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The Car Thread


MadManMike

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Reading up a bit on it, people say the throttle body gets bunged up with carbon.

need to clean it out, but where is it located?

Wonderful joys, a common 2l 8v problem.

I feed it oil, water and fuel. there-fore in troys mind, it shouldn't cut out. Realistically your right though!

I had exactly the same symptoms on my old 1.6l 8v 6n Polo. I have no idea whether they share the same architecture or whatever but cleaning out the butterfly in the throttle body worked for me. When I took it out it was filthy and black and although wasn't obviously sticking, when I cleaned it the problem went away. Worth a try anyway. It's pretty caked-on black stuff, I used some brake cleaner IIRC. Oh, and wear some rubber gloves or something - I had black hands for days after I did mine!

The throttle body is between the air filter and the inlet manifold, and it's what the throttle cable actuates. So it should be pretty easy to find.

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Assessors just called.

First offer for my car is £2400.

Phoned assessor to speak to him about the offer and he is going to have another search on Autotrader and get back to me tomorrow.

I have said that anything I would be happy to buy as a replacement is starting at around £3000 so I would be wanting closer to £2800-£2900 for my vehicle because I obviously don't want to be out of pocket. Also mentioned how the front tyres were £200 plus fitting and were only a week old, plus fresh MOT as well but apparently this is general maintainence and cannot be taken into account lol

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Judging by whats on auto trader at the minute Tic you won't get much of a replacement for £2800. Could you get salage on the old car and rob the leather seats etc?

I know this Danny and I initially said to him that I had looked and similar vehicles would be £3500. Being realistic I was actually expecting the first offer to be £1500 so was quite pleased when he said £2400. I have several example that I would class as something I would be happy to replace my old car with for £3000-£3750 so will see what he comes back to me with and send him these examples if he wants them. He said he usually limits his search to 40 miles of a postcode but had to up it to 100 miles to get anything comparable so I think he appreciates how nice the car was. The only thing I wish I hadn't said was '2900-2800' and that I had been a bit more vague but never mind. You need to remember how much I paid for the car 11 months ago and the fact that if I'm patient I can get a very tidy replacement privately for about £1500 (Rainbird proved this not so long ago!). It does sadden me that this has happened and I really do think that anyone in my situation (non fault claim) should be getting enough money to place them in the exact same situation without any financial loss but am keeping positive about it and just keep remembering that I should be happy I got out of the vehicle with no major injuries. It was confirmed by the assessor that the vehicle is a Category B write off, I got out of the vehicle by myself and didn't need to seek medical attention until the next day!

I have no where to store the vehicle to break it and don't want the hassle that comes with breaking a car.

Anyway, I will post a full update tomorrow whenever he calls back.

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The car is irrelevant at this stage. I can use any engine at this point. Looked at K20's, too expensive. KR/ABFs etc to bland..Cheap though. BMW blocks are too heavy. Saab of Volvo engine maybe? Tempted by a rotary due to compact size and weight. Also suitability for RWD gearbox.

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The car is irrelevant at this stage. I can use any engine at this point. Looked at K20's, too expensive. KR/ABFs etc to bland..Cheap though. BMW blocks are too heavy. Saab of Volvo engine maybe? Tempted by a rotary due to compact size and weight. Also suitability for RWD gearbox.

Rotary's aren't that light, no lighter than most iron blocked 4 pots anyway. I take it from the fact you want carbs you're also not wanting turbo? In which case a Zetec takes a lot of beating in terms of bhp/£ and easy to get running. Rotaries are cool though, and if you're keeping it NA and it's not a daily I don't see why you'd have any reliability issues. They drink fuel and they won't soak up high mileages like piston engines can, but a decent one should still manage a good few years driving in a weekend toy.

If you're worried about weight a k-series would be a nice option too, seriously light and easily mounted up to a type 9 with off the shelf bits. If it's a car where you're that worried about weight then 160 odd bhp will probably be pretty decent.

Edited by RobinJI
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1.8t :)

Ten a penny, great on fuel, easily tuned for peanuts and with a simple bell housing conversion easily made RWD.

Dull as dish water though.

Rotary engines are great if you thrash them, I have seen totally original engines with 140k that drive spot on. They NEED driving, pootling about below 5k to conserve fuel just annihilates them.

