my cousin got his rx-8 a couple of months ago. he doesnt know much about rotories. he said a week after driving the car the check engine light went on so he took it to the dealer. he said it stayed there for about a week and they wouldnt give him much information on what the problem was. it turned out that the apex seals cracked. this surprised the hell out of me( being that it was brand new). the dealer wanted to replace the seals but my cousin said no and demanded another car(this was right after mazda anounced that the horsepower rating mess up so he was already pissed off). the dealer negotiated and ended up replacing the motor. it took about 6 weeks to get his car back. man was he pissed. i dont know why but this really surprises the hell out of me. is it not that big of a deal?

must have been a factory defect

IF it was during the HP fiasko, he could have gave the car back and got a full refund and then purchased another one for less. Sounds like he got a lemon.

if a motor breaks, what else was assembled haphazardly in the car?...the brakes?

couldve been as simple as a gas tank cap seal..

ask them to give you the code pulled from the cel...

i wouldve asked to keep the motor as well..

**** happens, I know plenty of other non-mazda vehicles with serious issues and less then 500 miles, **** happens.

The only seal problems I know of were related to the coolant. Apex seals being blown would've caused more problems than the CEL. I bet that the PCM was not updated, that was throwing a CEL. If it was the engine the dealer should've given him no problem since Mazda is requesting the whole engine back on any cars that have had a problem like this. As far as I know there has only been a few cars that have had the engine replaced. My RX-8 has had no problems but my build date was in 9/03 and was delivered on 10/20 from the docks in Seattle. This isn't a rampant problem with the 8 so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

I was at mazda yesterday and they told me that the rx8 has a couple of problems like if you don't warm the car up before you drive you will have a problem with flooding the next time you take it out, oohh and when you do get it started it bellows white smoke for 5-10 min. There were a couple of other things he said it did but I cant remember.

I really don't read the rx8 forums too much but has any one else heard about the hydrogen powered 8 they have in the works? Iread somewhere that the hp difference is half of regular gas

yeah, at the mazda.com website they talk about building the hydrogen powered rotary