I recently bought an '86 RX-7 from a friends son (for a steal) with the understanding that something was wrong with it. It blows blue smoke often. I know that burning oil is "normal" for the rotary engines, but this seems excessive. Being a fan of RX-7's I would love to fix it up for the long haul but am not sure if it is worth it. If the side seals are wasted, what kinda costs am I looking at.

 

i ran mine with the seals gone for over 1500 miles before i sold it

it was using about 1 litre of oil every 200 miles

all i did was swap to 20-50 oil ( which is thicker i think ) and it started to use less

at this point - you probably need a rebuild , but i ran mine

a friend ran his for about 3 yrs like that !

hope this helps

 

How much oil is being used? It is normal for a rotary engine to use some oil as part of its burn cycle.

For an agressive driver it is not uncommon to use 1 qt every 1000 miles.

For the less aggressive drivers it may only use 1 qt every 2000 miles

are you using more than 1 qt over 750 miles??? if so then a oil seal may be leaking, or the MOP may be stuck on. If the first problem mentioned is the case, then rebuild ASAP (before you damage the engine and it costs a lot more to rebuild).

If it is the second one, fix the MOP.

Pretty straight forward.