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Im new to this rotary world, and cars as well. i have an fc, 88 tII. I put some prediluted coolant in it. Filled it closer to the full line than low... like the 10 minute maintenance book says. This was last week, its been in the garage since- I turned it on today and drove 4 blocks when i noticed the temp was really close to H. I pulled over and the car started buzzing with the add coolant light on the dash. i pulled over and popped the hood. The resevoir was overfilling. WHat did i do wrong. Yes im a rook. I bought this car because I needed a hobby, i dont street race- flame if u want, help is appreciated.

I bought a thermostat, 180 degree.
And some rubberized fiber to make the needed gasket.
Is that the problem? thermostat? If so... why, what did i do wrong?

Help appreciated.

 

i bought a stant thermostat at murrays... the faq says not to purchase aftermarket thermostats... like stant. :|

Where do i get an Oem from....

 

Do you have the stock clutch fan, or an e-fan? This happened to me once because the e-fan stopped working, and my thermostat also malfunctioned.. so coolant started overflowing. Apparently you should only use a Mazda or Nippon (OEM) thermostat. The Stant/motorad one's can be problematic, according to the general opinion of this forum (I have a motorad one and so far it's working okay).

 

i have a stock clutch fan....

could it be bad coolant seals?

 

If you had bad coolant seals, wouldn't you have a lot of white smoke coming from your exhaust? It's probably the thermostat that malfunctioned... at least, that's my guess... with my limited experience with FCs =\

 

cool, but why would my thermostat malfunction... all of a sudden when i added coolant? what i do wrong... it was 50/50... not all the way to full but closer to full than low... like the book thingy says.

 

Okay, first, an overheat is a good way to blow your engine. As in, time to spend a couple thousand on a new one. So good thing you shut off the car.

Second, if the Stant thermostat is brand new it should still do okay... at least for a couple weeks and probably a lot longer. Unless you put the thermostat in backwards. The longer, spring loaded side should point towards the engine. The jiggle pin (OEM thermostat only) should point upwards for it to work best. You can get an OEM thermostat at a Mazda dealer or www.rx7.com. If you want a quick test, remove your thermostat and see how it does. It'll hardly leak at all w/o at a gasket, so if you just want to test for a while don't worry. Plus you might be able to re-use the old gasket. You can drive like this for quite a while, though it's not a good long term solution b/c it won't cool quite as well and it hurts your fuel economy a little b/c it makes the ECU go into open loop. Plus it'll take longer to warm up and no engine should be driven hard when cold, especially a rotary.

Since you've lost a lot of coolant, you'll need to add coolant into the cap on top of the hose. Open it slowly, and don't open it when the coolant is hot. Top it off, and drain your reservoir down to the "L" line, b/c some of the coolant will move to the reservoir after you top off the system. Nothing bad will happen if the coolant isn't 50:50, btw. You can be off by quite a lot and still be okay.