As some of you may know, I had a broken pilot screw tip jammed in my Mikuni until recently. After going to great lengths of trouble, I got the little bastard out and spent a few days cleaning and polishing my carb. Today I went to put it back on, along with the intake manifold which I took off to get to one of the bolts holding on the carb. I spent the half-hour or so bolting everything back on and pouring in more coolant (a good amount came out when I first took off the manifold) then started her up. I tweaked the throttle and pilot screws a little (they're still broken, the new ones are on the way) and it ran pretty well.

It had been going for about 5 minutes when I backed the car half-way out of the garage to keep from killing my brain cells with exhaust, and I went around the back of the car to see if it was smoking or anything. Before I got a good look at it, I felt something land in my hair, went to brush it off, then discovered that it was a yellow-jacket as it stung my finger. I looked up to find that it came from a nest right at the top of my garage door. I was fairly angry at the thing for stinging me, so I went and got a can of Raid then exacted my revenge.

By this point, the engine had been running for about 10 minutes. I got back in to see how things were going, only to find that my coolant guage was reading about 230 degrees. It only took me the time to yell "holy sh*t" and reach for the ignition before I had the car turned off. I went to look under the hood and I could hear bubbling sounds and saw that I had already sprung a small coolant leak and oil was oozing out and dripping about twice the normal amount. Needless to say, the engine was cooked. Why this happened I do not know. At the worst the engine might have been slightly low on coolant, but nothing that would cause this. I'm pretty much stumped.

So, my summer is basically ruined since I can no longer swap that engine into my GSL, and I don't have the money to have the engine in the GSL rebuilt yet. I have 2 RX-7's taking up my garage space and I can't do a thing with them. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to find a blunt object and beat away my frustration on old appliances.

 

That's sad, but a cautionary tale to anyone who has to add coolant. As I understand it, there may be air trapped in the system, and if it migrates to an engine hotspot (a rotary mechanic once told me there's a hotspot at the bottom of the block) or causes the pump to cavitate you can fry the engine. What I usually do is start the car (cold) with the rad cap off then add more coolant as bubbles come up or the water level recedes. Then I replace the rad cap and sit in the car watching the temp gauge (while listening to the radio - this takes a few minutes) and look for anomalies: too rapid ascent or erratic readings.

Maybe it's better to powerfill the system, but that takes some equipment, and I often have a problem reaching the drain tap under the radiator (I add the $6 Prestone plastic tee into the lower heater hose on all my cars to allow draining, etc., - makes it easy to reverse-flush the system too).

Sorry about the loss in your rotary family.

B

 

sorry to hear that. But again, as usual, drive it til it die.

 

jack up the front end so the bubbles have a high point to rise to. that being the top of the radiator.

 

When I started it I had the radiator cap off and a funnel in it, but the fluid just kept rising, not falling. Oh well. Guess I'll start squeezing in more hours at work.