has anyone ever seen it working? or just in the static display? it might not even be coming from the PCM just electronic representations from the senders. im thinking of doing the same thing and there is someone working on an interface.

 

I never received a straight answer on it - so who knows how they did it, but it does say Mazdaspeed

 

but take a look at those numbers... they make no sense!

the temp says 128... so if that in deg F its really cool (and ranged only to 150... yuck) and if thats in deg C (which you would think so seeing this was from the j-spec car) the oil would be smoking

 

well it is near its redline and sitting still

 

I dont have sat nav ,but seen these really cool triple gauge pods here a while ago that fit into the same location(middlle font dash) I cant find them here(says is no longer available)..If anyone knows where these can be purchased please let me know..Oh I did see this really square (ugly)Tri gauge pod but thats not it ....I'd rather buy one than do a 1st timer.

 

go to japanparts.com and search for mazdaspeed guages

 

thats almost 260 deg F... at the redline you'd have burned oil vapor instead of oil

 

The temp gague is heavily center-weighted though - meaning that the center/normal position covers a pretty wide range of temperatures. This is pretty standard for most cars since people get freaked when the gague moves up and down as the thermostat operates.

On the FD if the temp was anywhere between 130-ish and 230-ish it'd be in the center of the readout. I'd suspect the rx8 gauge would be pretty similar. This is apparent from how quickly it goes from cold to normal and that it never moves from the normal position in usual circumstances.

I have seen my temp gague go higher than normal only in the case where it was the end of a track-day at willow-springs and it was 106F out. In that case I was pretty much flat-out all the time and I'd see the gauge go a click or two over normal until I got off the gas a little.

Simon.

 

Hmmm. just recently I had a oil light come on but no needle change I should look into it.?

 

I've had my 2005 RX8 since January 19th, 2006. I've filled this bugger up several times with just city driving and I haven't checked the oil "every second fill-up". With just under 800 kilometres (500 American dollars) am I putting the engine at risk by not taking that adventure under the hood to see the dipstick? As this thread indicates, an oil-hungry car has a stupid-light for its oil level.....really, what's the dealy here?

 

Did anyone try to get it to work correctly at the Mazda dealers?

 

oil light is quantity of oil (oil level) not Pressure. check your oil level.

 

this thread is about Pressure not Level. yes you should check your Oil Level.

Check every fill up or so until you get an understanding of your oil usage and then adjust you check schedule accordingly.

 

Lol, I should refrase that sorry, I was due for an oil change about 200 miles away, so my light came on yea little oil. But shouldnt the pressure gauge change to, less oil less pressure?

P.s. Changed oil yesterday everything is fine.

 

The two are not directly related. The light shows whether the oil level in the oil pan is low, I believe something like1/3rd or less above the low mark on the dip stick, but I could be wrong. The gauge indicates whether you have minimal oil pressure (see ZOOM44's post above for the exact number).

You can be low on oil but still have normal oil pressure in the engine and can safely operate the car.

 

no because it isnt a proper oil pressure guage as is explained in this thread. it is on or off- you have more than 5 psi or less. if more its on and up if less its off and down.

 

And can someone explain to me why we can put a man on the moon, but we can't put an oil *quantity* guage in the car? When you get right down to it, having to check a frigging dipstick is pretty 19th century. Especially when the dipstick on the 8 is so notoriously difficult to get at.

 

do what i did with my old firebird, change the oil and forget to put an oil filter on, then start the car. Only then will you see that bad boy move. (in my defense i was 16 and home alone)

 

Oil quantity or oil pressure - isn't the issue really oil flow to lubricate the engine. Has there ever been gauge for oil flow? I know these would be issues - high temperature etc. - but seems like it would be valuable in highly modified engines.

Anyone ?

 

As I posted elsewhere, you can. The French have been doing it for decades, from a little bulb linked with a capilliary pipe, to electronic sensors, most up-spec Citroens will report the oil level (and some basic ones, too), Renaults quite often have it as well.

I don't find the dipstick difficult to get at at all - open the bonnet, there it is. It can easily be removed without removing the plastic cover. However, the oil filler is another matter - my Beetle had a hole in the plastic cover for the oil cap, I certainly wouldn't change my mind about buying an RX8 if Mazda sacrificed some of the 'pretty' under the bonnet (I don't happen to think acres of black plastic are pretty) for some practicality.

Or dry sump the bugger, like a Previa, and have a visible, clear oil tank.

 

no...

 

You're confusing technical capability with economic viability and/or engineering judgment. There's no question the technololgy exists to do that, but when designing a car there are many trade-offs that are made by the design/engineering/marketing team. Those judgments are often controlled by factors other than the simple ability to build and install particular components.

I guess you haven't owned many cars because the dip stick on the RX-8 is easy to reach compared to some other cars.

 

Except that in the 21st century, when cars have everything gadget under the sun except power sun visors, where people come on this site and bitch because the 8 doesn't have automatic headlights or other such froufrou, you can't make me believe that a simple oil quantity guage is so difficult/expensive. Every car has a gas guage, they don't make you do a dipstick for that! Now, granted, maybe mundane piston cars don't need to have their oil level monitored so closely, so maybe it's not a good trade-off for them, but in a rotary that is specifically proclamed to need frequent oil checks, they could've sprung for one.

Seriously, how much would it cost? Keeping in mind that they'd get back the cost of having the current idiot light.

I've owned six plus regularly drove one of my parents' back in the day. The 8 is the only one that ever required me to carry a flashlight just so I can see to put the stick back in the hole.

 

The new 3-series BMW doesn't have a dipstick- it has an electonic oil gauge. So they're going that way.

The E46 3 series (99-04) has a dipstick and an oil level sensor. The oil light turns yellow when you are low, and red when you are really low. It also does this cool thing where it will turn yellow after you turn the car off and stay lit for 10 seconds if it detected a semi-low condition while you were driving, but not low enough to throw a yellow light. So yellow after key out means check the oil sometime soon. Yellow while driving means pull over very soon. Red means PULL OVER NOW!

Unfortunatley, the sensors on the E46's are notoriously iffy and break all the time. I guess they fixed that on the newer design if they decided to totally remove the dipstick.

 

that sounds pretty nifty. i wouldn't mind having something like that in the 8.