so my coils are dying...
 

yeah um, took a visit to rt tuning, spun it on the rollers, it pulls all nice and linear just as a N/A rotary does then some point just after 7k the power trails off then the lines get all squiggily and jagged edge lookin then the power at 8500 (its peak) is 25 whp shy of normal....its makin more power at 7k than it is at 9k....thats not normal....

doing some research leads me in the direction of the coils taking a slow and painful dump....some rx8s have had their coils replaced and there is an updated part number and all so there must have been an issue with a few of them so i kno ill have them replaced but im just curious on the aftermarket side....

this is the first problem ive had with this car and im actually pretty surprised....

thus brought me to the normal Q we all have when replacing an oem part...are there aftermarket versions?

anyone have high performance coils? are they able to still spark at 10,000 rpm?

I'm lost...

Was that your car on the rollers on Tuesday at R/T? I was there picking up my Lancer, clean RX-8 if it was yours. An answer to your question would be search "Okada coil packs".

Check over at Racing Beat.
They may have something.

yeah bro that was mine....pat ran it on the dyno and the both of us were like wtf the power is trailing off. we were blaming the heat but i think theres more to it, i looked up the coil pack failure and its not as uncommon as i thought. there's a tsb (technical service bulletin) describing how mazda wants them diagnosed. seems that some techs were puttin whole engines in rx8s due to lack of power when in reality it was the coils! d'oh!

okada....ok, ill check it out

At least your coils don't cough (misfire) a few times then just give up all at once, dumping fuel into the exhaust destroying your cats. Damn SAAB direct ignition.

I'll suggest the saab fix, how are your plugs and have changed them lately?

i wouldnt try too hard to stray from oem, especially if its under warranty. let us know what you find and what you decide to do though...

I would stay with OEM coils also. I'm not to familiar with the RX8 ignition, but I know some 3rd gen guys change there leading coils to 2gen RX7 coils. I run colder plugs in the leading holes and I also have a Jacobs FC1000 CDI.


How old are the plugs?

plugs have 7k on them, i change them every 20. i hooked up a timing light onto the wire for each coil (coil near plug ignition) and slowly brought up the revs and once it got past 7 or 8 the light would go out and on strangely, before7k the light would speed up and then go to striaght on. after 7k the light would blip off pretty often. checking the trailin coils and they would light on the way they should but both leading (espeically for R2) would be coughin out on me.

i will be stayin oem bc its still warranty and coils are wicked easy to reach and replace but was just curious if there were other coil offerings. leading and trailins fire diff times and those multi spark discharge systems worry me.

ill be swappin coils with a stock car someday soon and see how she runs.....if it runs better (and i can watch the misfires on the laptop we have) then ill kno to order me some coils...


i love working as a tech for mazda, muahahahahahahahahahaha

Yeah, the only reason I would go aftermarket coils is if you were planning on reaching for the sky with your revs. It just sounds like the coils aren’t refined enough to generate the timing you need at higher RPMs and they start messing up. Good luck with the fix though.