I was driving down I10 West last week to come home from work, and my car (1985 Rx7 GS) overheated, and died. I waited until the engine cooled, and tried to crank it. It wouldn't start, so I checked to make sure it had coolant in the reservoir, which it did. The battery appeared to be working, but just to make sure, when my friend came to pick me up about an hour later, we tried to jumpstart it. It still wouldn't start. A few hours later, I came back to try again, and I got it to start after jumping it off, but I only got it to go 3 miles before it started running hot again. So I went home with my girlfriend in her car, and got my Rx7 towed to my work the next day. One of the guys I work with is really into performance mods, and just knows a lot about cars in general, but doesn't know anything about rotaries. He checked it out with me, and noticed that, although the oil didn't appear to have any coolant or water in it, water and oil were dripping out of the car. He said that it could be coming out of a hose, or just dripping down the engine, but it could've been coming out of the engine. The car won't start at all, and I have no idea what to do. The car does turn on, and the radio works, the lights work, etc, but doesn't start. Oh, and the coolant never drained out of the reservoir, so as far as I could tell it wasn't leaking from there. If anyone knows what's going on, or what I could try to fix it, that would be amazing. Oh, and in case it helps, here are the specs on my 1st gen.

1985 Mazda Rx7 GS
Stock 12A Engine (Not the original one, but it was in the car when I bought it) with approx. 65,000mi
Stock 5spd Manual Transmission
Stock Carb, etc.
175k Mi on the body

Any help is much appreciated.

-Caleb

 

By not start, do you mean it won't turn over or it turns over but doesn't want to ignite?

 

Did anyone check the coolant level in the radiator, checking the coolant tank often tells nothing about radiator. Find out where the coolant is dripping from. Common leaks are the heater hose under the beehive and around the intake manifold. Pull the spark plugs and check them for both coolant and excess fuel.

Let us know what you find.

Welcome to the forum and the Darkside. In my sig line is a link to the online FSMs, carb manual, etc.
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I know what trochoid is thinking, you prolly blew a water-jacket ring with means the coolant is getting into the cumbustion and not letting it ignight.
one good way to check if this is the problem is to take off the header/manifold and crank it over if you have coolant comeing from inside the engine then you can replace the intake gasket's and try the test agian, if you still have coolant comeing out then you need to rebuild!

 

If you can still turn the motor over by hand, then that may be a good sign...

 

How can you know what I'm thinking when I don't even know 1/2 the time?

Coolant seal is a possibility, if it overheated enough. With the potential of an external coolant leak, there's several possibilities. Intake o-ring may have failed, fouling the plugs with coolant, heat may have boiled the carb over after shut down and flooded the engine with fuel.

If the plugs are fouled, clean them, make sure the radiator is full and fire it up, check the radiator for 'champange' bubbles, if there are none, good, move on to finding the coolant system leaks. If there are tiny bubbles in the radiator, rebuild time.

 

Come on know we all knew what this tread would end up saying.....Right?

 

I ran a compression test on the engine, and found that it was only getting about 70-75psi on all 4 plugs, so I'm guessing that it's almost definitely a cracked seal inside the damn engine. So I guess I'll be opening that bitch up on Saturday, and trying to replace that seal. Any tips?

 

Well, maybe you're dealing with a couple of different issues here. If the engine is flooded, then compression will read low anyway so don't give up hope yet.

If you can get the motor running, then of course it will be easier to track down the leaks and overheating issues. So, based on that, try this: Grab a can of Seafoam, and dump about one ounce down the primary barrels of the carb. Make sure the battery has a good charge on it, then try to start. If the engine is flooded, this should get it going but will leave you with a huge cloud of white smoke due to the Seafoam. This also has the side benefit of cleaning up the apex seals and spark plugs.

If that works, then you can start tracking down where your fluids are going. Good luck.