Has your car let you down?
 

give me the estimate...


my rotary car is a total pile of shit....... it has never done me anygood. its stolen my time, my money, and most of my life...................................



i am in need of a functional carb. I have not have good luck with the rotary/rx7... witht eh three i own, i cant even have one running..... it has caused me dissapointment, grief, and heartbreak.....

oh well... it shal run someday..... someday...

two time broke down. one was a spark plug and the second was the trailing igniter but it havent broke down since.

I would have to say that is has let me down much, much less than the American education system. :(

Hardly ever is not bad for a 20 year old car.

seems like most here have alternative transportation, and their 7 is the hobby/project/conversation piece, just have to accept it that it's a 15-20 year old car and upkeep is part of the hobby......

I've only owned it since August, but in the 11 years that my parents owned it, it never let them down. Just regular maint and it runs like a champ. So do/did their other two. 'Did' because they sold their 83. Between the three they've owned they've put in the neighborhood of 120K trouble free miles. No record, but certainly not bad.

Check and change oil often - it's cheap!

My alternator and water pump went out on my within a two week time period recently. Ive worn out 3 diffs and broke 2 trannys but over a 10 year time period that darn rotary kept running :D

strange my sevens sometime won't leave the drive way(:D}but never have they stranded me in the street!

My '82 was in dire need of tlc when I bought it. In the first four months of ownership, I had to replace all the tires, the alternator-twice, the starter, ignition coils, slave and master clutch cylinder. After that, the car ran pretty good ;). As the years wore on, I had to replace the fuel pump, I had the car painted (big mistake, as the car was holier than thou, if you get my drift). I rebuilt the carburator, put a new manifold-back exhaust on it (no money for headers), installed a used oil cooler, put a new ignition switch in it...the list goes on and on. The motor NEVER gave me any trouble and consistantly ran in some of the most varied weather in North America (-40C to +35C). For a twenty-year old vehicle which was bagged really bad, it did rather well.

Time will tell on my current '79, but all signs are good.

Matt
1979 SA22C

I have owned my 7 for 3 yrs now...

The time it has left em stuck are,

Runing out of gas,

Coolant hose going to oil cooler busted,

Clutch line broke at my house after doing work on my oil cooler O rings,

I bang the shit out of the engine and it still holds up...
I still think Rotarys are and can be reliable,My $175. car has been for me :D

the 2 times My baby let me down, were both my fault.... Forgot to check the fluid in my leaking rear diff, and it locked up at 80MPH. Then I blew my tranny when I missed a shift (ment to go to 3rd but hit 5th) when I was racing a Hon-Duh. Other than that it has always been extremely reliable.

The first time my 81 turbo FB let me down was when my gf and I decided that we were going to see a movie. The nearest movie theater was about 20 miles away and it was the same one that we usually went to. Well I cannot drive this car and not have a bad feeling about it. It pulses with evil and speed. Sure enough something happened. I overdosed on a fix of boost and snapped my only belt, the alternator, water pump,and cooling fan belt. All the lights on my dash lit up and I could see a trail of smoke behind the car in the dark. I thought I blew the engine or something for sure. Plus the motor had died. I was going about 65 mph at the moment and my gf is spazzing out, so I restarted it while we were still moving. It fired up, but the lights on the dash stayed on. At this point I was thinking not all was lost so I drove it about 2 miles to the theater, although I couldn't let the boost hit as it would choke out the engine and backfire, because without the alternator there wasn't enough spark the light the mixture. But it ran okay under 3,000 rpm. So I drove it like a pick-up truck and actually made it to the theater. We got out of the car and I popped the hood. Sure enough the belt had snapped and I had no spare. I would never call a tow truck for something this simple. All these thoughts were racing through my head about what I could use for a belt, crazy thoughts like shoelaces and stuff...lol. Instead I told my gf that we should at least go in and watch the movie, even though we probably wouldn't enjoy it. All through Star Wars: Episode 2 I'm thinking about my car. Finally the movie was over and it was time to go back outside. It was like the middle of August and it's never really cold at night in the summer in NY, but it was freezing that night. Maybe the cold air would make it so the engine wouldn't heat up as fast, seeing as I had no cooling fan or water pump. There was a municipal parking lot about a half a mile down the road and I didn't want to leave the car at the movie theater. So I fired it up and we drove off. There was like a million f*ckin stoplights on the way to the lot. I'm just watching the temperature gauge rise past 1/4 and then to half. That's when I shut the car off and coasted the rest of the way to the parking lot. It actually made it. Next step was to use my cell phone and call someone to pick us up. I didn't want to call my gf's parents cuz her father would probably look down on me or something, lol. He's a pretty cool guy and I want him to stay that way. So I proceeded to call my buddies. Call 1: "Dude you gotta come get us cuz we're broke down man!." I can't, I'm drunk and so is everybody else here./Turns out my friend was right down the road, not even half a mile and he still couldn't find a way to come and get us cuz he was drinking. (the f*cker). Call 2:No answer, answering machine=screw it. Call 3: "Hello?"(sleepy) Tim...put your Dad on the phone cuz I'm broken down and I need him to come and get us. "Okay"(like 20 mins later his dad picks up the phone and I tell him what happened) Luckily he came and got my gf and I and took us home. The next day I got a ride up to where I left the car and put a new belt on it. Worked out good and the car was okay. Drove it home. I thought everything was good to go until the next day. I was off from work and my gf wasn't, so I figured I'd stay home and have a beer and watch the game or something. But no beer. I walk outside and I'm staring at my RX-7 and it's looking as evil as ever. My other car, my Beretta GT, needed an inspection so I couldn't drive it. I have no choice but to drive the 7. Fired up fine and was fine all the way to the store and about halfway back. I wasn't horsing it or anything. The belt snapped AGAIN! I pulled over and it looked as if the alternator had seized up and fried the belt. There was molten belt pieces everywhere. That was funny cuz it had never made an odd noise the whole time. I restarted it and got up to speed, then shut it off and coasted in neutral to a garage that was luckily in reach. Walked in and told them to fix it ASAP. Some greasy dude says that they'll order the alternator and it'll be done tomorrow. I'm standing there with this 12 pack bottles of Michelob Golden Draft and it's hot out. So I asked the guy if he can run me down the road to my house. He like yeah I guess (meanwhile he's got his eyes on the beer). We get to my house and he sees that I'm selling my tranny-blown 91 Ford Ranger XLT (can you say P.O.S.) We had a beer and talked about the truck for a while. I told him I'd sell it to him for 50 bucks and we made a deal. I gave him 5 bucks for the ride back home and he'd said he'd call me when the car was done. I can change an alternator by myself but I was beat from all this shit happening in the last few days. I went inside and drank the last 10 beers. About 5 hours later my gf comes home from work and asks me where the car was. I told her "don't ask". She didn't say a word about the car for the rest of the night. All I told her was "Star Wars" and she got the picture. I got the car back the next day and it ran beautiful with lots of power. Hasn't broken down ever since. Right now the 7 is being stored for the winter and I'll bet it's giving me an evil grin right now as I'm telling this story. Some cars are really jealous machines and they will truely "die for you".

