rotary emotions

Now you're right :-)

Black13B

iTrader: (1)

when you have moving parts (mostly metal on metal), you have wear. the obvious key to reliablity is the smallest amount of friction possible.

rotaries spin obviously, which way more than halves the friction of a violent pistion moving up and down constantly..

how do piston engines control the 4 strokes? (looking at a DOHC inline 4cyl) well, 2 camshafts, 16 lifters, 16 valves. dont forget we have to keep all this crap in time with eachother..

think of all the wear in that.

the rotary's design eliminates camshafts lifters valves and all that other crap.

not only is there less wear internally, there is literally LESS CRAP that could wear out or fail.

or at least thats what i have concluded after reading about rotary in the past few weeks.

ive heard more than once to help prevent things from going wrong you should:

not rev over 3k rpm when cold (as with any car, but rotaries especially hate this)
you should hit the redline eachtime its up to operating temperature, as a form of preventative maintenance..

can anyone expand on these?

rotary emotions

Actually, it's not that very hard to keep a Wankel engine in shape. As stated above: take care when the engine is cold. This is very important with all engines, but due to the free-revving character of the rotary, a lot of idiots go full out with a cold engine anyway...
Change oil regulary (as stated in the manual) and use good, mineral oil. There's a lot of confussion on which oil to use (mineral or synthetic). The Mazda engine injects oil, and synthetic oil has poor burning qualities, where as the engine needs to burn the injected oil!
So what happens is that this oil gets burned badly and clogged oil injectors will result, which can damage the engine. So use high quality mineral oil. Racing Beat also says this, but the offer a special synthetic oil anyway. It's ok, but not worth the expense.
Overhere an oil change costs me $50, but I don't think oil is that expensive in the states, is it?
So that's abou it: regular oil changes (3000miles??), filter changes, and always make sure you warm up the engine correctly.

Black13B

iTrader: (1)

does the oil viscosity make a bigger impact on rotaries?

like would it be more advantageous to use a less viscosity based oil?

rotary emotions

Well, I guess that all depends a lot on how and where you drive it. Like: outside temperatures, engine temp....
But under normal condition I'd stick with the oil Mazda recommends. If you use oil with less viscosity, it might become too thin to "grease" the moving parts when the car gets hot...

diabolical1

iTrader: (3)

I think they are very reliable cars. I've never owned a Gen III car, but I can't see why it would be any less reliable than the Gen I and Gen II cars that I have had.

It's just like what most of the guys said already. Just make sure the car is maintained ... especially the oil and coolant systems ... and it will last and not have problems.

Personally, I think these erroneous tales of unreliability come from people who are ignorant, young or refuse to adapt their piston-thinking ... or any combination of the three. They don't have a solid grasp on the basics of tuning (much less tuning a rotary) and they see a car magazine with an article that says "... this 13B made 500 HP ...," then they go out and try it and break the motor because they're too broke, too cheap or just plain dumb!

I've been driving Rx-7's for 15 years now and I can honestly say that every motor or tranny that I lost, I lost because I deserved it. Other than unforseen failures like a fuel pump or switch of some kind, I've never had any problems with any of them (knock on wood)