Edited by Pashley26
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Rotary engines are great if you thrash them, I have seen totally original engines with 140k that drive spot on. They NEED driving, pootling about below 5k to conserve fuel just annihilates them.

What's that based on? It sounds counter-intuitive at best.

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It does seem to be largely true that rotaries need a good thrash regularly to keep in good condition. I'm really not sure why, as I've never really looked into the workings of them, but it's something I've heard quite a few times from reputable people/places. It does seem counter-intuitive, but then you can kill a 2 stroke with too much coasting off the throttle, and even 4 strokes can get clogged up if driven too gently for prolonged periods, so it's not a new idea.

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What's that based on? It sounds counter-intuitive at best.
Based on me being a Mazda salesman and having to find out the truth about them to be able to answer the countless retards who say "ere wouldn't ave a Mazda theyz well unreliable" on a daily basis. That information came straight from Mazda in a service bulletin, the Rensis and 13B rotary engine is basically race car technology put into a road car. They can't be driven like a 4 cylinder car, you know how most cars have a sweet spot where the car is really happy to cruise along at that RPM? Most cars it is around the 3000rpm mark. On Renesis engines that cross over is almost double; at roughly 6k where there torque and power figures over lap. If you run them around slowly trying to conserve fuel the rotor tips contaminate and wear much quicker, as well as higher internal pressures associated with high RPM keeping everything inside tight and well lubricated. Mazda made the Renesis engine rev to 9K because it can and it wants to, driving it around below 3k pinching the pennies isn't what it was designed to do.
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^^^ the above is pretty true from what I can gather.

It also sums up that it was a pretty stupid move to put such an engine into a road car. Fantastic engine for it's design purpose, but utterly useless in a road car. uneconomical, unreliable, and for the economy figures and the amount of bloody noise it makes, not that powerful.

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None of the above would stop me buying one though,they really are very special cars.

The handling is superb and they have a great road presence and feel when done right. I have driven a lot of RX8's and have been impressed by all of them.

And when they look like this -

www.thesupercars.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Mazda-RX-8.jpg

It's easy to see why people that 'get' RX8's and the sacrifices you make to own them are so enthusiastic about their cars.

Edited by Pashley26
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Looks wise they do very little for me sadly, close, but just not quite right somehow.

the rotary engine is clearly fantastic in many ways, but I just don't think it's quite right, or ready for use on a mass production road car yet.


Regardless of the ''if it's looked after properly'' comments, they still have about the highest failure rate of any car I know, looking after things properly applies just as equally to piston engines we all, and you don't hear of nearly so many failures across the board of all makes as you do compared to mazda rotarys :(

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I don't think it ever will be ready for a mass produced road car to be fair, Mazda have all but given up on it :(

If I could justify the running costs I would have an RX8 over the A3. But I can't so I don't...

Quite often you see them on ebay as "broken" due to misfires rather than compression issues, because most people won't pay £700 for a pair of coil packs and spark plugs. They take them into garages and the monkey just says "It's a Rotary. New engine."

In terms of cost the maintenance side of things it is no different do doing a cambelt every 60k, or head gasket every 100k etc. Internally the engine is under much less strain and should in theory be subject to no more wear than a reciprocating piston engine.

Issues come (and I know you will say it isn't the point) when people use synthetic oils which leave a film within the engine; not many people know that a Renesis has a second oil tank which injects used oil into the engine to act as a lubricant. Service intervals should be every 3/4k because when you do an oil change half the oil stays in the tank and is used over time; so the oil only gets fully replaced after two cycles of roughly 4000 miles.

The design is obviously likened to blowing on a pin wheel, and because everything is moving in the same direction theoretically it is under less strain than a piston engine. Premature wear comes from incorrect use and poor lubrication.

In terms of "engine failure" I really do think a lack of understanding is to blame.

Everything else is just electrical, coil packs, sensors etc.

Bore-a-thon.

Edited by Pashley26
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perhaps, lack of understanding completely, but that is exactly what makes it totally unsuitable for the mass market.

I'm fairly sure if you gave Mr. Average my A3 to thrash around for a day they would manage to break it, not because it's shit (oi! i know what you're thinking) but because it's quirky and in some ways highly strung, I guess the same applies to the rotary :(

That, and all the RX8's I've seen with an aftermarket exhaust have sounded horrid! Yet oddly FD 7's seem to sound quite nice.

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