Yeah so I decided to sell my FD after many years of frustration. I still want a rotary but I can do with lower power but I do need reliability. I'm picking up a blown apex seal 89 GXL from a friend and will have that rebuilt. I'm going to do a mid level street port (stage 2?) and other than an exhaust and intake that will be it. How much life can I expect from the non turbocharged rotary? I'm going to take it autorcossing and maybe road racing and it will be my daily driver for a while if I don't need to take my work truck.I need it to be reliable if I'm going to do this, I just went through a lot of heartache with my single turbo FD and everyone has been telling me NA is th way to go if you want hondalike reliabi.ity

 

From my experience the NA's have been bullet proof. Out of the 12 Na 7's I've had, they all were good cars. My old 13b in m7 85 gsl-se had like 230k orig miles when I traded it for another 7.

 

An N/A is great and very reliable for a daily driver as is a Turbocharged Rotary, however we all know the more you upgrade, and the more aggressive one drives, the more likely you are to blow an engine.

I cannot understand how so many people have blown so many engines on this forum. I have had 4 rebuilds on the six that I have owned and that was because I had them ported not due to engine failure.

But to answer your question the N/A is reliable, start autocrossing and road racing and understand you putting the motor under much more stress furthering your chances of yet another rebuild. And I can't imagine tooling around in an N/A after having a single turbo FD!
What a downgrade.

 

the n/a's are totally bulletproof!

Turbo's are bulletproof too if TUNED PROPERLY.

 

i have blown more (3)na motors than turbo (0)motors... first one was coolant seals. 2nd one was bad tune on n2o(lil bro blew that one for me) third one was engine builder used silicone for oilpan gasket and it clogged the pickup.

 

na's are great, your gonna miss the power though. if your going na you'll want to either street or bridge port it.

 

Heh no, they aren't . If stock maybe .

Go buy a 3 Rotor,9.7 rotors, streetport, a tweakit kit, Haltech and have someone make you some headers. For 10-12k you could easily have a powerful FC , all motor with 300HP and 250lbs of torque with all the relaibility you could imagine.

 

who has 10-12k just laying around?

 

n/a's are as reliable as you want them to be. all stock the things'll run forever. if you build them up and dont do supporting mods it'll go pop just as quick as a turbo. if you mod it out and upgrade fuel cooling ect, it'll remain bullet proof. make sure you keep up with that cooling tho.

 

I do!!! No wait, it's only $10-12

 

NA's are known to last significantly longer than turboed rotaries. There's something about adding positive manifold pressure that rotaries just dont' take too kindly to.

 

Dude you need to get your cars tuned and maintained right.

Proper ducting,cooling,and making sure your getting the right amount of fuel goes a long way.

 

I agree. My 87TII has a half bridge along with all the proper mods and I have had it for over 4 years now. Worse thing that happened was I broke an oil cooler line do to metal rubbing up against it. Then again I don't beat the pants off of it...

 

except when was the last time you heard of someone with boosted rotary that lasted 200K miles.

People post weekly 200K miles on non turbos.

 

yep that is true but FDs tend to average about 100k per rebuild, not impressive but not bad either. statistically the more power you put through a rotary the longevity of it will decrease even with proper tuning.

n/a - 200k+
TII - 150k
FD - 100k
300RWHP - 75k
400RWHP - 40-50k
etc etc etc

these are just averages and mileage can be exchanged, such as using RA seals to trade the life of the rotor housings for more rigid apex seals which are less likely to fail. using Atkins seals may last a little less but are less likely to damage the rotor housings when they fail.

keeping a boosted motor out of boost can help keep it alive longer but i see no point in owning a boosted motor if it rarely sees it, point being i have seen FDs with 200k original miles and TIIs with over 200k as well.

 

Someone that just sold their FD silly .

 

100k?

Try 60k, Ive rarely seen any FD's with a stock engine after 60k. But Karak's **** is right on.

 

you blew the 4th engine in 3 years not because turbos are unreliable
it is probably from stupidity.....

 

I've seen a -gasp- FD with 140k on original engine. However it was not driven like an FD should be. Also as long as you don't shift at the buzzer during daily on the TII and keep the fun WOT and hardcore driving to a minimal, the TII can last around 180kmiles. I don't know what the previous owner did to my car but it's effed up at 94k miles.....

 

Yeah, you can't strain them and get them too hot, that's like suicide. Do you keep the oil checked and changed in them?

 

you've only seen severely abused FDs then.

 

It's been 5 years and counting and I still haven't lost an engine...

 

3 years for me..1 of them was turbo hahaha but now my coolant seal is going...ill drive it till she dies and buy a ported short block..

 

Nah man you know how many people out there are killing to have an FD3S and you come out of nowhere thinking about selling it??? Look if you are that kind of RX-7 owners who drives agressively all the time and blowing engines... DAMN THAT PISSES ME OFF!!! You should think again and learn how to take care of your car

 

I'll trade you my 89 GXL, 72K original miles, runs great + some cash for your non-running FD. :P