When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Hybrid rx8.. runs on oil (mostly) and some petrol...help ?
Hi from the Netherlands !
I bought my 2004 RX8 last december after a decade of drewling over them, its a HP version with 153000km and supposedly 30k on the new engine. I am having some troubles with it but at least its not my daily. I work on it when i have the time......i do feel the need to touch it everytime i walk past it on the driveway 😆.
I hope to get out of the new member ban soon ... maybe you guys can help me by discussing my biggest issue with the car.... yeah its your advice or rebuild... thats how bad i think it is....
Starting off the car drove and the previous owner was scared of the sound of a ratteling ssv valve. After a few kilometers i lost power and the engine stalled. The catalytic converter was completely clogged.... i installed a decat and replaced the sparkplug and ignition coils to get it running fresh again. It started right away and ran beautifully! Next thing i noticed was blue smoke from the exhaust and high oil consumption : (. Maybe that is why my cat burned up.... did it ingest so much oil that it started burning in there ?
So now i am left with the question.... would an internal seal be broken ... or :
- Is the omp bad and injecting too much oil
- Is there carbon buildup in/under a seal and can it be loosened up with engine flush ?
- Will the problem stop with using a SOHN adapter I bought last month ?
Any thoughts/ advice or previous experiences you d like to share with this long time rotary loving newby?
Has this excessive oil consumption been happening for a long time or did you just notice it before posting ? If it's a new thing I'd take it on a long hard drive and see if it clears up.
otherwise :
The most likely scenario is that the oil control rings are worn which unfortunately ...... means a rebuild.
The omp isn't really capable of injecting so much oil that it visible smokes. So it's not that. Who did the rebuild? It's easy to rebuild a rotary, it's hard to rebuild it so you don't have to rebuild it again.
Has this excessive oil consumption been happening for a long time or did you just notice it before posting ? If it's a new thing I'd take it on a long hard drive and see if it clears up.
otherwise :
The most likely scenario is that the oil control rings are worn which unfortunately ...... means a rebuild.
HI ! Thanks for answering first of all !
When i took the first drive it did not smoke the whole thing started after the CAT failed. I dont know if it is possible that the back pressure (from the clogged exhaust) got so high in the engine that the side seals or oil control rings failed.....
Would this also give a loss of compression?
I can make a video and post it on youtube if it helps, like i said besides this it runs great.
The omp isn't really capable of injecting so much oil that it visible smokes. So it's not that. Who did the rebuild? It's easy to rebuild a rotary, it's hard to rebuild it so you don't have to rebuild it again.
HI ! Thanks for the reply
Unfortunately i only have the name of the shop where the engine got mounted (in germany) and a bill for the engine. So it was probably swapped out for a rebuilt one. The shop doesnt seem to exist anymore but wasnt a rotary specialist or mazda dealer for shure. The previous owner drove 20.000 km with it so in dont think he had this problem from the start.
With the sell he only pointed out that the car had been sitting for 6 months because he was afraid the ticking noise of the ssv was coming fron inside the engine. He wasnt a very technical guy but he kept all the bills from what he spent on the car so i had some idea of what was done on the car.
Not so much back pressure but heat - yes that's possible. Dead cats kill engines.
Friggin cats.....
So yeah ..sucks to take apart an engine with such low miles on it . Hopefully the housings and irons are in good shape so i can use them again. I will try to get a kit asap and maybe take it appart over the winter. Do you have a favorite apex seal? Just OEM or something else?
Don't rebuild your engine, get a known good rebuilt from an expert or new one from Mazda. You don't want to carry over whatever problems you have with big parts of your current engine to the rebuild. That's a quick way to do this all again soon. Do you know what exactly was included in the rebuild it received? If it was just apex seal swaps, that's not really a rebuild.
But before all that, get a compression test to confirm the problem. There are other ways to get oil in the exhaust, for example it might be barfing oil into the intake via the oil fill neck. The last thing you want is to go through a rebuild only to find out the problem is still on the car (again)
07-05-2023, 05:19 PM
