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In Reply to: RE: American manufacuring in the 60s posted by bcowen on June 18, 2016 at 11:20:28
I've never even seen an RX-2 in real life, but my intro to rotaries was I was given an RX-3 to drive one year for my "gopher" summer job. What a total blast to drive that was, an amazing city car if you wanted to have fun, decades ago when you could still do that in a largish city. My first new car was an RX-7, it replaced a GTO...
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This is my daily driver right now. Bought it new in '05, and just hit 81k miles without blowing up the first engine. :)
I've had a lot of cars in my life, but only two I've truly loved: an '83 Nissan 280ZX, and this one. I'll drive it until something goes wrong that just doesn't make economic sense to fix. Then I don't know what I'll do, 'cause Mazda quit making rotaries...
Apparently there's an RX-9 coming. It's going to be "expensive" compared to the RX-8.
Hmmmm, as best I can remember with others, and in my own experience, the rotaries by the time of the RX-7 were noted for their great reliability. Why would you blow up your engine? (Or was that just a joke re your hard use?) I regularly hit 9k with mine. Nothing ever went wrong with that car *mechanically* ('81 model), it was all the electrical accessory doo-dads that eventually went flakey, like mirrors etc.
The "Renesis" engine in the RX-8's was a substantial redesign of the 13B engines used in the RX-7's. In the '04's (first year) and '05's (like mine), the oil metering pump was initially set for too low an injection rate at low RPM's. Lots of blown engines on automatics, as an automatic is always going to operate at the lowest RPM possible. Mine's a stick, and I remember when I took it in for the ECU flash recall to fix this. When the service guy told me it was mostly low RPM operation that was causing issues, I told him there wasn't any need to mess with mine. :)Beyond that, the RX-8's have garnered a bad reputation for engine reliability with a statistically high number of replacements, even to the point Mazda extended the drivetrain warranty to 8 years/100k miles just to sell the cars. I personally think they shot themselves in the foot by not advising buyers that the engine was a bit different and needed some extra care and attention. Nothing all that cumbersome, but with no effort spent to educate owners or prospective buyers, I'm sure a lot of these engines met their doom needlessly. Mine shows no signs of premature death, but I bought mine already armed with the knowledge needed. "A redline a day keeps the mechanic away." :)
Edits: 06/19/16
Ah, didn't know that. I thought it was the high fuel consumption that was the main downside to the RX-8, and that was what killed it at the dealers.
You combine naturally high fuel consumption with a free-revving engine (and a stick!), and the unknowledgable consumer, and there's going to be some complaints re fuel cost (especially here in Canada).
You may not believe it, but what killed it for me was a back seat that didn't fold down. That's all! Gotta have that, especially with such a tiny trunk, I'm always toting medium-size crap around.
Have a '13 Mustang now. It is a decently free-revving engine, but you don't need to get it "up there" like with a rotary, and with a stick I'm not unhappy at all. Never thought I'd ever own a Mustang. Cheaply made IMO, but works much better than it looks/seems like it would. They actually have got a lot of their shit together in many ways, spruce up the interiors to '80s European standards, and they should make some money...
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