Just wondering how does the thermal pellet work? Looking at the shop manual there seems to be two oil paths after the oil filter one for the e shaft and one that bypasses the rotors to lubricate the bearings and metering pump,turbos.

 

Caveat. I am new to rotaries, but the way I see it, and I could be wrong, is Mazda added this as an emiisions thing. The pellet limits oil flow through the rotors to speed warm up and reduce emissions. When hot the pellet allows more oil to flow to aid rotor cooling, when the oil is cold flow is reduced to get the oil to working temp faster. It may have some other function, but that's all I can work out from the info I have (manual, same as you). Interested to know if I am right. Gurus?