oilcover

ok. here we are on day 3 of owning a '90 RX7 TII.

it's been a champ until today. I went to drive it home, from riverside/colton to huntington beach... about 60 miles. I get about halfway there and i notice the oil tempurature gauge is creeping up. and creeping. and creeping.

i pull off the freeway at a gas station and get some gas and let it cool down, then i look it over. there isn't much coolant/water in the radiator, so i top it off. oil looked a little low, so i GPS a pepboys. I get ready to continue on, and it won't start. push start it, great what now? I get to pepboys and put a quart and a half of 20w-50 in it. now it started this time. I go to drive home and it's still hot but not as hot as before. wtf! when i clutch out and coast on the freeway, the oil temp goes down quite a bit, but when i get back on the gas just barely it starts to creep again.

i limp it home and i hear hissing. i pop the hood and found this guy leaking:



I have no heater; and the little plug for the outlet line was leaking out my coolant!



i refasten it and try starting the car. it wont start. uugghhh...but now when the coolant system is pressured, it isn't leaking out of this little nipple now.

so now my real issue is getting the damn car to start and see if my cooling issues are gone.

the highest i saw on the oil temp was when i first spotted it. it was a little over 150°C ( ! ) and i was like holy crap i'm stopping. since i've had it, it hasn't gone over 100-120°C on a hot day (90deg +).

it never really smoked when i would start it. i couldn't see any when i would look for it. i checked the plugs, they were pretty wet so i cleaned them off and unplugged the F.P. , and cranked it with no sparkplugs, to clear it out. i didnt get smoke out of the sparkplug holes, just a little fuel. i reassembled everything back again and it still wouldn't start..it would crank and every 10 cranks or so it would start to spark to life then just go back to the cranking cycle.

the motor has a little over 2,000 on it, it's a pretty fresh build. it's been dynotuned as well, it has a power FC. like i said before, this is just weird because it was running fine until today.

i've got some help coming to help me push-start it to see if it'll even start THAT way...anyone have any suggestions?

also: this is my first rotary (i consider this my initiation) and i'm wondering why my oil temps were skyrocketing up instead of my water temp, when my radiator was like .. less than half full? shouldn't it be the other way around? coolant was like 90deg C, give or take ...

Stanello

iTrader: (1)

Does the car have a front plastic undertray on it? Without it air doesn't want to go through the nose of the car.

Oil temps of 150C is really REALLY high. Do an oil change and check for bits of bearing in the oil and filter. They will be little copper flakes.

Andrizzanizz

iTrader: (1)

go to rotary ressurections site and try the other way to flood it.
My car got flooded to hell one day and his method helped me get it right.

nunchuckgun

best way if you cant see the bits/shards of metal is to drag a clean magnet through the oil, that helps

Stanello

iTrader: (1)

Copper is non-ferrous.

nunchuckgun

well then....magnet wont do anything...haha

oilcover

thanks for all the advice, guys. I'm kinda new here. I've always lurked but i decided to register / post after i bought yosuke's car. you know...the neptune speed one? the goddamn thing barely lasted me 24 hours, i didn't even get to floor it. i feel like i got suckered : (

nunchuckgun

please dont tell me all that yellow and those extreme side fin thingys is the reason why you bought it

Stanello

iTrader: (1)

.

Funkspectrum

iTrader: (5)

Hmmm....so essentially, you're saying you overheated it? But the engine temps didn't rise...just the oil temps?

Are you sure it's not some other issue like faulty resistance readings off of the oil temp sender?

Your oil temps shouldn't randomly spike up after a coolant leak. It doesn't add up.

A side note: I'm assuming since you have an aftermarket EMS, the EMS needs to see a signal form the thermoswitch on the back of the water pump housing. I've found with the microtech, if you don't have enough coolant in the system the thermoswitch reads super cold, therefore the ecu richens the mixture up. I'm not 100% sure about the PowerFC but i'd fill up the car with coolant, deflood the engine and let the car sit for a little bit before starting it.

