I've got a problem that has popped up in the past few months that has not been a critical one so I've not brought it to the shop yet, but it's annoying. Since I'm out of warranty I just want to verify if this sounds like a problem with the plugs or something before spending the money to have the dealer look at it.

Basically, for the first 5 or 10 minutes of driving after starting up I have this serious loss of low end power. Over the course of the 5 or 10 minutes it incrementally gets better, so in the first couple minutes I can get a nasty lurching at low speed. I split time between a motorcycle and the car, so I'm only at about 22K miles (which makes me wish warranties were based on miles, not time).

Oh, this is on a 2004 RX-8, by the way, and I have had it in for the ECM recall, as well as the recall after that where the ECM was draining the battery.

I've also likely had to turn off the car before it's fully warmed up on occasion. After having the engine failure light come on back when and being told by the shop that turning the engine off cold was the likely cause I try to be careful, but sometimes the trip is just too short to really bring it all the way up to temp when it's 35 degrees out. However, there are no warning lights coming on right now so I'm not sure exactly what this problem is.

 

I would start by replacing the plugs & coils. Also, the short trips & low mileage will reduce the life of these parts.

 

Thanks for the response. I figured the plugs were a good bet, but didn't think about the coil. In searching on that topic I now see some service bulletins about that.

The next question is how easy it is to get to the plugs and coil on the RX-8. Since previous maintenance was under warranty I never bothered to work on things myself. I imagine step 1 is to get a service manual.

 

did you see this page??


http://www.finishlineperformance.com....php?pageid=11

 

Yep, I caught a link to it someplace and it does seem like there are a couple that could describe my problem. The only thing that makes me wonder if it's the ECM glitch listed at the top is the fact that it is something that started happening after my last visit to the dealership. I'll have to see what happens. After having the car for over 4 years and not having the plugs replaced, I imagine they need to be swapped anyway. I'll see if that fixes things first, and if not I'll bring it in to get it checked out.