Same locations and bolt placement.

Only difference is this one shrouds the sides of the ESS. As you can see there is a hole in the top.

That ^ will also help answer the question as to why you clean it.

Easiest way i've found to remove it is after the bolt is out, Twist the ESS as far as you can back and forth while pulling down. It popped out pretty quickly for me and as you can see this cover is completely covered in oil and grease. The seal was shot on this one so i swapped with another i have (front cover). I'll replace this seal, clean everything up and it'll be used on another engine.

Travis

 

Thanks again.

 

BTW, for any SII owners reading this, on my 2009 I found that the bolt is above the sensor. It is easily accessible from above with the airbox removed. I did not see an easy way to get to it from the bottom. The SII service manual also says to access it from above.

 

I'm an SII RX8 owner and I just did this job yesterday. It was fairly easy for me as I have an AEM intake setup. It is a bit tight in there but with a little finesse it can be done by an average joe from the top side. I completely removed it and cleaned both sensor and connectors with electrical contact cleaner. I was having intermittent idle issues when coming to red lights and stops and cleaning the ESS and resetting the NVRAM profile has seemed to fixed my issues. Hope this helps anyone with similar issues.

 

So... I was able to remove my eccentric shaft sensor bolt and remove the sensor to clean it, but while I was putting the bolt back in, it TORQUED OFF. There is a very little bolt left exposed, but I hadn't even tightened it down on the sensor yet.

Can ANYONE tell me how to remove the remainder of the bolt that is in there now? There's no room to drill it out as far as I can tell - or did I just seriously total my car over a $2 bolt...

 

Your biggest problem will be access. If its sticking put enough to grab with vice grips or something and carefully back it out. Use some heat on the front cover...the aluminum will expand and make it easier.
If you cant get a grip on it your only other choice is to drill it out carefully and try not to screw up the threads

I wouldnt want to try it in the car.... and removing the front cover to do it out of the car is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Might want to get a pro to do it

Good luck

 

If you get seriously stuck, and your sensor is in good shape you can just contact cement it in place. Or use a high heat epoxy etc. Just clean the surfaces really good and make sure it sets in the right position, it will work just fine. I'm a fabricator and I wouldn't want to tap that bracket in the car.

This is obviously a semi-permanent solution so a new sensor might not be a bad idea. Prep with wire bush and brake clean.

 

I would hope that you dont mean contact cement....might get away with JB weld or another structural epoxy for a while but i wouldnt expect that to last very long

 

Last couple times I've done JB weld plastic to metal it's disappointed me. I've done a lot of rubber to steel with industrial contact cement at works that goes pretty well. I mean the sensor weighs what like 75-100 grams? I dare say, but super glue applied correctly would probably be plenty.

 

The problem would be if it falls off.... at best it will screw up the sensor and harness on the teeth of the trigger wheel.... at worst it could ping and take out the motor

Either way i dont see a cheap fix unless you know how to pull the front cover off and fix it properly.

It isnt really that difficult....but if you dont do it perfectly you will end up having to pull the engine out to fix it

 

Thanks guys - I appreciate the support here - I was able to get the sensor lined up back in place, so I used some high temp silicone to put it back in place, albeit probably temporary. I haven't tried to run it again since I think I may get one more drive out of it before the silicone lets go... and does one of the two things that dannobre said above...

Right before all of this (and what got me into this mess) was that I was diagnosing a rear rotor misfire, only to eventually find out that my expensive "never have to replace the coils again" BHR ignition system gave up after 25,000 miles in 24 months (no different than the Mazda coils...) I still had my 100C Mazda coils in my parts closet and when I took out my BHR system and those back in, my rear rotor misfire resolved. So much for the upgrade...

The engine has 123,000 miles on it, and I've been thinking I'll have to finally ditch the car and find something else, but I have to say I do love this car, so I'm having a hard time giving up on her.

SO... I live in the Atlanta area and Mazmart is about a 30 minute drive from me, so I'm seriously considering a new Mazda reman engine that has been checked over by Mazmart. I got a quote from them to do the work there and the engine is actually all new housings and rotors at this point. Rather than pay the $$ to have this engine pulled to "hopefully" be able to extract this broken bolt and put this one back in, wouldn't it just be smarter to drop a new engine in if I'm paying to take the old one out?

Thoughts????

 

Not having any way to get at the bolt to extract it (and without the tools necessary to drop the subframe), I drove the car over to Mazcare in the Atlanta area to see if Charlie could help. He ran into the same access problems that I did, but has the experience and tools necessary to drop the subframe in order to drill out that $1.80 bolt that I broke.

Needless to say, it's all fixed now, but that was a rather expensive mistake not thoroughly cleaning the receiver and using a new bolt... While it was up, I had my compression numbers run, and I'm around 6.0 everywhere, so it's very even around all the rotor faces and across both rotors. At 123k miles, I'm not disappointed in the compression. It's not brand new, nor is it what it was a few years and 40,000 miles ago, but who'd expect it to be?

I have to say that Charlie at Mazcare was absolutely stellar. I wasn't able to get in quickly, but he took outstanding care of me and my car. I'm sure it's already been said, but if you're looking for a knowledgable and capable shop to work on your RX8 in the southeast, Mazcare is the place to go.

 

S2 owner here. Thanks for pointing this out, as I felt silly reading everyone talk about how clear it is to see this thing from underneath the car, and I couldn't find it for an hour. I still have the OEM airbox, so that's also why I couldn't find it easily from under the hood either.

But at least now I know for next time.