Gomez,
I look forward to seeing the results of your experiment.

BTW, here's what it says in the 2004 Owner's Manual on page 5-16
"Power steering is only operable when the engine is running. If the engine is off or if the power steering system is inoperable, you can still steer, but it requires more physical effort."

Regarding the above statement, I'm not sure if engine off is the same as stalled engine with ignition key still in on position - but we'll know how it really works after you report back .

rx8cited

 

Been there, done that... bought the T-Shirt

https://www.rx8club.com/lounge-4/our-attempted-trip-orlando-meet-26623/

 

Kudos to you Mr M, I've just given the car a wash and parked it in the garage.....stomped on the brake pedal, engaged first gear and dumped the clutch at 1000rpm. Sure enough, I stalled the car and the power steering kept working.

I love it when an experiment comes off . Now I just need to find a good use for this feature other than having my steering continue to work when I run out of fuel at 110kph.....Hmmm....... :p

Hope I haven't just flooded a cold engine

Gomez.

 

Just got back from the Mazda dealer. They say that they couldn't find anything wrong with my power steering but they suspect that an electrical connector was a bit loose. This seems like an acceptable diagnosis to me since the problem I was having was intermittant and went away after the car warmed up.

I asked the tech to tell me if there was an power steering failure error stored in the log but he never got back to me.

 

Good to hear that.

I tried again turning the key OFF and clutch in while coasting on a small hill at ~25mph. There was a definate increase in steering load so I knew the eletric steering was off, but it was still not bad and not much more different than my RX7 (with manual steering) was. I feel it was much easier than any standard hydrolic power steering vehicle I have driven when the engine stopped or belt came off. So bottom line is with the electronic fail safe, as GOMEZ posted, and my test, the RX8 has a very safe steering system.