ok, so i absolutly love the rotary..and thats final.

BUT!
ive noticed a lot of people having blown engines. and not only blown engines, but on their 2,3,4 engine in less than 10 years. and well i dont know if i like it that much to drop about what 3-4k every 3ish years. What are people doing to blow up thier engines seriously.. i mean cmon. id hate to go with a v8 swap, but id do it just to avoid the trouble i keep reading about with this.

 

It all depends, there are lots of variables that can cause an engine to blow but if youve got a rebuilt engine or an engine with good compression you can make it last if you take care of it, lots of engines blow up from previous owners not taking caring of it the way they should and that can cause the engine to blow sooner for the next owner.

Few things to keep in mind

1. Mileage on the engine, high mileage engines tend to have lower compression and will blow up sooner than lower mileage engines.

2. Not doing simple maintainence like changing oil , replacing fuel filter etc will cause the engine to blow

3. Redlining the car alot and driving really hard on it all the time will make it blow up faster.

4. Letting the car excessively overheat at anytime can cause the coolant seals to go and break the coolant waterjacket as well (meaning you need a new side housing, along with rebuild)...

#4 Is equivelant to a blown headgasket on piston engine, but a rotary engine needs to be taken apart/rebuilt to fix it...rotary engines dont have a head or headgasket...but you should know this

 

13B engines have a 80-120k mile life expectancy(roughly). Just the nature of the beast I suppose. And while a v8 swap probably would be more reliable, Ive seen people go through v8's fairly quickly too depending on how much they are hard assing it. Just depends how well you treat the car..

 

Mostly it's people who are abusing the crap outta thier engine. Too much boost or excessive mods, poor maitenance, slamming it into gear during a downshift at high RPM is a popular one...etc. You treat your engine like *** and it's gonna take a dump on you just like anything else. Learn how to maintain the motor and keep the limits of your 20yr old stock internals in mind when doing mods.

 

ive downshifted mine before several times but not at high rpm, id downshift when im at like 4500 rpm or so to bring myself into the powerband in the lower gear like when im racing (downshift from 4th to 3rd, or 3rd to 2nd depending on how fast youre going)

5th gear is a gear lots of people im sure downshift on the highway to pass cars but its not like youre going to be doing high rpm downshifting unless youre not very smart.

Drifting is one thing that will definitely tear up your motor, I have a friend who drifts his rx7 and hes making the redline/over-rev buzzer go off quite alot.

 

I see as many examples of 200+k mile 240sx etc for sale as rx-7s you dont see when all of them let the motor go because whenever they do someone immediately picks it up for dirt cheap and drops an sr20 in it.

Camaros ive seen have bad engines not too long after 100k

People baby corvettes and barely drive them

The RX-7 sold alot back in its day, people who may have otherwsie bought a civic si may own these the same people you see driving rusty pieces of crap that smell funny its not unlikely to see bad examples of the cars many tend to be DDs especially S4s because of the cost. IIRC it was less than 10k in 87 for a luxury model like I own.

How many people do you see buy Corvettes as a cheap DD? Not many, otherwise you'd see the same thing.

Same thing goes with used engines, the metal will corode faster in the water jackets and seals go bad.

Unless you know you have a GOOD car, you have no idea. My car didnt last very long but it sat in a gravel driveway in someones backyard for 7 years. I bought it for $700 and put a ton of work into it.

If you cant find a good car or arent dedicated enough to the rotary to keep it around and love it get something else.

 

See, that's a crappy statement. If you take care of a rotary engine properly an N/A can last over 200k and so can a stock TII. So, if you're talking about a "13B engine", which means new housings etc., then you need to rethink your statement.

A lot of the problems come when people don't take care of them. Which was A LOT of the original owners.

 

It is all about proper maintenance and tuning. Another thing people fail to realize is that the engines will carbon up if babied too much, we have seen 100k N/A engines blow that had hardly ever been over 3500 rpm. The carbon build-up was so extreme that it finally fell of the rotor face in a big chunk, taking out a rotor and housing. You must take the engine over 4500 rpm every so often, this keeps the secondary injectors and (n/a engines) the 5th/6th ports from siezing up.

 

Radically dis-agree with that.

In fact it is quite the opposite.

On every FC I have owned, it has seen redline every single time I drove it. And I have put 145,000+ on single motors.

Nothing wrong with wringing it up to redline, and infact generally benifical (as mentioned in BlueTII's post.

Worst thing that you can do is baby the engine around, keeping the RPMs under 5K.

Well that and hacking the motor up with "speed" mods that were either ill concevied or not properlly tuned for.

 

well its definatly nice to get such contradictory responces from everyone. but personally ive yet to see anyone post anything about thier car no matter how babied or beat on see anything over 145k. which is dissapointing, cuz i want a fast daily driver. and i drive a lot. but at the same time i like to take on a challenge whenever im cruisn around. and frankly if i have to replace my engine once in 7 years. is once to many.

 

https://www.rx7club.com/2nd-generation-specific-1986-1992-17/how-many-200-000-miles-we-got-622086/

 

Well I take my car above 4500 rpm regularly , its where my car makes all its power not to mention I love that mean rotary sound its making when its getting into the power band

 

I typically sell my cars around that, so that I why I used that number. There are numerous FC's running around with over 200K on their original motors.

It is all in the care that the owner took with the car that owned it before.

If they babied it, and drove it like grandma and kept the RPMs under 4500 then chances are the motor will die an early death.

Much like if they never changed the oil, or didn't check the oil (at every fill up), or regularly change the filters and coolant. All those things are manditory for long engine life.

Remember a good rotary motor driven correctly will typically use the same amount of oil as a Chevy small block. About a quart of oil used for 1000 to 2000 miles driven. Of course the big difference is that with the Chevy the oil leaks past rings and valves and the like, while on a rotary motor, it is injected and dribbled into the combustion chambers on purpose.

And if you got a car that was tweaked on, with someone bolting the wrong size exhaust, or the wrong turbo, or didn't plan modifications out, then you can blow a motor very quickly as well.

 

When I'm calm, I usually shift at 4k, but I almost always get it up around the 8k mark any time I drive it.

 

thanks for proving me wrong with that post, i guess as it turns out there is just a lot of dumb people on here blowing up engines messing up the rotary's reputation lol. so ya thanks for that cuz i love the rotary to much to have to replace it with a regular engine. but it was becoming a serious option since my rx7's n/a was blown by the previous owner. so ya.. now someone should really help me find a good condition engine wit 5 speed tranny. i have a couple of leads on some.. but if anyone can find a good one for me under 1500 then let me know. but i can do things to make it more reliable cant i? like better apex seals, pollished rotors and a few things like that right?

 

For that price you can get your motor rebuilt where i got mine rebuilt. It cost me about $1430 to get my motor rebuilt and i needed a new sidehousing (extra $100) , i also got it streetported (extra $300).

You can get a basic rebuild like stock for $1000 if you are not needing any housings or rotors (because yours are bad), if not youll have to get the parts but he has everything u need

If youre interested in going this route the website is http://www.rotaryresurrection.com , he may know where you can find a used transmission or get you one.

If not you can usually find a used na transmission for $75-150 bucks, turbo 2 transmissions will run from $150-250

 

If you wantit really reliable, keep it close to stock and keep up on maintenance.