I found this near my area and I think it's a pretty good deal. The guy said that it needs a new wiring harness and that it wont idle. I'm tempted to go pick it up for $1000 trying to fix it up. This will be my first car that I would get to work on, and my first rx7. Here's the post tell me what you think.

1986 RX-7 full Turbo II Conversion

 

Here's what I think:
If he has another EM harness and it only requires "snipping two wires", why has he spent a year not fixing it?
That said, the chassis looks pretty good and $1000 isn't a bad price for a good shell, motor or no.

I always hate when sellers try to minimize the amount of work they think it'll take to complete their fuckups... if it's so easy, why haven't you done it already?
I'd just assume there's a lot more going on than stated and plan for the worst.

 

Learning how to work on a rotary as your first car and the fact that its not running and may have other issues besides wiring harness(which is a big one). Im not sure how mechanically inclined your are or how good you are with electrical stuff. You could easily be in over your head OR this could just require some elbow grease and money and you could have a nice set up for pretty cheap...if all fails, for 1k you could part it out and make some money on it

 

Sounds like an issue I had...i replaced the TPS and mine finally idles. It does look like a clean body. For 1K I don't think you'll go bad with this one considering it has a TurboII swap already.

 

buying a project RX-7 is a good way to learn how to fix an RX-7 as long as you don't mind doing your research and spending 95% of your life stumped.

Just expect it to take a year or better and all of your discretionary income in the mean time before it's actually running.

 

+1 i wouldn't believe a word of that ad. a compression test would actually be the first step, chances are it doesn't idle because the engine is bad.

that being said, the body is clean, if its got all the T2 parts, and the RB turbo back, its worth what he's asking.

 

edit, car looks to have been repainted, so look for signs of collision damage.

 

Where can I go to get a compression test? And about how much would it cost.

 

You don't need to take it anywhere. Check out the procedures here.
Is My Engine Blown?

 

If compression is good then that is a steal of a deal. I just bought a bone stock unmolested s5 vert for 1k and would have bought that instead if it was local to me.

 

Okay. So I contacted him and he said that it won't hot start and that's caused by the em harness. He also told me that it'll take a couple of dedicated weekend's and some cash to get it running right.

 

hot start problems is a sign of low compression......not all the time though. If your serious about the car then rent a compression tester, look at the procedure on how to compression test it then when the car is fully warmed up do the compression test. A EM harness swap wont take weekends to swap unless you have no clue what your doing.

 

i think you can believe the part about it not hot starting. i would take his emissions harness diagnosis with a grain of salt.

 

For 1k, the body looks nice and so does the paint. I would check to see if the car has been in crash and fixed up. Even if you don't get it to start and you give up on fixing it, I am pretty sure you can make the 1k back by parting it out and still learning about the car as you do so.

 

Okay I asked him about the compression rate and he said that the compression was at 120psi. He said that occasionally the car will start however the sometimes the solenoid wont even make a 'tick' noise. Now he said that he is almost positive that it is the wiring harness and he said that he has another one that I can put straight into it because the harness that is currently in it is shredded. How hard will it be for me to replace the wiring harness?

 

He also does have a clear title for it saying that it has not been in any wrecks. Another thing about the psi. I dont know if thats a good compression rate or not so you guys tell me.

 

It's hard to say whether it's an "easy" fix or not. I notice a lot of people are already condemning the engine, but his words may not be too far from the truth. See, I had a wire separate from the water thermosensor connector, but it stayed inside the sheathing. So it seemed to be plugged in, but it would not make connection. Hot starts became the hardest thing ever, and that was with a 5k mile rebuilt engine, so it had great compression, freshly cleaned and flow-tested injectors, etc.

I'm not saying by any means that it's not a low-compression engine, it very well could be (especially if it's a JDM TII... they seem to sit at the bottom of a lake for a few years before getting shipped). And the very first thing I do every time I go to buy an Rx7 is a compression test. Every time.

If the guy did a NA to TII swap, he very well could have botched the wiring. I've seen some pretty bad wiring jobs, and if this guy's been working on it for a year, he might not have the electrical knowledge needed to actually fix the damn thing.

>85 psi is good.
>100 psi is great
120 psi sounds like someone might be sugarcoating it :/

 

Okay. He did do a JDM swap so you could be right about the engine. I myself do not have much electrical knowledge. Like I said this will be my first ever car I will get to work on.

 

Also he said he tried three other ECU's two of which he knows were 100% good.

 

120psi is a freshly rebuilt engine. I would go and do the test yourself

 

he said that the compression test he did was 6 months ago tops.

 

I don't want to be in over my head. I'm hoping it's just the wiring issue. But what do you guys think?

 

I tried getting the hood from this same guy.

 

As I said before, the chassis with the trans and diff is probably worth the grand, regardless of the engine.
As to "being in over my head", that's hard to say.

When it comes to electrics there are two levels of expertise.
I can follow schematics and hook things up but don't have satch's seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of the detail/theory.
My deficiencies haven't been too much of an impediment to ownership (so far) and of course, there's always the forum to fall back on.

Anything will seem daunting at first, the trick is to break it down to smaller steps and just start slogging.
If you haven't already done so, I'd recommend you download the service manual and start studying. You'll be living within its pages for a while and will become more comfortable as you go.

 

Bottom line. If the compression checks out ok, then buy the damn car.