Captain Capitalism

Hey all, I'm new to this whole rotary thing. I recently picked up a beautiful '79 SA with 79k miles (funny how that works). It looks like at higher RPMs a large plume of white smoke comes from the exhaust. I've heard that this likely means blown coolant seals, it does have the 12A, and I've heard that Alumaseal can potentially fix this, but I figured I'd see what you all have to say. Thanks.

7aull

iTrader: (2)

"Usually" white-coolant-caused smoking is more prevalent at cold starts and warm-ups, when coolant seals are beginning to (or have) failed). How is your cold-start? Also, advanced seal failures also show in a lot of required cranking on cold-starts, since the engine is trying to purge the coolant residing in the combustion chambers...

"recently picked-up" is another alert phrase. How long had the car been sitting B4 you bought it? If it was mostly in storage, what preservation efforts had the PO done prior to storage? It may be that you just need to drive the car and get the 'gunk' out of its fuel system to get you on track.
STRONGLY recommend 2 things:
1) change the fuel filter: easy! under driver side rear, in fr of back wheel. Sits right out in the open. $3 filter any auto parts store will have: Fram G12/WIX 33002
2) dump a full can of SEAFOAM into the gas tank (I do this yearly) - it will do a great job of cleaning entire fuel system - into full tank.

Stu A
80GS
AZ

Captain Capitalism

Thanks for responding! I'll definitely try that and get back to you on how that goes. As for how long it's sitting, it's been consistently driven nearly every other day by the seller without any issue for about a year. When under normal driving conditions, I get extremely little if any smoke at all. Only when the motor revs past 6k or so does it have any issues.

Thanks.

7aull

iTrader: (2)

OK, well I think good news here is water seals are fine then (others with more knowledge will chime in...)
Could be the oil seals on the rotors are getting on in age, but this could take years/miles to accumulate as a problem.
Most important thing on a rotary is you have to be RELIGIOUS about checking oil. If you are DD-ing esp, then you should be checking once a week!! Serious. If for no other reason is so you can get a fix on how many miles Btw oil top-ups. qt in 500 miles is not unusual.

And-
coolant: unless you KNOW the PO flushed (not merely drained) the coolant in the last 3 yrs, this should be done ASAP. It must include pulling the rad and getting it chem-dunked to clean it out correctly. PITA but a big deal on a 40 yr old rotary. These live-or-die on proper water cooling. Also confirm PO replaced thermostat, pressure cap and ALL the water hoses if/when he did it. Otherwise plan on all-new for good measure. Your rotor-motor will thank you. And, yeah, your wallet...eventually

Stu A
80GS (with all that stuff done)
AZ

Captain Capitalism

Alright, sounds good to me! I fully expected to be putting more time and care (money too) into a rotary, so I'm ready to take it head on. Hopefully I'll see you all around on these forums, because I love this car.

tommyeflight89

iTrader: (4)

Stu had the good advice!

Most of the major service items like filters, hoses, T-stat, rad cap etc are all still available and pretty easy to change out. And the health of the cooling system components like the rad could give you and idea of what might be inside the engine...

Then I would keep an eye on coolant levels once you get everything bled and running.

Does an SA have a factory oil pressure gauge? I would check on that also.

LongDuck

Smoke is white and dissipates quickly and has a sweet smell, or bluish-white tinge to it and hangs in the air for awhile? If its white, it's steam - and steam is coolant being burned. This would be accompanied by radiator overflow bottle running low or dry as the radiator sucks it up to replace what's making it into the intake path from your water seals (*equivalent to a head gasket on a piston engine). If its blue-white, it's oil being sucked past your Oil Control Rings into the intake path which has its highest vacuum at higher RPM. This is typical with higher mileage engines, and those which have sat for extended time. It will show as high oil consumption - like needing to add a quart every fill up (~200 miles) to keep it between the hash marks.

Unfortunately, fixing either (*or both) of these issues is not an AlumaSeal thing; it's fixed by rebuilding the engine. On the upshot, Oil Control Rings which are going soft will give the engine PLENTY of lubrication and compression! You can drive it like that for years as long as you don't mind horrible emissions and smoking traffic behind you like in Spyhunter. It helps to stay out of high RPM and high load (high vacuum) driving conditions.