I bought an RX-8 last Friday and was pretty happy with it until Saturday morning.

My wife took it to town on Saturday and ended up calling me to tell me the engine light came on. I told her to just take it by the dealers and have them check it. She called 10 minutes later telling me that she did not make it.

The dealer towed it in and informed us that the cat converter was clogged and needed to be replaced. Stuff happens!

The thing that concerns me is the mechanic told my wife that with rotary engines you have to rev the engine up to 3700 rpms for about 2 minutes after starting it or it clogs the converters. I had an RX-7 and I never had to do this with that.

Have any of you ever heard of this or does this mechanic not know what he is talking about?

 

You should search for my threads on this. I believe one is at the top on the discussion forum now. My CAT was disintegrated on the inside. READ about my nightmare. My titles are cat. convert.--mileage restored and others.

This is an unpublished recall/bulletin by the way (per Irvine, CA).



RENE

 

It's not a user issue. The mechanic is blowing smoke your way.

 

yeah it doesn't make sense

 

The mechanic is full of it...

There may be a higher propensity for them to clog if you consistently make short trips where the cat never quite gets up to temp for long enough or the engine mix stays rich (or something like that) but there's definately no unwritten-rule about revving a cold engine for minutes to avoid clogging the catalytic converter, its BS.

Simon.

 

The engine was flooded while the dealer had it, or stopping and starting the vehicle AT THE DEALER is what contaminated the cat. They stop and start cars without warming them up all the time...

There is very little chance you could have caused this problem in such a short time, unless you are driving it the same as the dealer (described above). Are you?

This is unfortunate, but it is a warranty issue. Don't pay for that cat!

Good luck.

 

Well guys I don't know maybe Pyros is on to something?...
I was messing around with a 360 a month back when I had ma SES light on and I floored it. When the ove-drive kicked in and the RPM's shot up a BIG poof! of black smoke was behind my car and the light went away?...

 

I'll say it again. The RX's CAT is malfunctioning nationwide. This is a problem they know about. Get it fixed soon, mine was disintegrated on the inside.

RENE

 

Don't worry about it,they have to replace the catalytic converter for 100,000 miles it is a mandate by Federal Law. I do believe you should Rev it up to at least 8,000 RPM at least every 250 miles. This car really doesn't like city driving, like most cars. Besides, what a great excuse to Rev it up.If you just picked it up with very little miles it was defective from the factory regardless how you drove it.

 

After three PO420 "catalytic insufficiency" CEL's, I encouraged the dealer to check the catalytic converter itself, not just re-flash or change the oxygen sensors as they had done. Sure enough, the first honeycomb disc in the top converter had detached from the catalytic converter body and was laying sideways in the converter (this was very visible just looking in the converter after it was removed). This explains the catalytic insufficiency CEL, as well as the fact that power seemed lower than it had been. The disk is about 1.5" thick, and, laying sideways, was restricting exhaust flow, reducing power as well as taking oxygen levels out of spec. Good to hear that the built-in diagnostics picked this up. My 8 is running beautifully again.

 

glad to hear you got everything taken care of.

 

Actually what the mechanic said is very true. I work for a dealership, what the mechanic left out was you only have to rev it up to that if your driving less than the required time needed for the engine to reach its required operating temp. If you consistently drive the car for just a mile or just move it out of the driveway or into the garage you need to rev it up for the required time to reach operating temp. If you have any other questions please feel free to email me.

 

That is the BIGGEST line of BS i have ever heard....man, now i dont even feel safe about what my mechanics say! The sad thing is, the mechanic wouldn't have told your wife that if you were there. When it comes to cars, people take advantage of the women because they think they dont know anything about cars. Next time go with your wife to the dealer and see what they tell you.

 

Ok maybe what he said isn't 100% true but there is some truth to what he is saying, he just left out the part about operating temp. The main thing to consider is if your just moving the car or driving just a block you have to get the car to operating temp or your converter will become clogged.

 

btw emmisions is 8/80 not 100k The rich condions and the flooding mainly from transport is whats killing the cats. Most sales people are warning the customers to let the car warm up before killing it.

 

Does this mean you start and turn off your car as much as you like, once it's at operating temp? For example, at car washes -- car off while being washed; five minutes later, start up and drive 30 feet to get dried off; five minutes later, start up again, drive a block to grab a bite to eat.

Oh course this wouldn't be done to an extreme, but the above scenario would be quite common while running errands during the day.

 

Hey, this is something you just need to accept. The RX8 is a special car with a special motor, if this is such a problem maybe you should trade it in for a Kia that you won't have to deal with. If the worst thing I have to do is warm the car up a bit before turning it off I'm ok with that. If what you want is a grocery getter you bought the wrong car.

Black RX8, 18" Motegi DP5 Gunmetal Rims, Fender Strakes, very dark tint, red/black interior, all Factory options, origional RX8 third brake light. K&N Typhoon Intake.

 

You betcha, or at least in CA.

Remember, we all gave up between 9 and 25 HP to achieve this so it is only fair that we get something back out of our reluctant "investment".

 

But Mazda is stupid in a sense. They should have huddled together with the bean counters, figured out the costs of honoring the warranty on the cats over the next 5 yrs in North America and left the 8 at its original specs. I.e. 250 hp, original engine mapping etc....
They would not have suffered the pr fiasco of reducing hp, engine flooding problems, m-flashes, etc. As a manufacturer, they should have accepted it and work on new cat design for upcoming model years. Instead, they tried stop-gap fixes which I think are detimental to their cars and image.

 

I think the best we can hope for is they accept there needs to be changes made not for just the 05, 06, future models etc, but for the 04's we have al;ready paid for, and when they do figure out a way to correct the cat and other small problems the recall and fix the problems without us paying for it twice.

 

I agree with your first statement!

Regardless, what scares me is that here we are, over a year later, and they don't seem to be any closer to a solution to the CAT problem. That usually means they are not working on a solution (at least for the RX-8).

 

Actually emissions is different depending on which region of the country you live in. In CA its 100k