dear god AdrenalifeRX7, that post is huge. anyway, my car has a million problems and requires oil and coolant like you wouldn't believe, but its never left me stranded anywhere yet...... *knocks on wood*

My car has let me down Lots of times! Blew the motor, blew the oil cooler lines and spilled oil over the street so i couldn't drive it, Broken tie rod ends, broken ball joints, Battery and alternator cables came loose at the same time and shut the car off, Bolt got stuck in the butterflies and held the revs at 8000rpm (dealerships fault!) Im sure theres many other things im forgetting. Only recently has it been more reliable since Everything has been replaced by now.

Never let me down, just scared me alot of times.

my points expired and the car ran like shit, then didnt run at all :(, my clutch expired too, that sucked. the car has never let me down, unless regular maintaince stuff counts.

My '84 GS let me down once. It wasn't really the car, it was the battery. I had snuck over my girlfriends house (she's my wife now) and I wasn't supposed to be their cause her mom had walked in on us but that is another story for another day. Anyway, my car was in her driveway and I was trying to start it so I could leave before her parents came home and it wouldn't crank. The interior lights went dim when I turned the key cause the battery was dead. I got her brothers girlfriends car and jump started mine. I got to the top of her driveway, the driveway goes up hill, and as I was pulling out, I stalled the car. (Too much clutch, not enough gas) I didn't want to let the car roll down the driveway so I pushed it out into the road, then down the hill away from her house. It was rolling backwards, and I had it in reverse and let the clutch out to try to start it. It made an awful sound but didn't start. I heard you could push start a car but I never had any success with it. So again, I'm stuck, but I'm further down the hill in the opposite direction that her parents would be coming from. I figured they wouldn't see me and I could flag someone down and get a jump and head home. NOT! They somehow noticed my car and put 2 and 2 together. Her pops was nice enough to give me jump, but he was super pissed to see me there.

You should roll start in 1st gear!

OK, NOW you done it! So jist whuts rong wiff publik echakashun anyhow? I went ta publik skool!

Actually, I've had my SE all it's life (18-yrs+) and outside of the rare no-start, it's never let me down.

nah 2nd is better so you dont bounce off the non existant rev limiter after it starts
reverse is good too

Never, cars awesome.

'85 GSL-SE.

Sounds like my car.... :eek:


Jeff

Since I resurrected my beast, the only things that have happened is the alt belt snapped (only one I have) in a hard accel from a red light (got me back to work without overheating) and the alt went out on my way home in the middle of the night (still drove it home on the batt 25 miles- 15 with no lights, but still made it home)

peace

If you read my post, that's pretty much the same thing that happened to me. We both need those double belted alt. pulleys. Who sells them?

Only a couple times. But it was more my fault than the cars. When i got the car it had a million things wrong with it. Now its just a few things. Kinda like those million times my fuel filter cloged up because of all the rust in my tank. And when i ran out of gas because my fuel gauge was broken, and i first got it the starter only worked half the time. But overall it runs strong.