asherwood

Ok, I have read most of the threads talking about the problem associated with the Pulsation Damper; my question revolves around the actual number of fuel leakage and fires that resulted from its failure. My car has only 45k miles and it seems like kind of poor engineering that it should need this part replaced at such a low mileage.

All of the S4 and S5 cars are beyond the mentioned 10 lifespan and some are well past the suggested 15 year mark as well so this affects all second generation owners! Are we talking about a remote possibility or a ticking time bomb waiting to burn up our hard work and cherished rides?

Please refrain from suggesting the ‘banjo bolt’ fix I’m not interested in that scenario but rather the actual number of confirmed failures of the PD, not ‘it was probably the PD’ but CONFIRMED failures.

So are talking 1 in a 100, 1/1,000 or possibly 1/100,000 (that’s 0.001%)?

Please no guessing, just factual information. If you have had a confirmed failure or know of one, post the details: S4 or S5 and year and mileage and any mitigating circumstances.

Thanks!

SureShot

In 1998 my 87NA PD failed.
It had approximately 180,000 miles.
I replaced it before it caught fire.

(That's 1)

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

i have had 7 efi rx7's (1 t2, 1 86base, 5 gsl-se's), i have had 1 pd fail on me, and i bought 1 gsl-se due to a bad pd and small engine fire. so to recap:

2 failure's
5 not failures

i currently have one with 235,000miles on it and its 19years old, i've been waiting for it to fail since 99

mike

reamia

i hav a 88 t2 and it failed i guees u don't know when its going to fail. woke up one mornig went to start my car and started it and i smelled gas looked under the car and saw the gas dripping, poped the hood and saw it was leaking between the trans and the turbo shut down the car and found out it was the pd and replaced it with a s5 lower fuel rail that has it built in it, and thats that so if it does go out replace it with a s5 lower fuel rail mazda fixed that promblem in the s5

asherwood

So far that is only a total of 4 for nearly 36,000 members

Remember only confirmed failures and post the mileage as well.

Thanks!

J-Rat

iTrader: (2)

I had one that failed. Car was at 212,000.

Jarrett

Black13B

iTrader: (1)

I had one that failed, and a guy I know (member of the board who will probably not see this thread) had 2 fail on him.

We should really be polling how many people haven't had the failure yet.

You can ask pretty much anyone who has had their 7 for a while and they will say it happened.

Bigretardhead

mine failed. supposedly the engine was a Jspec with about 45xxx miles on it. luckily, the compression got really low so I tore it apart, and found it before anything caught fire. but there was a bunch of fuel just sitting above the LIM. it was scary when I found that.

7Rebel

I had a PD fail on a 87 Base with 175,000 miles.

Scott 89t2

ReTed had a big list once. it was pretty long.

asherwood

I'm not sure why I would want to poll on who hasn't had a failure!? They way you guys are talking this is like the Ford Pinto in the 70's...a rear end collision would almost always cause a fire! Sounds like pessimisom rather then optimism. Maybe this is a time bomb!

So 10 thus far, all with fairly high miles...hmmm

Any body have the total number of second and third generations RX's that use this system?

Hey ReTed do you still have the total off of your list?

Sounds like a group buy of S5 PD's is in order!

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

i think if you had a good study you would find the failure rate to be lower than it appears to be, or that the bell curve for failure peaks in 2001-2002 for all the injected rx7's (fd's included)

it just happens to be that the consequenses for failure are bad

mike

skydivr73

only one problem here--the S5 pd has the same tendency to fail as the S4 does.....the basic difference is that it is permanently attached to the fuel rail unlike the S4's which screw onto the rail...

and mine just failed--found out yesterday morning. Luckily I also found a bad injector o-ring(the car flooded), and when I looked under the hood, that was when I found the leaking pd....so no fire. Car is a stock 86 GXL with just under 91K on it.

As for the total number of RX7's that use it, they ALL do as long as they are EFI. Matter of fact, any EFI car out there uses a pd of some sort. IIRC, many models of Honda and Toyota even use the exact same Denso one that we do on the S4, but with far fewer failures which cause fires than we do. this was all covered in a thread called "pulsation dampner" that has been going on over just the last couple days.

IMHO, the placement of pd in relation to our exhaust, and our higher temps, are a good reason why we have more trouble with this

REFLUX

you did a search and read all the threads
you should tally up the posts from those instead of relying on this one thread to get a % of PD failures

rxspeed87

mine also failed at about 190,000

drove it like such for a while being I didn't know that failed

but no fires or anything of the sort

temp fixed for now

CRXtoRX7

2a+ron's failed at like 130,000 miles.

asherwood

I welcome any assistance you might like to provide!

I thought that this would be more accurate and easier to read if the information was limited to the details that I asked for.

