Hey guys my friend is offering me a 87 rx7 with a blown head gasket. Im not fimilar with rotary enginges so i was wondering if anyone could tell me are blown head gaskets hard to repair. How much would the parts cost? How much time does it take? Any special tools? How much for a mechanic to do it...The car runs for like 20 min but then over heats....please help guys this is a great chance and i love this car....

 

Rotarys dont have heads, what symptoms lead you to belive its a head gasket failure? Anything more then it overheating?

 

Last time i checked rotaries dont have head gaskets....maybe blown apex seal?

 

i didnt think i did but oh well....only thing really that i can tell is that when we drive it for any more than 15 or 20 min it just over heats...it only has 90000 miles i believe....

 

Does it have power when you drive it?

 

blown apex seal is that cheap and easy to do???

 

it seems to have pretty good power but im not sure never drove any other rx7 before....

 

If its a blown apex it will require a engine rebuild.an apex seal is like a piston ring on an piston engine

 

Does it rin smooth ya know smooth exceleration and stuff?

 

Did he try replacing the thermo? or replacing the radiator? Coolant seal failures on rx7's have different symptoms.

 

The guy told him it had a blown head gasket im just wondering what led that guy to believe that?

 

No.

 

The guy that told him is an idiot and doesn't know what a rotary is, simple

 

runs smooth yea...i dont think he replaced the thermo, radiator, or collant seals...what are the possiblty of it being those instead or an enginge rebuild?

 

If the coolant seals are shot, which happens very easily in a continuously overheated rotary, then it requires a rebuild anyway. Does the car smoke at idle or high rpms out the exhaust? If so what color smoke?

 

Well you said hes pffering it to you how much? and NO most mechanics wont know much about the rotary.

 

it smokes at high rmps and its looks white...

 

Lots of smoke? Sounds like some bad coolant seals to me! Time to rebuild that motor if that's the case, which means you'll need to replace some basic seals and gaskets at a very minimum with few shops that will have the knowledge or ability to do so to a rotary. Plus the few there are will charge you an arm and a leg to do so. I'd get to researching about how to do it yourself, or find a good shop with fair prices, that is of course if this is in fact the problem and you still want it.

 

alright thanks guys you just saved me a lot of money just wished it would have worked out better than this

 

Or you could be daring and drop in a J-Spec TII motor

 

Well you can do a test. Take off the coolant filler neck cap. Pull out the EGI fuse in the engine bay. Then have someone crank the engine (without starting obviously since the EGI fuse has been pulled) for like 5 seconds and watch the coolant in the filler neck. If it bubbles or spits out it's definitely a blown coolant seal, if it doesn't well then maybe you have some hope and it *could* be something else. Remember everything we're saying here is speculation because we can't actually be there to see and test the car.

I'd do a compression test too.