I picked up beautiful midnight blue 87 na for an awesome price. The problem was the car has been sitting for years, so following the advice of a friend I sea foamed the hell out of the engine prior to first start. So it's been a good project for me and my pops and we have been getting a lot done with the car but we keep running into issues. My pops is a mechanic for subaru and I have a little mechanical knowledge myself but nothing on rotary engines. The current issue is that While driving the car we kept hearing this noise coming from directly below the shifter it was like a metalic kanging knocking kinda noise, it mostly did it in 2cd and 3rd gear so we thought it was the clutch then when we parked the car and tried to start it again the clutch pedal wouldn't budge at all until the following morning and it started fine and clutch pedal went in fine. So we decided to put a new exedy stage clutch in there figuring maybe that was what is causing the noise. Sure enough the noise is still there my dad suggested maybe the car has bad fuel and it could be spark knocking but he has no idea what that would sound like from a rotary engine. So key points: doesn't do it at idle or rev, metalic klanging/knocking noise from shifter area, usually happens before shifting to third, I can feel it in the actual shifter as well. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

 

Check and make sure all the bushings in your shifter are there and not cracked or broken. My shifter chatters too even with an aftermarket short shifter

 

Yeah I bought the bushings from mazda because mine had melted apparently. I just hope I put them in right but that could be my issue. Thanks for the info!