Boingers

[Alain Toussaint]

> Alain,
> 
> Carbon deposits and the burning of the oil inside the engine 
> have nothing to do with shortened longevity IMHO.  I have seen 
> rotaries at 200,000 miles which ran just fine, which is pretty 
> impressive for such a tiny, high revving engine.  (The hard driven 4 
> banger in my old Honda was pretty much dead at 130).
> 	A very common (if not notorious) cause of premature rotary death 
> (premature meaning, before the 200,000 that you would expect for a 
> well cared for engine), is failure of the eccentric shaft oil bypass 
> valve, which leads to insufficient oil flow through the rotors, 
> overheating of the oil in the rotors (and the rotors themselves), 
> leading to failure of the seals.  R&R of this item is recommended 
> every 50-75k miles by those who know about it, but it is rarely done, 
> probably as a result of ignorance.  This isn't really an engine 
> design fault, it's a maintenance fault.  Just imagine the bad rap 
> that piston engines would get if nobody ever replaced a timing belt, 
> and if 95% of the mechanics who worked on them had no idea what a 
> timing belt was or where it was and no idea why or when it should be 
> replaced... 
> 
> Zack

nice point,i see it's a driver's thing (the durability that is),premixing
2 stroke oil & gas would help in that case but i don't think the average
owner bringing his gas can and his 2 stroke oil bottle at the local fuel
station and mixing thing up be4 puting it in the gas thank (just imagine
how mazda would be losing sale if it required owner doing just that),so a
compromise have to be done and it's not the best either (the valve
thing),about customer ignorance,i can think a lot of thing that consumer
should be doing as maintenance beside oil change,one thing that spring to
mind is radiator maintenance,how much customer know that they should flush
a radiator twice a year and put distilated water in the rad,i've seen much
failure of cooling due to that,and i think overheating is much related to
radiator rusting.

Alain