I am going to call the dealership tomorrow to see what the cost would be for a new rail/pd assembly.

bingoboy

maybe you should be smarter about this. why dont you create a thread asking people if they have died, and then conclude that rx7 owners are immortal.

skydivr73

look man--I am not getting this, and I dont think many others are either...

By now, if you did a simple search for pulsation damper, you would have come across enough threads to let you know that the pd is a regular concern. Now, if you are trying to assess whether or not you should keep an eye on yours, that should be MORE than enough for you to decide. If you are trying to get SPECIFIC about it, does it really matter? I mean, when my pd goes, how the hell would that affect yours?

Tell you what--your pd is fail-safe. Bulletproof. strong as iron. It will not fail for the next 300,000 miles. There-feel better now? GOOD.....when you're driving and you see flames around your hood, it's just the pd that failed, you know--the one that leaks, but you needed better info than just that??

marcus219

I've had two that leaked......no fire though, both were caught. The thing is old, its a old car, things need to be replaced...the word just needs to be spread so people no to fix it. No survey needed...hehe.

-Marc

RotaryResurrection

iTrader: (8)

Being that you seem to be fairly picky about the results posted here, you may take this how you want. Having worked on these cars for about 6 years now, I have seen plenty of dead PD's. I define failure as leakage, or the screw having fallen out indicating imminent failure. Seems like you;re after actual fires as failures, so your definition differs from mine.

I have probably seen no less than 500 s4 PD's in my short time working on these cars. OF those, probably 400 or more had the screw fallen out of them already. ITis actually to the point that when taking apart an s4 motor, I am **surprised** to find a PD where the screw has NOT fallen out already, regardless of mileage. OF those 400 that the screw had fallen out of, about 50 were actually leaking fuel before removal.

I can say that I have seen at least 5 cars in junkyards that had severe engine fires (hole in hood) due to this.

Take my experience for what it is worth to you. IT is not pessimism, it is realistic to believe you may be next. I ama firm believer that if you do not act to resolve the potential problem, and your car has a failure, it is nobody's fault but your own. IT isn;t like you havent been warned, or you don't know.

Regardless of mileage, each and every owner of an 84+ EFI rotary should check their own PD TODAY!!

JohnWohl

86 gxl, confimed to have crapped out and replaced. now with vacuum leak!

it didn't surprise me at all to have such a part fail after many years, however it did surprise me that there was something like that, that could fail and potentially start an engine fire. it was kind of scary to take off the UIM and see that fuel puddled there, just to think, if there was static or a spark or even the motor got too hot.. WOOOSH!!

RylAssassin

Im sorry but i have to ask what the point of this thread is?
It seems you are trying to rally us all up and get some kind of lawsuit going towards mazda on failing PD's.
We all know there prone to failur, and we all know that its a very important part of the engine to replace just like the oil pellet.
Im sure there was some kind of class action lawsuite against mazda and a recall done in the past on these failing PD's. Its a little to late to get anything done about this situation execpt for us to identify with it and correct it before it does any damage.

Icemark

Actually next to impossible to get the NTSHA (who admins recalls) to look into something on a car 10+ years and 120k+ miles old. At that point the car or truck is considered past its useful life.

And I don't think there is a judge out there that would allow a Class action on something that old either.

And too the thread starter: They all (84+) will leak sooner or later. Live and learn that.

But I agree 1000% with you RylAssassin. Identify the problem, correct it before it is a problem, and be happy.

asherwood

I guess that some of you did miss the point of the thread, I have read most of the other threads and many go ‘off topic’ very quickly. It would seem that there are lots of those out there that like to jump on the bandwagon and say ‘yeah that happened to me too!’

But I don’t recall that the PD was regularly mentioned in threads that I did read when a member asked about what else should be changed or looked at when the engine was apart for rebuild. Or more particularly when someone was asking about cleaning their fuel injectors, this would have been a great time to suggest the replacement of the primary fuel rail/PD assembly!

So for ‘bingoboy’ your post was of no use what so ever, and ‘skydivr73’ no your post does not make me feel better, your sarcasm is also of no use in this thread.

‘RylAssassin’, I’m not interested in rallying support for a lawsuit either, but agree that the PD should be of more prominent interest, more so then ‘indiglo gauges’ for example.

I was trying to get a feel for those owners out there who actually thought that the problem was real enough to actually break down and buy and replace this part!

So in closing I must send thanks to all of you who answered without useless editorial comments.

And to Kevin Landers, his is the best answer of all, a realistic assessment of a potential problem that exists in all of our cars and the assertion that if left unchecked can really ruin your day!

Icemark, if this thread shows me one thing, it is that a statement should be added to the FC FAQ suggesting that the PD be replaced if you have the engine intake manifolds off to allow access, for example when servicing the fuel injectors, or during a rebuild.

I missed the chance to replace this part when assembling all of the manifolds during a rebuild, it would have been much easier then, now I have to remove the UIM etc to replace it, oh well live and hopfully learn!