alex10superman

Well I bought myself an 88' N\A project car. I don't get to work on it that often since I am in college and I work but I finally got to it this past weekend. I changed the oil and put water in the radiator (since it was basically empty) and just used the battery from my truck. Well it starts up just fine but......
Well it has a lot of smoke, like a whole freakin cloud coming out the back. It looks white but it smells like burning oil. I look underneath and smoke is coming from the Cat. area so exhaust leak somewhere there most likely. Now for the engine. It runs really rough and shaky. Ummm... kinda hard to explain in words but in sound I could, LOL!!! Well once I rev it up it seems to even out a bit but smoke is still going strong. I am sure that it will have enough power to drive but I have it up right now so I'm not going to try. Well I was going to check the plugs but after I pulled two of them I was like.... WTF!!! What is with these plugs and how do you tell if they are bad. That will be the next thing that I get so what type of plugs do you guys recommend? Well I'm thinking Apex seals from what I have read but I need some opinions or someone to tell me what the actual symptoms for Apex seals are.

86rx7racer

first never put water in the radiator it will rust believe me. and does the smoke smeel sweet at all? if so you might have a coolant seal out or an oil seal. your motor could possibly be bad. fire it up again and run till the smoke goes away and see if it idles any better. then do the same the next day and see if it still smokes. if so your motor is probably ****. good luck

alex10superman

I'm not living the water in there.... it was just to test it since I don't wanna go out and buy antifreeze. What do you mean by the motor is ****..... as in, not repairable or what?

smokie

iTrader: (5)

no i dont think he mean that but let me ask you when you got the car or before you got the car did the car sit up for a long time? if your oil seals can be bad. what you can do for that to stop some of the smoke is go and by you some stop a leak (may not be in that name) but they sell it at your local auto store, the reason why your having smoke is because your oil is leaking and getting into your water so when you pour that in its real thick like honey it will stop the oil from going pass the seal, now as for the plugs you can tell if there bad by looking at the tip, if its brown or black and like chiped up then you need to get some new plugs, the plugs recomended for rx7 is NGK go to a auto zone, pep boys or kragen or any local part store tell them what kind of car you have and tell them you need spark plugs make sure that you get to trailing and two leading on the plugs it will say t or l on them thats how you can tell, after that take it to a shop and have them do a point inspcetion its free taht way you will know what you need to fix i had the same problem when i got my 86 n/a (which is now converted to a t2) if you have any questions just pm me

alex10superman

The car may have been sitting for quite a while, I am not sure. Well the actual tips on the plugs that I pulled looked fine except that they were pretty black. Point inspection? On the plugs or on the car? Did your engine shake pretty bad when this happened with you? Also, can you tell if oil is in your coolant by looking at it?

alex10superman

Wow, people post on this forum like crazy!!! Ok, well I changed the plugs on my car and started it up. It ran the same way as before. Does anyone know exactly which coil goes to which plug cause I want to make sure they are in the right place. Well I was going to let it run for a while (which by the way is still running with lots of white smoke and runs lopy) and it just died. It was probably running for like 2 minutes and then the idle got real low and it died. I tried to start it up again but it wouldn't. I could smell fuel, so I'm thinking it got flooded. I haven't touched it since (no time) but I could still use some opinions!!!