My first Renesis was the original engine in my RX8. It was the engine that made me a little bit of a fan boy because regardless of all the hate surrounding these engines, to me, it was the little engine that could. Despite people telling me never get the first model year of a car, rotaries are unreliable, your engine will blow after 30k miles etc mine just kept on running and running well. The original engine lasted 97k miles which included 25+ track days and countless autocross and performance driving events. I could beat on it all day at the track and it never missed a beat. This dependability really made me dismiss all the Internet hype about how horrible these engines are. It caused me to gain a lot of respect for the engine and in a lot of ways made me a rotary believer.
It was actually my very last track day at Hallett Motor Racing Circuit when my original engine gave out. I had already accepted a job offer back in my home state of Washington and I was getting in one last track day to say good bye to the great friends I had made over the years and to take one last crack at breaking 1:30. In reality it probably wasn’t possible for me to crack 1:30.
My fastest time had been a 1:31.0 but the cool crisp air, some relatively new but broken in patches of pavement and a clean track gave me hope that I could finally break my long time goal. It was the second session of the day and I was starting to really push the car in pursuit of 1:30. About half way through the session at full throttle coming out of the turn affectionately named “The Bitch” there was a loud pop and a lot of smoke. Thankfully this is the last corner before pit lane so I was able to get off track immediately and limp back into the paddock.
Here she lay… toast. But because of the unique design of rotary engines they don’t really blow, they just stop making power. It’s a feature that comes in really handy when you live over 100 miles away from the track. I was able to limp home on what I’m guessing was just one rotor. It made enough power to sustain highway speeds but it was pretty useless at everything else. I only had one close call where I had to stop for fuel on the way home and it took a very long time to get it started. I thought I was going to be stranded but she finally turned over and the rest of the trip was smooth sailing.
My RX8 with a blown engine was eventually trailered 2000 miles back to my new home in Washington where I started to ponder what to do with it. I never really contemplated selling it because it was already set up so well for the track and I knew I would always want a track car in the stable. Since I had gained so much respect for the engine over the years I decided I would stick with the Renesis and give it another try.
The problem with that (and this is where I went seriously wrong) was that I spent the entire last track season pursuing 1:30 and only got within a second of hitting that time once. I was at the point of diminishing returns in suspension, brakes, wheels, tires, weight reduction etc. The only thing I could do to significantly increase the speed of the car was power.
The only real way to do this with a Renesis is forced induction and the most reliable and proven method to do this was with the Pettit Racing supercharger kit. The next six months I spent tearing the car down and installing a Mazda remanufactured Renesis with a Pettit blower on it.
When I purchased my RX8 I had very little mechanical experience. Every modification I made to the RX8 was installed by me with little or no help from someone who actually knew what they were doing. While I was intrigued by mechanical work it was mostly out of necessity as my budget only allowed for the cost of the parts.
At this point I pretty much knew every nut and bolt of the running gear but I had never really touched the engine. Installing a new engine is nothing to sneeze at so thankfully a fellow RX8 enthusiast with a lift allowed me to use their shop and coach me through the process.
It was a lot of work but it was finally done. The car was back on the ground with a supercharged Renesis and I was anxious to get it back on the road and eventually back on the track. I had a lot of little issues getting the car to run well but the most frustrating of them all was a flurry of misfires that would cause it to fall flat on its face at 6000 rpm. It ended up being that the spark plugs were gapped to wide but a lot of time was wasted going down the wrong rabbit holes trying to figure out what was wrong. Once everything was sorted tuning could commence.
This brings me to my first problem with the Renesis — no one wants to touch it. The RX8 had reached the age where the aftermarket was really starting to dwindle and it became really difficult to find reputable people to deal with. The community was littered with scandal and drama and only a handful of seemingly trustworthy people remained in business. So when it came to tuning a statistically fragile engine above and beyond the power level it was designed to make it didn’t give me a lot of comfort when I was selecting a tuner. I went with a tuner that was highly recommended to me by my friend with a reliably turbocharged RX8 and was one of the few remaining in the community I could trust. To this day I think he is probably a talented tuner and a great person but what I’m about to explain next will always have me wondering if i made the right decision.
After finally getting all the kinks worked out and finalizing the tune I could once again drive my RX8 to the full extent of its ability. The added power was fantastic and the immediacy of the torque made the car so fun to drive. I was very happy with how everything turned out and being late fall all the tracks were closed but my plans were to really button down the car so it would be fully ready to go for the next track season. I had planned on upgrading the radiator to ensure any additional heat wouldn’t be a problem and I needed new tires and new brake rotors. Over the winter I planned to buy parts and get the car dialed in so i could hit the ground running in the spring.
And that brings me back to this photo where it all came to a disappointing halt when one crisp, sunny, late November Saturday I decided to take the RX8 out for a spin. I had been driving for about 15 minutes getting the car up to temp. There is a fun winding road about 20 miles from my house where I like to go play. It immediately follows a long relatively uneventful road that is usually littered with traffic. Up until this point I was basically just warming the car up but as I pulled on to this long uneventful road I got stuck behind a truck. I know what you’re thinking, you think I blasted past this guy and blew my engine. Well, you’d be wrong. I decided to just slow down and create a gap between him and I so on the few corners on this stretch I squeeze a little more throttle on to enjoy the drive a little more. As the gap widened I decided I just wanted to feel the glorious immediate and effortless power of a supercharged rotary engine. I was going 45 mph and gave it maybe 60% throttle. I just wanted a little taste but with absolutely no warning “POP POP” and the car immediately sounded like a Subaru.
I had lost compression in one rotor again. After only 4000 miles for supercharged goodness it was gone. I did the all too familiar one-rotor drive of shame back to my garage and just sat there in my car in a weird state of anger, sadness and embarrassment. I immediately thought to myself “Why would I ever think this was a good idea?”. I knew what I was getting into but my admittedly rare experience of owning a relatively reliable rotary for so long had distorted my perception of reality and coerced me into making a bad decision.
Long story short. Here goes nothing…
