1SWEET7

iTrader: (1)

I had a friend that had a 1st Gen that ran on 1 rotor very well. It was very gutless, but it ran and drove just fine.

petervalle

I am confused...The thermostat opens up at a certain temperature to let more water get into the engine and cool it down. If the thermostat is off, then water is constantly going back and forth, thus cooling the engine faster and keeping the temperature down. correct???

I am a "parts changer" not a mechanic, so any help would be appreciated. I have driven it around town and it drives great. It even starts quick after running for a long time. Hopefully the engine will last to around summer time when I have seme $$$ to buy another one.

barnett87rx7

iTrader: (1)

you got a ridiculous amount of white smoke comin out the back ?

petervalle

Not at all. It has been in the 30's the last 2 weeks. When I first start it up it smoke a little, but after running for 5-7 minutes, there is no smoke at all. Even going down the road my wife said that there is no smoke at all.

Toxindude

Your seals are seals are going bad you said you have hesitation around 6 or 7k rpm. Yeah my 86 did that for bout a month then boom lost a apex seal on rear rotor scratched the hell out of the housing. I did a rebuild never had done it before i bought a kit from atkinsrotary.com and a video. Just keep track of all you parts take pictures of everything to help you remember where they go. These motors are so much simpler to work on then they look. I just got mine up an running, I rebuilt it in my living room lol.

NCross

iTrader: (18)

Try putting some Aluma Seal in it.

Amur_

Over what period of time? Ten seconds? A minute? Two? What you did is sometimes called The Geyser Test and there's a good reason for that. A few bubbles here and there is normal. A steady stream of what? Small bubbles, big bubbles, what?

If you got the sound of boiling from the heater core to the rad, either the coolant mix was way the hell off or the coolant wasn't flowing worth a damn. If that car's been sitting for 3 years then who knows what state the coolant is in. After this boiling incident my first priority would be to replace it.

If the thermostat was responsible for preventing flow, and now it sounds like it might have been, BUY A NEW ONE. Get it from a dealership. The cooling system was designed to operate with that device in that location. If you keep operating the car without it you may be very sorry one day.


How do you know this? From what happened, or did you do a compression test?


Don't jump to conclusions. Imho people are a little too quick to associate any kind of overheating with a blown engine. It's been my own experience that our engines can take more than they're given credit for. There's a procedure called the modified coolant flush that involves intentionally overheating the car for a short period of time.

http://fc3spro.com/TECH/MODS/COOL/cooling.htm

I did this procedure several times on my 2nd RX-7 (I'm on 3 and 4 now) and it never did any harm to the engine that I was aware of. It definitely didn't blow the o-rings. I disconnected the e-fan, watched the temp gauge climb to H and then shut her down and drained the coolant. Did it at least 3 separate times that I can remember.

You car may be fine. You might want to find that out for certain. If it is, and you want to keep it fine, you might consider bringing it up to snuff instead of waiting for it to die (which may just happen if these apparent cooling issues aren't addressed.)

Amur_

http://www.rotaryresurrection.com/2n...ne_prices.html

Rotary Resurrection is arguably the best you'll find for a budget rebuild, for quality of work and pricing. Kevin's reputation is golden and you'll find plenty of glowing feedback in the Good Guy/Bad Guy section from when he still posted here.


Rather than on and off, it's either open or closed. When it is closed, it restricts coolant flow to within the engine. When the thermostat warms up to a certain temperature (I think it's 180F on a Mazda unit) the thermostat opens and allows the coolant to flow to the radiator (which in turn flows back to the engine through the lower rad hose.)

When the thermostat is closed, the goal is to allow the engine to warm up to operating temperature as quickly as possible. Once it reaches operating temperature, then coolant is sent to the radiator to keep the engine temperature from going too much over that operating temperature. With no working thermostat in place, coolant is constantly flowing to the radiator which means that the engine takes longer to warm up. I think there are other consequences but it's been ages since I've read anything on the topic and I don't remember. Maybe someone else will post about it.

clokker

iTrader: (2)

Actually, the thermostat is not an "either/or" device, it spends most of the time operating in the middle of it's range...neither fully open or fully closed.
This range- from full open to full closed, is called "hysteresis" BTW, and is also an important factor when choosing thermoswitches for an efan...

Except for full cold conditions (i.e., right after start up), a certain percentage of the coolant volume is always being run through the radiator, this mixture being determined by the thermostat.
The lowly thermostat should be considered the primary component of the cooling system because a poorly performing one will screw up the entire thing.

You can- within reason- block off part of the radiator core and the thermostat can compensate by sending more flow through the core.
You can- again, within reason- degrade the flow rate through the waterpump (either through a corroded impeller or underdrive pulleys) and the thermostat can adjust.

One the other hand, if the thermostat is not right, neither the waterpump, the radiator or the fan can do much about it.

Given it's apparent simplicity and low cost, the thermostat is a remarkably sophisticated little device and defining it as an ON/OFF switch means that you'll hamper the performance of the cooling system as you consider the design.

Amur_

My bad. Thanks for the correction.