When you get it started, check the coolant for bubbling...excessive bubbling...just to rule out the possibility of a coolant seal leak.

oilcover

haha no. i know i'm new but gimme a little credit <3

it drove REALLY nicely the first .. day.

the chassis is set up really well, it drives telepathically. i agree it needs a paintjob and new front bumper like .. yesterday. it's getting real simple aero and paint, it has real RE rear corner pieces, i like em so i'll probably keep em.

you meant the canards on the front bumper for mad jdm downforce yo? yeah those are going off...

it's like 5 different shades of yellow, it's gross. lol

Funkspectrum: yeah i guess thats what happened. i'm not sure how the Power FC functions with that kind of catastrophe, we'll see. at the speed the oil temp was modulating with throttle/speed its like the wires were switched with coolant temp...i'll know a little more tomorrow after it gets under the knife.

nunchuckgun

haha well if its the REAL RE stuff and not the shine auto id keep it, either that or sell it for the $$$

haha and if thats the case with your unit id further inspect the car afterwards to make sure the guy didnt mess anything else up, have you tried contacting him and asking if he knows anything about it? could quite possibly be he knew it was gonna crap out so he sold it, and you picked it up just in time

oilcover

perhaps...he's got a pretty good rep here in so-cal rotary community, he worked for a reputable shop here, too. just some stuff on the car was half-***. i talked to him about it, and he felt bummed out ... he was trying to help me out over the phone on how to un-flood and all that. I knew how to already but he insisted the car was still flooded..we'll see. i get a consistent psst psst sound with no sparkplugs when cranking, so to me it sounds like it still has compression by EAR...

nunchuckgun

well did you make sure to remove the egi inj fuse(40A i think it is)? well your gonna hear the psst psst psst but did you put your hand up to it, each one is supposed to have the same sized burst when it comes out that hole, also did you check the back rotor?

oilcover

ehh i never removed the fuse... but even dry-cranking with no plugs or pump shouldve done it...

nunchuckgun

i guess but in all the guides and advice i ever read or heard it said to remove it hahaha, give that a try

Ked63madison

coolant seals are toast

Asterisk

iTrader: (3)

Wow... what a way to **** up... I hope you get your car fixed. Dont give up, ok? It's not the FC's or the rotary engine's fault... **** just happens sometimes.

oilcover

yeah .. i'm just bummed. all my other car friends (non-rotary ppl) are like "i told you they suck!" man i'm **** with cars and check everything before i drive it somewhere. oh well...thats how it goes...i'm expecting the worst case senario

nunchuckgun

and i bet they all push civics....you gotta stand up for the 7 man!

Asterisk

iTrader: (3)

As I said, not the car's fault... and why would you delete the heater core anyway? I know it's always warm there, but for how little benefit it does, it's a hell of a lot of work, need to pull the dash and everything... The PO must have had WAY too much time on his/her hands.

fc pro am

iTrader: (8)

Update please....I knew Yosuke and his work was bomb. Neptune Speed rules so Im a bit suprised at the issues your FC has been having.

cmanns

Uhh, where does it measure the oil temp? Is it that bell looking thing to the right? maybe the coolent spewing out was getting on that? O.o

SmogSUX

iTrader: (12)

Another thing....if your radiator was half full I'm pretty sure the engine temp gauge wasn't even getting the reading for the coolant since there pretty much was none in the car...I've had that happen once before =/

And if that much coolant is missing and you're having issues starting you may need a rebuild to replace the coolant seals

oilcover

hi guys...i forgot about this thread!

so essentially the car puked out all the coolant out of that half-*** return line plug that yosuke had on there. after talking with neptune speed I confirmed what I knew would be a rebuild.

aaaand so i went to rotary power

car runs amazing now, you would not believe all the half-*** stuff and shortcuts the car had on it once the motor started coming out. i put in all new housings, had those streetported, injectors, ect....while its out, might as well, ya know? had it retuned and now it makes around 240ish, the car runs SO much better now than it ever did before.

how good?

I drove it from orange county - thru the desert to willowsprings then drove back from the track and I never saw over 87 deg or so coolant temps in the dead of summer, almost 109 at the track. car ran good ON the track, temps hit MAX 98 deg once or twice all day