Why does my car make a crackling sound when I punch it? Sometimes it's during low RPMs when I immediately get on the throttle or when I take it to high RPMs (3k-3.5). I comes and goes. What's wrong?

 

Is the sound from the engine or what?

 

sounds like detonation to me....

 

yeah right...

It sounds like its coming from the dash where the heater/ air conditioner vent is. It's kind of like a rattle. I just got back from the store and the car drives fine, it's just the sound that likes to go off every now and then.

 

the hvac fan is outta wack maybe? could be the speedo cable, too i would imagine.

 

its sounds like the problem i had, i was runnin regular gas, i know bad move, but i switched to plus and have never had the problem since.

 

I run mine on 89 octane and she's very happy...
Doesn't seem to mind 87 either.... And I've heard that unless you have a turbo rotaries are happier on lower octane anyway?

 

mazda did pretty well with 80 octane in their race cars back in the '80s...

 

There is no reason to run high octane gas on a non turbo rotary. Octane rating is the resistance to burning. If you run high octane gas without reason you will actually be down on power. Like cpt gloval said, mazda used **** water gas in the 80's on the 787b, and it did just fine.

Could you describe the crackling a little better?

 

I had a similar weird noise on acceleration. Turned out to be the metal guard on the driveshaft that surrounds the yoke going into the transmission. The guard came loose from the shaft and would intermittently make crackling or popping noises.

It's easy enough to check. It took me a damn long time to figure out what was wrong, so I thought I'd share.