Sometimes I feel like your videos are like those random education videos on courses I was struggling on in college. I should start taking notes because you might have an exam at the end 😅😅. Absolutely informative, thanks for putting in so much effort!

I forget everything when i take the 8 out for a drive!

This was a very very good video Carson.  I enjoyed how articulate and passionate you were during your presentation. I remember sitting in one of these on the dealership showroom floor when I just got my license and wished I had the money to get one....lol.  Keep up your videos. Excellent work.

It is great to see people with a genuine passion for something and share it so well. Can really tell this car makes you happy. Thank you for sharing.

The few mods I have on mine are for cooling.  All aluminum rad.  ECU tuning to allow both coolant thermostats to open sooner, different oil thermostats, and fans to start sooner.  Yeeting the stock cat converter to high flow one helped ALOT.  All work done by the great folks at Rotary Performance in Garland , TX.  :D  
edited to correct info about oil coolers

I pray that I can eventually get one of these, istg a RX-8 has been my dream car since like high school and seeing how fairly affordable they’ve become on the used market just gives me so so SO much hope. Anyway awesome video Carson, love living vicariously through internet drivers lol.

Thanks for this detailed analysis of the Renesis! It's one of the most informative ones I've viewed. Question:

In your Renesis teardowns, how much exhaust gunk/carbon deposits did you find in the side seals vs. that inside previous (peripheral-exhaust-port) rotaries? It would seem this would be a major factor on engine life-expectancy/compression.

My rotary-engine days ended almost twenty years ago, and they were limited to the 1st-gen RX7s (series II and series III 12A) mostly stock with few mods. I actually LIKED the stock turbine-like sounds of those cars, preferring that to impossible conversations at highway speeds and of course the "heat-score" problem that would have been presented by those braps causing every cop in a three-mile radius to drop their donuts and turn on the strobes. But the weak torque under 3K rpms and the glacial >9-seconds zero-to-60 times - not to mention the "bean-counter-special" recirculating-ball steering box were points of contention and aggravation.

The rotary engine failed because it was FORCED to fail. In a parallel universe with no enviro-Nazis and oil embargoes, how might the Mazda rotary have evolved?

I can speculate that Mazda would still have wanted some form of (hopefully-less restrictive) thermal reactor than the ones they used back in the 1970s.

But imagine if a three-rotor became the standard rather than the two-rotor. This would have played a prominent role in solving the weak torque at low rpm issue. Sure, it would have topped out at around 15 miles per gallon, but at current $1/gallon gasoline rather than $4/gallon that would be of little concern.

The production money saved by not having to invest many millions into R&D for emissions systems could have been spent on things like performance upgrades, more robust coolant seals, OMP pumps that last over 500,000 miles and a large 5000-mile reservoir - complete with low-level warning light - for TWO-CYCLE oil to supply that OMP rather than dirty 4-stroke oil. I once ran a metering pump adapter (Richard Sohn's device) that acted as both block-off plate and 2-cycle-oil delivery system running off the stock OMP. It worked fine until the OMP quit - the result of which was a nice big Samsung Galaxy-sized chunk of chrome departing from the upper surface of my rear rotor housing.

I actually think that barring the cooling seal issue which does cause overheating failure, RX8s problem is that it gets less hot due to not having any port overlap and that causes carbon buildup which destroys apex seals and interferes with lubrication, and produces less power/more exhaust back pressure at the same time. Thats why the people I know with the highest mileage RX8s all say to redline it once or twice each drive, which helps burn off carbon buildoff (among other things to keep their cars alive)

I’m not a rotary mechanic but I am an engineer, and that makes the most sense to me.

Love the video and the dedication to the RX8.
Would you mind sharing where you got your jacket from?

I feel like I'm living vicariously through you since this(RX8) was on my short list for project car.  Currently treating a 2004 350Z with a tragic case of being clapped.  It has cheap Nissan plastics. T_T

I remember it being the X-Men 2 movie. So cool!

Yeah, spicy triangle engines do occasionally do the big funny

I admit I was one of those guys who never care much about the RX8, I own my R34 for the past 10yrs now and honestly never gave a second glance at any RX8 that I drove pass on the road. I never knew of the story behind the RX8 and you gave me a newfound appreciation and respect for them. Thanks for the insightful introspective, you have a new subscriber in me, keep the content coming.

The biggest issue was the oil pump didnt put enough oil into the engine, most people can take these cars pretty far as long as you premix and dont do any insane porting or after market parts or crazy ass builds.

I fell in love with my cope car too. Way back when I wanted a 2nd Gen mr2, but could only afford the wedge of cheese that is the mkI mr2.  But now its all a care about.

Update. I love this video.

Wow,  what an incredible job you've done here with this video,  the passion you have for all variations of the Mazda Rotary engines has made me realize just how fantastic and unique they are, and how determined the Mazda Engineers were to keep the magic alive.  Thanks for schooling me on what drives your passion, and why. 🥰

Great video, straightforward, valuable info. And entertaining.

Love that you threw in the halfway crooks clips there at the end!

You are so underrated. Wish u the best