Basically, while rotaries are supposed to burn some oil, the Renesis motors in the RX-8 have been injecting too much oil and not burning it all, which gunks up the catalytic converter. Mazda is having all the cars inspected, and instructing the dealers to yank the motor in any car that is showing signs of too much oil consumption. They'll be replaced with new and/or remanufactured motors.

Article as follows:

After suffering a black eye from disclosing that it won't count RX-8 owners' opinions in its internal customer-satisfaction scores, Mazda says it may have to replace the engines in many of its flagship sports cars.

The voluntary recall of all 2004 and 2005 vehicles, and some 2006s, is expected to be announced this week or next. It involves damage to the catalyst resulting from oil leaks in the RX-8's rotary engine.

Any engine that does not pass a vacuum test must be replaced, said Robert Davis, head of product development and quality at Mazda North American Operations.

Engines prone to failing the test are mostly in hot climates and use synthetic oils.

Mazda also will check each RX-8's battery and starter, which tend to fail in cold climates.

"We're going to give these cars the white-glove treatment," Davis said. "We would rather replace the engine than have the dealer crack them open."

Davis would not disclose the projected failure rate of the engines or the cost to replace them.

Mazda has a remanufacturing center in North Carolina that will rebuild faulty engines and return them to service.

The recall comes after a video Webcast by two dealers who attended the July 11-13 National Dealer Advisory Council meetings in Newport Beach, Calif., was leaked on the Internet.

In the video, dealers said problems with the RX-8 were unfairly lowering Mazda customer-satisfaction scores.

Mazda informed the dealers that RX-8 owners would continue to be surveyed, but that the responses would not factor into dealer customer-satisfaction scores.

Mazda has issued service bulletins on such trouble spots as squeaky brakes and engine flooding.

http://rotarynews.com/node/view/822

 

Hot damn, what a shame. Luckily for Mazda the RX8 is fairly limited edition car and didn't sell too many.

 

welp, my dad's gonna be pissed.

 

maybe they will put a real engine in there.

 

"Engines prone to failing the test are mostly in hot climates and use synthetic oils."


People cant use synthetic oil in their Rotary engine... it does not burn properly compared to "dino" oil, and leaves gunk which in turn ruins everything else. (Burning oil is an integral part of the lubrication and cooling of the Rotary). The owners manual doesnt say to use it and if you talk to Mazda North America they'll say they dont reccomend it. Expansion in hot running Rotary engines also lessens the compression ratio - especially in hot climates.

 

It's not quite clear if Mazda is at fault or people don't know how to operate rotaries.

 

I think Mazda pushed the RX-8 into production too quickly as they already overstated HP in it and now the engines are prone to failure - Mazda maybe a neat little automaker but they just don't have the resources to push an engine technology that is not widely accepted. For instance up unil the 2.3 liter in the Mazda 3, Mazda used the FSDE/FSZE engines for over 15 years - it was on many Fords too after Ford bought them. The rotary development team was discontinued and some engineers kept the program alive in a garage on their own dime (this is not much development for a production engine). Mazda quickly revived it with spurred sales and the "zoom zoom" marketing that they put the engine into production too quickly to figure out the longevity based problems which we are seeing now leading to such a major recall.

 

I could put money on it being the Apex seals.

 

isnt this sort of the same thing that happened to the older generation RX's with rotaries?

 

you'd lose a lot of money then.

Apex seals were only weak in the 3rd gen FDs, and even then the stock seals could hold 700 hp if properly tuned.

the problem was stupid ricers would get their hands on the car when the price dropped and add boost/modifications without retuning the car - the seals aren't weak per se as they can hold tons of horsepower, but they're sensitive - a little detonation from improper tuning and they're toast.

My old RX-8 held 10 psi with no problems. There's one in Puerto Rico holding 18 psi on stock internals.