It's been 5 days since I've been in front of a computer, but I remember reading something somewhere that the RX-8's ECU is set to run rich for a certain number of miles, so the engine can't be abused too much during break-in? probably BS :dunno:

 

it's the theory because that was true for all the previous turbo rotaries (turbo II's and i'm told 3rd gens are the same), the engine is running very rich i've seen a fuel map in conjuction with the dyno graph and it supports the theory

also the theory about why the power is down is that was the reason the cars were in port for so long, the japanese cars currently don't have any kind of recall on them for a power shortage and they've been released and worked on a bit longer, so either way we know that the RX-EVOLV was capable of 280hp, with the exact same engine, so the fuel maps are very open to some more aggressive tuning (as the cost of emissions though)

 

I think it's nice. My cuz picked his up recently and he's been breaking it in slowly.

I saw a silver one with the Mazdaspeed kit in Japan like the one Beav has in his sig. A huge headturner!

 

I followed a red one this afternoon after lunch for a few minutes... I was gonna rev on him... but it was some older guy and we were at a turn signal :rick:

I could say I raced one, y0!... and lost... hard...

 

it's not that fast in a straight line, it's very fast on a road course (or auto-x in my case)

 

ill bet its a hell of a lot faster than a 95 civic.

anyway, people on the mazdatech board have been talking about the recall. seems a little far fetched, ill believe it when i see it.

 

the power decrease is verified, it's now what the mazdausa.com website says, in that case i believe they will treat it just like they did the miata, which does include the option of a buyback, although i'd say fewer than 1% opted for it, to people that own or have driven the cars nothing has changed, it's a fast fun car, just one spec is down for what was expected

 

http://www.rx8forum.com/showthread.p...347&perpage=50

And yeah, mazdausa.com now says 238 hp for the 6-speed and 197 hp for the automatic. You gotta give it to them for handling it so quickly as opposed to the few months that it took for the Miata when it had this problem or the even longer time it took for Ford to deal with the SVT Cobra. This took what, like a week tops?

Oh, and it is entirely possible that the motors are simply down on power because they have a long break-in period. Supposedly the tolerances are a lot tighter than on the old 13b and they're designed to take a long time for the apex seals to fully seat against the rotor housings. I'd like to see a dyno of an RX-8 with say 10,000 or so miles on it, once someone actually puts that kind of mileage on one.

 

I heard the power drain is mostly due to emissions-standards. The Japanese-spec cars, which have been sale for almost 6 months now, are still rated at the original 250hp. There have been no reports from Japan about cars running lower than claimed-hp ratings.

 

why would that be BS? my bmw had that in the ECU. i felt power difference before and after 12000 miles.