What ever happen to changing your battery and drive deal. Noooo... not when it comes to the RX-8. My battery decided to die on me today, so I changed it. Car starts up right way - good. Car die at idle - bad. I may not be the only one with this problem. I did search and could not find anyone posting this already. I have the M flash so maybe that is my problem there. It looks like I have to follow the drive cycle procedure mention by Charles Hill at BHR to fix my issue. /rant off. Anybody else have to do this at all???

 

Okay now I seriously have doubt myself on doing maintenance on my 8. I did the drive cycle procedure in order for the PCM to relearn the fuel trim and it does not work. On top of that I got the CEL now. The car does not seem to have any inherent powerloss from the CEL being on. Something else is going on. The car dies at idle rpm when coming to a stop. I have checked for leak, loose wires, and what not. I may have to tow my car to the dealer and have them look at it and possibly do a compression check and update the PCM. My 8 is 04 6 speed MT with 61 K miles on it, in case you are wondering. If anyone have experienced this and got it fix, please post and let me know what you did to fix it. Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

I afraid to think my spark plug would be foul, but the car still start fine so I am not really sure on it.

 

Here is the link, https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-tech-garage-22/help-engine-dies-idle-after-spark-plug-wire-change-145174/, to the drive cycle that was post from another thread that I started when I was changing my spark plug wires and found that the spark plug was the issue. I only have about 20 k on the current set unless it is really an issue. I will have to wait this weekend to check it.

 

alternator gone bad? loose connections?

 

nope. alternator is fine. My old battery was getting some charge when i drove the car over the weekend. Battery died because it lost all its charges due to the car not being driven for about a day and 1/2. I checked all the connections too. I think my spark plug may have gone south as I think the CEL might be for the misfire from all the times that I had to restart the car from a stall while burning in the drive cycle.