In a sealed, soundproofed and temperature-controlled room at Mazda's engine plant No. 2 here, parts that elsewhere have been engineered and manufactured using computers are painstakingly assembled by hand into the Renesis engines that power the RX-8.

Working with palpable concentration, seven workers hand-assemble rotors, housings, eccentric shafts, stationary gears, seals, bolts and other parts into the final engine. Time per engine: 35 to 40 minutes


This came from Autoweek...so Seven engines per hour times 8 hour shift= 56 engines a day..so we can expect to see

280 per week...

 

Isn't that nice that those Japanese build those rotary engines by hand... Just like DaimlerChrysler AMG without paying an AMG price...(last time I check how much a CLK55 V8 5.4 engine cost like 40,000... you can check your local dealer for pricing =)

They had an engine per person building the engine in like 4 hrs, since they had a VERY .. VERY nice computerized & organized way of getting their tools & parts. It used to be 12 people building the engines now I think it's like 40 people to build engines.

 

Hand Built?

Is that good or bad?

Some engines will be built right and some ?

One guy can have a hangover and then that engine could have problems?

Just think if that engine was built in Mexico?
The roters will be rolling down the street in front of the RX-8.

 

We're talkin' Japan here! I can think of no better work ethic than they have in Japan. I have complete confidence on the engine build quality. IMHO

 

it's true that the Japanese culture toward profession and work is encouraging to say the least when it comes to "do-it-right" (i've had a japanese gf, and have many japanese friends...), in the same industrious sense as Germans...

but we must also remember that this isn't some schmoe, it's a highly skilled technician who's probably been in the Mazda factory or in the company building rotaries for years... it's not like Mazda stopped making the 13BREW in 1995, and only just started to produce the RENESIS a few months ago...

 

keep in mind too that the renesis has sooo few moving parts and so little is needed to put it together. There is a video circling the web of a guy putting the two rotors and housings together in about 5 minutes. Since even the simplest piston engine can have as many as 30-40 moving parts, the renesis is like henry fords assembly line wet dream.

 

That's a cool video. It shows the correct phasing at 180º apart with a blue dot.

 

Linkage?

 

search the media section... it was one of GoodDuck's, i think...