[OcTaNe91]

my friend just bought a mazda RX-8 and its got the usual Rotary engine in it and i was wondering if someone could explain to me how this works? does it get better or worse fuel economy than a standard 4 stroke engine? does it have more or less power? does it run on cylinders or is it just a single triangular gear?

[j0k3r]

Well first, you start with Google, then you type "How do rotary engines work?" After that you select one of the copious links provided.

Howstuffworks "How Rotary Engines Work"

[Chainblade]

RX-8's are so nice. I want one! but ya, I think j0k3r answered your question quite well

[Juballharshaw]

Originally Posted by j0k3r

Well first, you start with Google, then you type "How do rotary engines work?" After that you select one of the copious links provided.

Howstuffworks "How Rotary Engines Work"

Google?

What is this Google you speak of?

[funkgab]

read up on rotary, its intresting, and rotary gets worse gas mileage

[Jishory]

Originally Posted by Chainblade

RX-8's are so nice. I want one! but ya, I think j0k3r answered your question quite well

wouldnt be so fun to need an engine rebuild at 100k miles

[j0k3r]

Originally Posted by Jishory

wouldnt be so fun to need an engine rebuild at 100k miles

Rotary engines are a neat concept and produce an AMAZING amount of power for their size, but yeah...they are pretty much horribly unreliable.

[sims]

its not that the rotory design is unreliable, its that they require religious and meticulous maintained right from the very get go or it will never be properly reliable. They're also very picky about how their driven, you need to pretty regularly drive it hard, just not to hard.

Heat, detonation and rotory's never really worked out great either. the turbo RX-7's had alot of problems but their NA counterparts were generally ok. I think that if you got an RX-8 brand new and took proper care of it you'd be fine. You however simply can't trust a used one unless you know the PO. a guy I know is on his THIRD motor at 100K. each time instead of properly rebuilding he gets a j-spec motor and keeps running into problems with them.

[Mr. Ali]

One problem I want to mention about the RX-8 is that if you start the car to move it (like 50 feet) on a COLD morning and stop the engine, CONGRATULATIONS you just flooded the engine and now it wont start. Yeah, this happened to my coworker.

[Miller]

the rotary engine's hp to displacement ratio is nuts. the NA rx-8's are somewhere around 180hp/liter stock, the TT rx-7's were around 200, and built racing rotary's are around 300. you dont see those kind of numbers in piston engines to often. but lifespan on a rotary engine is around 100k, i know the rx-7's had a lot of cooling issues.

[MSP]

I work with a woman who basically lemon lawed an RX-8. Counting the original motor she went through 3, and she had far less than 100K miles. Mazda bought it back from her to avoid it being reported as a lemon.

[bigwill51534]

It is common to have to rebuild the older rotary motors every 40,000-50,000 miles. Just a common rule of thumb with rotary engines. They are just designed to operate that way. Nothing we can do about it, other than live with it. Remember, you can never get something for nothing. They are a great motor, though. And rebuilding them isn't too hard from what I've heard. I have a really good friend of mine with a 3rd generation RX-7 pushing just over 400hp at the rear wheels. That car is SICKENINGLY fast. He eats ZO6's like they're standing still.

~Will Courtier~