First Oil Change!

Today I did my first oil change on the 8. I bought 4 quarts of Castrol GTX 5W-20 oil and a Mobil1 M1-108 oil filter from Advance Auto Pats along with a hand pump and a filter wrench. The filter was pretty tough to access. It's stuck between the engine and the firewall and getting to it took some doing. The hand pump was small so it didn't pull out a lot of oil with each stroke. As a result, the change took longer than I wanted but with the weather being what it is (cold and windy) it beat trying to lift up the car and changing the oil the normal way.

With the hand pump I extracted about 2 quarts of oil. This may seem low but it was actually okay. The oil level was on the low end to begin with and the difference between the low mark and the high mark on the dipstick is about 1.8 quarts. Most 8 owners report getting about 3.7 quarts of oil out when they do their oil changes so between the 2 quarts I got out and the 1.8 quarts that were "missing" I'm confident that I got out all of the oil I could. My confidence was bolstered by the fact that I poured in about 3.5 quarts of new oil to get the level up to just below the high mark on the dipstick.

All in all it was a pretty easy job. I bought an extra quart of oil to keep in the trunk so that I can add it between the oil changes as needed.

This is the 2007 Mazda RX-8

It has a 1.3L rotary engine making 232 HP and 159 lbs.-ft. of torque at 5,500 rpm.  It redlines at an astounding 9000 rpm!

Mine is the Grand Touring model, although the Honda dealership selling it thought it was a Sport model.  The GT comes with a number of amenities over the Sport, including xenon HID headlights, dynamic stability control and a keyless entry/keyless start system.

I first became interested in the RX-8 when I came to the sad realization that my Miata PRHT wasn't going to cut it for a guy with three kids.  The problem was, I'd only ever heard the bad things about it.  The knocks on the RX-8 were: 1) it gets bad gas mileage, 2) it burns oil, and 3) the engines were prone to failure.  However after really looking into it I discovered that 2) and 3) were not what they seemed at first glance.  It still gets pretty poor gas mileage (16 city and 24 highway), especially for a 1.3L normally aspirated engine.  And the car does burn oil but that's actually by design.  It uses the engine oil not just to lubricate the three (yes, that's right - three (3)) moving parts but also the six apex seals found at the three points of each of the two rotors.  Because these seals are inside the "combustion chamber," the oil that is used to lubricate them inevitably gets burned off.  Most people estimate that an owner needs to add about one quart of oil in between 3,000 mile oil changes.  As for engine failures - most were apparently because the owners didn't add that quart of oil in between oil changes.  In other words, the owners treated the rotary engine like a regular piston engine and never checked the oil level between regular oil changes.  As a result, the oil level in the engine dropped below the minimum level and - *poof* - there went the engine.

I've already made my first two modifications to the car; I hardwired my Valentine1 radar detector with a remote display and I bought and installed the XCarLink iPod integration kit.  I'm very happy with both mods.  In the future I plan on adding clear corners and Sylvania Silverstar fog lights, lowering the car with lowering springs and replacing the stock shocks with Tokico D-Spec adjustable shocks.  Until then, though, I'll be motoring happily down the road.

By the way - the pics are clickable to get to higher resolution versions.