ALNY93R1

Hi Everyone,



Check this **** out... A friend of mine bought a beautiful looking FD, on Jan 12.2005 from a forum member. He drove it about 5-6 times and the engine is fucked. He was driving from work last Saturday morning and as he got off the Pkwy, the car just shut off on him. We checked for all basic things and then he took it too a local non-rotary shop. The mechanic had no luck, so he got in contact with a rotary mechanic and went through evreything. Let's just say his compression in somewhere like 35-30.

Now , I find it weird that there was no warning and it just died like that. The car did have high mileage, 84,000 miles on it. The car did run good , it did have a torn coupler which didn't make any boost over 2psi, but we replaced it and she was running strong 10-8-10. The Fd is all stock except a cat back. So he owned it less than a month and payed $13000.00 cash for it . Now he's looking for a motor, now that sucks.

bradt

that dose suck,but if someone would have done their homework they would have known the 13b only lasts somewhere in the 60,000-80,000 mile range.(some people get over a 100,000, but not a high %age) If it has the origanal motor you wold have had to see it comming.SORRY if that sounds harsh but it is the truth, that is why they are relatively cheap to rebuild.Congrats on the purchase the fd is a beautiful car.

FikseRxSeven

yup same thing happened to mine, around that milage and owning it about that long...... such is life.... make sure you tell him to take it off insurance for now

PhoenixDownVII

I agree with what the following have said but doesn't such a situation usually *slowly* degrade?



You don't go from awesome compression to crap in one week do you?



If it acted and seemed healthy (Did he get a compression test before buying it?), I don't see why it would go from awesome to dead in a matter of weeks.



I would suspect, no matter what go's on the rotary (Coolant seals, apex, etc) it's somewhat of a downhill curve, not immediate drop off..?

89 Rag

I asked an engine builder what else I could do, prior to a compression test, that might give an indication to the condition of a rotary engine in a prospective used car.



He suggested taking the car out on the freeway, running the rpm's up to 5 or 6,000 in fourth gear and then adruptly back out of the throttle. By doing this he claimed that and abused engine, or an engine needing a rebuild in a short amount of time, would exhume some degree of smoke from the exhaust, and the amount of smoke would indicate just how soon the engine could pop.



Not an exact science, mind you, or an alternative to a comprehensive test from a rotary specific mechanic shop, but I figured what the hell, i'll give it a shot, it beats spending half a day and $65 dollars an hour to have it checked.



Of the four RX-7's I have owned, this theory has proven to work well as a preliminary test. The two first gen's I bought showed no signs of smoke at all, I sold them some time ago but for all I know they still run well to this day, The '89 puffed a small amount of smoke, but lasted another 60,000 miles before it gave up, and the '85, well it looked like the car from spy hunter, I bought it for half the asking price and drove it to the engine builder for an engine swap. The two FD's I recently looked at also smoked moderatly, but I simply passed on buying them.

Sinful7

FD exhaust smoke is more likely caused by turbo seal failure, not blown apex seals!

My FD shoots flames it's so rich - that doesn't mean the motor is on it's way out.



Sorry to hear about the bad luck.. I purchased my FD a few years ago with 48,000 original miles on it, all papers, hell - it nearly had a pedigree. I paid $18,000. Well worth it for this beautiful car. Not two months later the motor popped. The reman set me back $5200 with all the replacement parts and labor that came with it.

ALNY93R1

Let's get it clear that it's not me that did the purchase, and yes I did warn him. As a matter of fact I told him to start saving up for a motor, 84,000 miles is alot and on top of that it probably didn't run on 10 psi in a long time with the slice I found on the coupler to the y pipe. It probably had a **** load of carbon built up. Well, anyway he will be buying a brand new motor from Mazda Malloy since they have them in stock and the remans won't be in for a week. My friend is pissed and wants it running soon.

jspecracer7

Probably got the car running good with the new coupler on there and possibly dislodged some of the carbon build-up. That might have taken the motor out?

Fe3Boost

Close, but I was thinking this, it had a boost leak for a long time and he finally fixed it so the vent values in the ecu are maxed out from not getting boost. So when it was fixed and you go to romp on it the boost went thru the roof! Not really the cars fault and not really the owners fault but it is something that happends to alot of people. I have seen way too many blown motors from dumbass ****. These cars are so ******* fragile you might aswell keep apex seals in you wallet!



-Ryan

Sinful7

If I could only count the number of times I've replaced a coupler then stomped on it.. It's never, ever blown up on me because of it. I go from making 4 psi when I turn it off to 14 when it's back on and I've never had any non-traction problems.

Besides, there's no way a stock ECU would be so unstable that making a repair would cause it to blow out.