Problems with 12 month old RX8!!!!!!!!!
 

Hi Guys,
A friend of mine has had an RX8 for 12 months bought it from new and now is blowing out black smoke, Now I'm not sure if these have a Turbo and I know if it is the turbo the smoke would be blue right?? Any Ideas to what it might be??
Cheers
Colin

Colin,

Just did a quick google and found this relating to rotary engines:
White smoke: you're burning coolant, bad seals on the cooling chambers
Blue smoke: you're burning oil. Could be the oil seals on the rotor face or from the turbo.
Black smoke: you're running rich, which could be a number of things.

Not very helpful I'm afraid :( I would get the dealer on the phone asap.

RX8's do not have a turbo (yet)

It could be rotor tip seals on the way out, causing compression loss and poor combustion ....

But get the dealer onto it .... a mate had an RX7 turbo (the 968 look-alike from the early 90s) that had three Mazda-approved engine replacements in a year ... all related to failed rotor seals :(

Should be of no concern to him. He should drop it off at his local dealership, request a similar car to use in the meantime and tell them he will collect it when it is fully sorted, thanks. Thats what 3 year warrantys are for.

Unless he did a VERY silly thing by saving a few hundred quid and buying a Jap import? Please tell me he didn't?

As Olly said, the car has a 3 year warranty so the dealer will sort it out.

There have been no other occurrances of this reported on the Owners Club Website that I am aware of.........

http://www.rx8ownersclub.co.uk/forum

Owner's club is a good place to start. Has your mate been regularily revving the engine hard? If its the HP 230 bhp model, then this is redlined at about 8500 (you'll hear the rev warning beep). Above 7200 RPM, the third port opens and extra air is drawn into the engine. There have been some issues with this 3rd port becoming stuck - largely as a result of not revving the engine to open the port often enough. You'll find that most enthusastic owners will rev the engine hard enough each day to hear the beep! This may account for the black smoke - def a dealer job though - use the warranty.

Rotaries are like VTECs - they love to be revved :)

It may also be using too much oil, and burning the excess off causing the black smoke.
Rotaries inject oil into the chamber to lubricate the little rotors spinning around (to use the technical terminoligy).
Is the car using even more oil than they usually do?

Ive had my fill of rotaries (after 1!!), recon there will be hundreds of RX8's for sale VERY cheap when they start hitting 60/70k miles, nervous owners will be throwing them away to avoid any post warranty engine rebuilds, even with the improvements over the RX7 unit, after this stage you'll start seeing tips going and water seals starting to wear out, and the design means that unless you make absolutely sure your oil is always topped, you risk seriously damaging the engine, and I bet there'll be a few owners who arent enthusiasts that let that happen.

Once you have a number of failures due to things like this, peiople get nervous, values drop, and it goes the way of the RX7...

Cheers guys, I'll tell HER:D, She will have to give it to me for acouple of days:norty:
Cheers
Colin

I've one and had the same problem a whil back.

My engine went into limp mode but it was driveable.

It turned out to be fouled plugs which rotaries are prone to. Take it to the dealers and have the plugs changed.

Cheers
Simon

Thanks Simon:thumb: