Chris...when you get a chance brief us on the failure.According to the forum several have had clutch pedal assembly failures but no gas pedals?

 

The way I hear it some Z driver needs to learn that stepping on the pedal harder does not give the RX-8 Tq.

 

 

/\ lol

 

Basically, the plastic pedal support broke just above the top of the gas pedal. Practice starts and Jason's morning runs went great. I noticed the pedal clicking during my first Sat AM run (2nd driver) and got worse when I switched to the other side. The pedal completely broke away as I lifted for the finish and coasted to the staging lane. A quick inspection revealed 4"-5" of the plastic pedal support was still intact so I took my fourth run holding my foot higher in the footwell. This basically left us with an On/Off switch for the throttle.

The local Mazda dealer did not have a part in-stock, so a repair was made to the pedal assembly before the Saturday PM runs with a huge helping hand from EP CRX owner Dr. Howard Sharf who happens to reconstruct bones for a living !

Jason took some photos of Howard's handy work that he will hopefully post up. I'm not sure of the cause other than the driver(s) just trying to mash the pedal through the firewall too many times.

Chris H
2006 RX8 Sport

 

oh man. weak.

 

Hey guys,

I was able to upload the pics of the fix, I'll try to link them here. I didn't feel the pedal changing during my runs, but I do have huge feet and I am kind of a big dude, so perhaps I was pushing the pedal too hard? The pedal stalk itself is actually plastic and could be susceptible to fatigue (or fat drivers )

I priced out a replacement pedal from Mazdaspeed and it is $119, so maybe we should start carrying spares.

Chris, PM me your VIN number and mailing address and I'll send one your way









You can see in the last pic where the break occured...the plastic bends towards the driver, so when the pedal is floored, if your foot is down low enough on the pedal, you can exert quite a bit of leverage on that bend.

Hopefully this will help,

JR

 

For an on-the-fly fix, Dr. Sharf does some nice work!!!

Jay, I've heard of the plastic gas pedals on the Evo X breaking, but never one on an RX-8. It definitely may not be a bad idea to have a spare handy.

 

The C4 Corvette was "prone" to broken gas pedals. At least that is what I was told, so I bought a spare, and as long as I had it I never needed it. However, on two occasions other people had to use my spare and buy me a new one in return.

 

Next time someone is parting out an RX-8, I know what to pick up.