Thinking about an RX8....
 

Always loved these but the engines are a worry to me, which is probably why they are now all selling for pennies.

I would be possibly wanting a pre march 2006 model so i am not getting my tadger fiddled for excess road tax


Any SN folk had one that has never blown up?

Reading a lot online about people going through 2-3 engines under warranty :Suspiciou

Also reading a fair bit online about premixing the fuel with two stroke oil, which actually makes a fair bit of sense to me (two stroke oil is cheap and i can see no down sides at all)

They certainly are cheap!

Heard they drink oil

Drink oil Is an understatement you will be putting oil in on a weekly basics and not just a little, fuel consumption is worse than my Impreza, other than that there nice cars

Fuel economy would not be worse than my old impreza though, so its not sooo bad on that front :D

Engines are a worry, the more i read, the more premixing the fuel with 2stroke oil is making sense, there seams to be more rx8 engines blowing up on the net than subaru ones, and thats saying something (i went through 3 scooby ones :D )

+1

Mate had one, averaged 18-19mpg (could get early 20's on a motorway run) but could drop to >10mpg when booted, good handling but the fuel - he sold his due to the fuel bills.

Get a HOT compression test done before buying.

Make sure it is hot because garages would prefer to work on a cold engine and it gave me a false reading when I bought mine.

Compression failure means sitting at the petrol station for 20 minutes waiting for the engine to cool down so you can start it again.

My mate had one for 2 years, 10-15mpg if your lucky, oil consumption is rediculous and as above it would start when it wanted to not when you wanted it to, not a good motor in my opinion, looks aren`t so bad if your a hairdresser or beauty therapist or such like.......lol,

Gaz.

Lots suffer from the warm starting problem. Also the piston rings as such are on the tips of the rotary piston and wear out, usually needing replacement around 80k. Hoses can be fooking expensive to replace as well. There is a reason they are dirt cheap now.

My ex's brother had one for a bit. As said above,had to put oil in every week and fuel consumption was poor at best. Also trying to find someone other than a dealer thats willing to work on them is a nightmare.

my mates got the 231bhp version, nice cars, juicy then my STI, however i know the rx7's were known alot for rebuilds but the rx8 didn't realise were bad aswell, and oil consumption is bad as i know of.

my son had a 231bhp 55 plate bought it with about 12000 miles on the clock great equipment quality inside.. he used it every day and it went well but on average he got about 12/13 to the gallon normal daily drive, didnt like short trips where you start /stop switch off then switch on again it would flood the engine and you had to wait for about 10 minutes or apparently if oyu revved it up to about 8000 rpm before switching off it emptied the fuel in the engine and it would start starnge but true... it would happily rev to around 9500 rpm sounded like a load of bees in a tin can but did go well he sold it after 6 months purely because it was using about 1 pint of oil a week and loads of fuel which seems to be normal check out the rx8 owners club forum

Owned a 55 plate 231 model since 2006, had 12k miles when we got it.
Now got 36k miles.
Never let us down, only 'failure' has been the front anti roll bar linkages, one failed at each of the last two MOT's. Common MOT fail, cheap to buy and replace though.

Only problem we've had is that I've flooded it twice, you can't start them from cold, drive a few feet and switch them off again. There's lots of forum advice on this, I keep forgetting, but I do know how to recover it from flooding now..

Oil consumption depends on how hard you drive it, I buy 5 litres every year, top up every 2 months - can't say this is really a problem, it's semi synth oil so not expensive.

Now car is approaching 6 years old, I'll need to change the front and rear discs for the MOT, exhaust has a rattle, might be a heat shield, could be the cat falling to bits (poss expensive)

Nice car to drive, excellent handling, miss the turbo kick give the linear power delivery, needs snow tyres (nearly as bad as 3 series BMW, I keep a spare full set of wheel with snow tyres)

Fuel consumption again depends on how hard it's driven, I'll get about 250 miles from a full tank.

Reasonably practical as a 2nd family car, wouldn't like it to be the only family car though.

Probably selling ours shortly, looking to get something for a 19 year old to drive, although it may be a toss up whether the Rex goes or the STi3 wagon goes - think the better practicailty of the wagon may mean the Rex goes.

p.s. the Bose stereo is incredible:)

Don't the engines give up around 75k?

yes always get a compression test when buying a rotary, as they sometimes need Rebuilds etc at around 70k
i know this because i am a specialist in rotary and we are always rebuilding rotary literally every other day

You would have thought Mazda would have mastered it by now!!!

The more i looked into them, the more i have put myself off them, shame they never did a nice TD version with a sensible engine :lol1:

I saw your old (I assume) impreza the other day.

Don't get an rx8, where's the turbo? :D

Where i work silverstone autosport specializes in rotarys and subarus , we have seen hundreds of rx7 and rx8's dead and very alive ,

Rx8 suffer with starting issues , huge fault was starter motor was to small , they then upgraded it to a larger one

Coils and leads also very poor , Plugs not cheap either .

engines can fail with as little as 27k on the clock , and ones that have been just driven slowly coke up inside like an egr valve .

Rear stationary bearings fail , cost of a 30 quid bearing but you have to take gearbox out to change

antiroll bar links as said above
and the cat can fail , they used to be a dealer only part at 1200 quid was expensive but they are now available non-gen for 300 quid .

good points

high reving , very nice to drive , very nice gearbox the 6 speed , handle amazine , cracking seats . and there is a supercharger kit available

The guy i work with had a nice dark blue one for sale , its had full rebuild , with new coils plugs and leads etc , on a 05 plate if your intrested .

I'm wondering is some of this 'they give up and need rebuilding at 70K' advice actually is for the RX7 not the RX8.

They are different engines. Latter is supposed to be alot more durable (not being turbo'd helps).

Damn, where was it ? :D

What power engines were available on the RX8 as I had a blast with one a couple of months back in my lowly FN2 Civic Type R (198bhp) and thought he'd leave me but very similar straightline. Maybe its packing a bit more weight.

Don't know exact figures off the top of my head but two available, one with atround 190 and one with around 230 bhp.

Wife had her 2005 RX8 from 19k miles to 35k miles now. Get 21mpg every day to work and back and get more on a run. Is a brilliant car to drive and has been faultless.

Never found a problem getting any Mazda garage to service it or work on it.

Have owned very powerful RX7’s too which were all great. Engines were more prone to failure on the RX7 as they were older generation rotary engines with different tip material.

Car is a cracking every day drive and we use it above my Subaru on most runs. Honestly a brilliant car!

p.s. its up for sale, need an estate now! :) haha

My RX8 needed a "re-build" at 55k. Bought all the bits for £800 and a friend helped replace all the seals and then it was all sweet.

Pass, lol..

Pretty sure it was in Kent somewhere, medway iirc. I'm in 3 or 4 locations a day all over (London, Essex and Kent usually) the place so it's hard to remember.

I've recently bought one. Lovely car with great spec and I love the two tone red/black interior and leather seats. It might not be the fastest thing on the road but that doesn't bother me. Mines the 231.

Fuel wise it doesn't bother me nor does the higher rate of car tax.
There quite a quirky car with it's own unique features.I love the dash set up and the sound system from stock is great. It makes my Subaru one seem even worse than it already is.

I took some advice from the RX8 owners website but there all paranoid to hell with compression tests and some other feature/faults. I ignored a lot of the complaints and fussing and I've still managed to get a nice one with dealer history on an 08 plate.

It revs up to 9k which takes some getting used to as you feel that you should of changed gear a few rpm ago.

Brilliant car for the money :thumb:

http://youtu.be/Bzi2_oiBMmY

this is what you need lol