perhaps you can share more on your experience with ur rx-8
type e or s?
i am noob here...
sure, it was an impulse buy, I was test driving a CX9 when the salesman showed me the silver series2 auto, 2009 model, when I return to the showroom. I never intend to buy a sports car, especially in Malaysia, as the roads here are too tough (speed bumps, pot holes, terrible ride surfaces). After a few km, I never had so much fun on four wheels! Even though it was an auto, it changed gear so fast with the paddle shifters like a DSG, only much smoother and it has this gear hold feature that automatically keeps the car in the gear you enter a curve, which provides for instant response when you accelerate out. The engine response is instantaneous because the engine has only 3 moving parts! After doing some research on the rotary engine, I decided to buy the car, as it seemed to be an amazing piece of engineering, and it handled so well....; light weight and perfect 50-50 distribution, super smooth rotary engine sound right up to about 7500rpm (apparently will happily rev to 13,000 if limiter is removed!) and so much power from such a small displacement. What is really impressive about this car is the way it changes direction so fast and so precise...I believe nothing else can do it on the road. On a twisty road it's just a fantastic drive. If you look at the spec, you can see why, incredibly light weight and perfect center of gravity...nearly all the mass of the car is between the axles.
From my "research" I found many of the US 2004-05 models suffered from engine failures, loss of compression due to failed apex seals. However, many seemed to be caused by the owners using synthetic oils which were not recommended by Mazda, in fact "banned" by Mazda US, however their laws over there seemed to favor the consumer more so Mazda extended the engine warranties to 100,000km or 8 years, even on cars running synthetic oils. The RX8 in other countries not affected apparently....different emission control standards. The recon RX8's I believe we see here are mostly from Japan and quite ok. Since I bought a new one from Bermaz with 3 year warranty I am not affected by the Series 1 Renesis engines, the Series 2 brought out in late 2008/09 had so many changes to the engine and chassis, they are completely different cars to the original RX8, and much more "sorted" I believe. For example, the oil meter pump is now electric and controlled by the ECU, and there are 3 oil injectors per rotor (previously only 2) to lubricate the apex seals. Also the coil packs are now protected from heat damage by insulators (another weakness on the original cars). Mazda still do not recommend the use of synthetic or semi-synthetic oils for the new engines, which is fine by me, I don't believe the rotary in normal use needs it. For track days, maybe, and the Idemitsu rotary synthetic is the only one I would use, but I never go to the race track! Other than the extensive engine changes to the new models, the chassis also got a lot of changes making the car stiffer and better handling, as well as some stylistic changes.
Driving a rotary car is a very different experience to a normal piston engine, and really good fun. I wish I had the chance to drive a turbo RX7, which was an incredibly fast and furious car! Maybe one day I will do a turbo conversion on my RX after the warranty expires, bump up the output to about 400bhp, which equals around 300bhp/ton!...LOL!!