. For adults.
Once you have your first, you realize very quickly that babies come with a LOT of stuff. The first carrier for newborns sticks out a LOT from the back of the seat. The sorcerers at Mazda Engineering made it comfortable for tall people in the backseat by compensating for limited front-back space by using up-down space. This made it impossible for use for an infant unless the front seat was scooted all the way up.
But then there's the stroller. Good luck with that in the comically small trunk opening. Bags of stuff, boxes of stuff, yes, these things are non-optional, and they don't fit in that car, especially all at once.
The final nail was the fact that it's kinda hard to insert a child plus carrier into the backseat with your hands full. Having it back there would've been easy. Getting it back there wouldn't have been. Retrieving it, even more difficult.
After you make your peace with the above, and still manage to cram everything in, bear in mind you still need two adults, not just the driver, to fit in the car at the same time.
We could've done it, somehow, but it was smarter to sell it and buy a cheap used SUV, with plenty of room for everything. It also bears mention that I had used that car as a daily driver for 10 years.
You should have held out on the wait-and-see. The moderate-sized rear cabin with those little suicide doors (you are talking about the RX-8, aren't you?) is absolutely great for baby and child seats.
Also, yeah, I had my RX-8 tow started once. The recovery guy actually suggested I drive his truck while he sat in the car and tried to start it. So there I was with the new experience of driving an enormous full-size recovery vehicle, getting quite concerned as I looked in the mirror and saw clouds of white smoke pouring out of my car's exhaust! But, once properly wary of flooding, the car didn't give me any trouble before or since.
I have an 8 (and am involved in sports car things as a hobby) and I find the back seats to be superior to almost all sports cars and most mid-sized normal cars for seating adults.
More or less usable. They did have a tendency to blow apex seals after 80k miles, which was could end up as a full rebuild of the engine. As far as how finicky a rotary can be, the biggest thing to do is let them warm up before driving, and let them cool right down after you're done. They were never an engine to replace the standard fourbanger, but they weren't any more finicky than say a BMW or Audi at the time of the RX-8
weren't any more finicky than say a BMW or Audi at the time of the RX-8
YMMV, but my E46 BMW has been very reliable compared to an RX-8 bought at the same time. Audi was still in the process of applying the lessons of the RS4 to their everyday cars, but I still wouldn't call the RX-8 reliable compared to its peers. As you hinted, there are a couple of problems that lead to full rebuilds before 150k miles.
Mazda shot themselves in the foot reliability-wise with the first generation RX-8 because they:
* Underspec'd the ignition coils
* Didn't do enough on-road reliability testing
* Lowered the oil pressure and removed OMP ports
* Designed the oil filler breather in a way that allowed oil into the intake
In '04, the first wave of RX8s were coming in to the dealerships after 30k with severe misfire from the coils going bad. Mazda didn't have this failure mode in their factory service manual, so the cars got replacement engines (poorly reman'd in Mexico, not made on the Mazda Japan line). These didn't last because of poor manufacturing. Once the coil issue was figured out, the 8 became much more predictable and reliable.
As noted by Busterarm, they fully got their act together with the series 2 update.
Heh. I mean an engine rebuild at 80k seems kind of crazy. I am both continually amazed at the ICE and at the same time can't wait for it to die out. It's such an archaic technology. Hell, a turbine engine would be so much more fun to have in a car!
It was not, in the end, a production car, but there was a lot of data gathered as to performance and reliability in real-world settings.
Not too long ago, Jaguar had a concept CX-75, which was a hybrid mid-engined supercar where the piston engine was replaced with two Bladon Jets micro gas turbines. After 2008, they didn't want to commit to an expensive limited production vehicle, too bad.
Damn. That sounds like they almost made it work. I wonder how those cars would have done with corn ethanol. Electric boost for initial acceleration and better heat exchangers would have probably completely eliminated the remaining problems with them. Thanks for the link!
Turbos are definitely taking hold in the American auto industry as well, with stuff like the Chevy Sonic and Fiesta/Focus really making good use of them with tiny engines. The 2015 Focus had an option for a 1L, 3 cylinder engine with a turbo for commuters. Great stuff.
Lots of torque, lots of pep, though from what I heard, the US version (mine) had substantial increases in pollution controls which hobbled the car. Always first off the line when I wanted to be.
Yes, it burned oil by design. I'd add a half-quart of non synthetic 5W-20 maybe every 1000 miles. The rear bumper required additional car washes, as it'd get a black film, no doubt from cold starts. That wasn't much of a problem.
The big issue it had was flooding the engine. To trigger the condition, turn on engine, let it run for less than 1 minute, and turn it off (like pulling it in or out of a garage). Unless you floored it in neutral before shutting it off, the car would end up near-bricked.
The fix was to have it towed to the dealer where they'd clean out the engine for a few hundred dollars. Later I learned you could tow-start it if you could get it up past 20mph. It'd put all kinds of foul smoke out the back when you did that but in terms of hassle, it was much better.
The car had a POS OEM fuel pump under the rear seat. On hot days you'd get a vapor lock. Not the rotary's fault. Took years to find that problem, and didn't get very long with the fixed version before the stork came and the rotary had to leave.