Then owning an rx7 is not for you. They require a lot of maintence.

 

Why do you say that?
I disagree.

There is nothing exotic about the FC, save the engine.
Outside of routine maintenance and basic upkeep, nothing on the chassis requires any more fettling than other, more pedestrian models.

You may be conflating the "ravages of time" with "requires maintenance" but they aren't the same.
If your car is falling apart when you buy it, it will continue to do so until you fix it.
If you approach the critical subsystems (brakes, cooling, electrical) with a scorched earth approach- i.e. replace/overhaul everything at once- you won't be endlessly chasing little issues, which can seem a lot like constant maintenance even though it's not.

Once returned to a healthy base status, the 7 is a perfectly normal and reliable car.

As for doing your own routine maintenance...performing stuff like oil changes is when you get a chance to look over the car and see what's going on. You'd be in the bay as well as under the engine, if anything looks suspicious you might catch it before it catches you.
The drone in the pit at Jiffy Lube isn't looking for, nor would he care about, a potentially weak heater hose (the one that gets soaked during a filter change), but you, the owner, would.

Prevention is the name of the game with a twenty year old car.

 

i don't know about that, most of those shops make all their money off those little upsells. sometimes off selling things that really aren't important or are marginally failing.

but if they aren't doing the repairs properly then they could be creating issues versus fixing them. sometimes even if you know what you're doing its best to repair things when they fail. there have been times i went out of my way to repair something before it was a problem, it then turned into a real problem because you won't always get good parts, your fix may create another problem or you wind up with a strange issue that your repairs presented that you need to fix as an aside(like say rebuilding a clutch master, which only was originally seeping but then after being rebuilt bypasses internally and will not seal).

 

I said that because my experience so far tells me that daily driving requires learning to dry off or changing spark plugs, adding oil, possibly adding premix, learning how to pull the egi fuse to deflood. I know a proper running rx7 will probably not require lots of those things very often, but lets face it. These cars are 25 years old, and most people are not willing to drop 6000$ on a pristine one. Low mileage might not mean that it's healthy too. My car has 67000 miles and had a cracked rear iron and a blown turbo. That's why I say that if you can't be bothered to learn how to change the oil yourself, maybe a less maintence intensive car would be better suited for you. These cars are cool and fun, but they are work.

Agree to disagree.

 

unless you can afford to take it to an adept rotary mechanic, for those who aren't.

i do know plenty of people who don't wrench, but usually they don't own these cars for very long.

 

Just my 2˘ on recent trend of newer cars running lighter weigt oils. It's all about mileage. Piston powered engines have to drag the crankshaft through the oil. Thinner oil puts less drag on the crank, frees up more power to drive the car more efficiently. Running 5w30 over 10w40 might give an extra 2mpg and decrease the engine liftime only slightly. It's free mileage for automakers. I'm not sure how this would effect a rotary but I'd guess that it wouldn't effect mileage at all. Also this isn't some crackpot conspiracy theory, this was presented at a high performance engine failure analysis seminar by an oil company representative, that I attended 2 years ago.

 

I've always used Castrol GTX 10W-40.

 

has anyone used that new Castrol HD 30 or HD 40?

 

In six years and 75k miles, I've never had to do any of those things.

The question is, why not have a "proper running" car?

 

All of our cars are low. You just need a Fumoto F-106 standard model drain valve and a low-profile oil pan.
Fumoto Valve | Qwik Valve™

^ This.

Also, the guys who work there are mostly idiots who tend to ruin your car.

It works the same way for rotary engines. Thinner oil has less friction, which results in more power and better gas mileage.

Besides the economy issue, modern machinery tends to use thinner oil because it has tighter tolerences.

No, but I have used other monograde oils in non-automotive applications. I wouldn't use monograde in a sports car. Monogrades cause more wear during cold cranking, usually yield worse fuel economy and higher oil consumption, and do not protect as well at high temperatures.