gaz1

i am looking at buying an rx8 but want to know how effective are the improvements to the new engine. i have noticed most series I rx8s have have had a rebuild by 70,000 miles. i know the question "how long does a series II engine last" is a question that can be answered with a straight forward answer but can anyone give me an answer on what the common milage seems to be.
sorry if this has been asked but couldn't find this question in a forum.

pistonhater

It is hard to tell what the longevity of the series II is/would be because there aren't many of them out there and they are not as old...although there are people out there that have put quite a few miles on some of them.

Is the series II that much better? In theory it should be because of the changes mazda made to the engine (added oil injector, different oil pressure levels, etc.). But only time will tell if those changes really added to the potential for longevity and reliability.

gaz1

Iv bought a series 2 with 100000 ks ( not miles) on it got a compression test done buy mazda and it came up 121 120 on all 6 faces at 250 rpm. Was surprised about the results if it wasn't mazda would think they were dodge results

9krpmrx8

iTrader: (46)

The series II have proven to be really reliable. Only a couple of failures have been seen over the years here and one of our local members is a tech at the largest Mazda dealer in Texas and they have only done one or two and the failure modes could not be attributed to the engine itself, one overheated and had been tracked and the other was due to a clogged cat. But they also do not get to tear them down at the dealer so they can only speculate what the failure mode is. Just as a comparison, he estimates that his dealer has done more than 500 SI RX-8's. Two of them were mine,