Hi all,

First off im new to this forum, so let me start off by welcominng myself and I hope to get lots of clear and friendly advice from you fellow RX8 owners

So here is the problem, i bout my 2004 RX8 in January 2011 with 33K on it and when I bought it I was told a new clutch had been recently fitted to the car about 1 month previous.

The bitting point was within 1 inch of the floor when I bought it and I just assumed this was fine with this being a new clutch and over time it would slowly raise slightly to a normal level. However to this day and now covered over 1,000 miles since the clutch replacement the bitting point is still the same and when trying to engage 1st & 2nd gear the pedal actually sticks down near the floor and I need to ping the pedal back up with my foot.
This does not happen however in 3rd, 4th or 5th, occassionaly in reverse this occurs.

I took the car to the local main dealer and they looked the car over and said it it was the "clutch master cylinder" so just today I had this replaced and it has made no difference at all to the car, I am back to square one and still no solution as to what is wrong with my car.

Can somebody please try and help and advise of the situation and any possible causes/solutions at all to this?

Many Thanks
Gary

 

Your dealer mis-diagnosed you, and it has nothing to do with anything past/downstream of the clutch pedal. The pedal assembly itself is breaking or has broken. Mazda has a 100,000 mile warranty on that part due to the complaints and NHTSA investigation.

Take a look at this thread: https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-trouble-shooting-95/clutch-pedal-snap-off-8-year-warranty-recall-%7E%7E%7E-132912/

 

I am a new rx8 owner aswell and I just had the exact same issue! Apparently it is an extremely common issue. Your clutch pedal is broken. My mechanic told me the same thing about the master cylinder and the reason the master was leaking was bc the clutch pedal was broken. Now it is fine.

 

Could also be that the person that installed the clutch never adjusted the pedal properly when they were done. However...with it sometimes not returning I would agree that you probably have a snapped pedal. That's easy to look at and verify though.

 

The point of movement that the pedal is at when it breaks seems to be the changing factor of what effect you have. Sometimes the clutch is permanently engaged, sometimes it's permanently disengaged, sometimes in-between and burns out the clutch fast, sometimes it's still functional but REALLY off what it should be, and sometimes it damages the clutch master cylinder.

 

you either have air in the system still as some monkey bled it out when the clutch was replaced(of which i'm not sure why, you don't even need to break open the system to replace the clutch) or the adjustable clutch rod just off the pedal needs to be adjusted due to clutch arm travel variations.

start by bleeding the clutch to be sure there is no air in the system. the slave cylinder is in a crappy spot so a lazy mechanic might try to avoid bleeding the system properly.

if all else fails, loosen the locknut on the adjuster rod at the pedal and lengthen the rod. you should have approximately 3/4" of pedal travel before you feel the clutch start to give any sort of resistance.

 

...or you could read the rest of what was posted, which includes a problem ridiculously common to all RX-8s and one of the possibilities produced by that problem is what he is describing.

 

Thanks for all your comments guys. How difficult is replacing the clutch pedal itself. I am going to check with the guy that he properly bled the system when he replaced the master clutch cylinder.

Just a question also, I have found a clutch pedal for sale but it is from a 231bhp model, yet I have the 192 model. Will this make any difference between the 2 models?

 

No, all clutch pedal assemblies are the same. (other than broken vs non-broken) Supposedly there is an updated one that is stronger, but no one has been able to point to changes or show that it's actually different in the points that matter.

 

What about on how to change the pedal, is this difficult, how many man hours? Cheers

 

Like....1/4th? It's 5 annoying nuts, but just open the driver's door, sit next to the car as far forward as you can, and reach in there, unbolt it, pull it off, slide the new one on, and re-tighten the nuts.

 

^^Oh wait, isn't that my thread

it's 5 "bolts" but 2 of them are really just plastic and you Snap it on.

the rest can be taken of with a 10mm socket (or was it 12?)

you can take it off in under 5 minutes, reinstall another 5.

another thing to keep in mind is that, IF your bracket is actually ok, then your Clutch MASTER/Slave or both cylinder could be failing.

I think I'm the only one on this forum who had Clutch Master Cylinder failure. no idea why. it just did. **** luck ?

 

I want to say I saw 2 or 3 mentions of master cylinder failure, yours included. And yeah, terrible luck, but then, that's your theme isn't it? (or do I have the wrong NY guy?)

I believe both 10mm and 12mm are used. 12mm for the firewall 3 and 10mm for the "ceiling" 2. Just memory though. Everyone who owns this car should have 10mm and 12mm around anyway. You can disassemble 95% of the car with those 2.

 

I have a clutch / clutch pedal issue to report as well, and I wanted to confirm whether or not it is the pedal or bracket that's the problem. For the past few days my clutch has been squeaking very loudly whenever I engage the clutch. My transmission has been having issues engaging second and fourth, but that started before "the squeak".

This is an 04 with 88k miles on the original clutch. I've had it since 53k and learned to drive stick on it.

Regarding a possibly breaking pedal I just crawled inside my car to look. The pedal has some leeway and can move about an inch or two. When I looked up at the bracket itself while pressing and depressing the pedal I watched the bracket flex. I also noticed that the pedal's free range of motion (left to right) occurs no matter where the clutch is; depressed, partial, or disengaged.

So is this a sign of trouble brewing? Thanks for the help!

 

Yup. Mazda might not replace it before it's broken, but it's on it's way out. Shouldn't be flexing at all. Engagement difficulty is a common prelude to pedal failure (though not always seen in all failures)