im about to plop down 900 bux for an 86 and got to really test drive it today. i drove it to my mechanics shop to get an opinion from him.the car pulled ral strong and even peels out in first. no smole whatsoever on startuf ior even redline shifting. one of the mechanics put his hand on the radiator hose coming from the thermostat and said it felt too hard like it was holding pressure. is this bad. i didnt think it felt that hard but he thought it did. could this be a stuck thermostat or clogged radiator?

also the shifter is real sloppy with ooddles o fplay. easy fix? something need adjusting maybe?

thanx for all your advice

 

well the hose thing you can do a pressure test and see what it is sounds like an easy fix unless you have leaks. and the sloppy shifting can be fixed easily by new shifter bushings. you can get the bushings on ebay or mazdatrix or even your locale dealer.

james

 

the pressure test is done to find leaks. the car has none that i know of. my main coincern is why the hose was holding so much pressure.

and secondly, does the tranny have to be dropped in order to put in the shifter bushings?

 

yea but if the hose is getting hard and losing its elasticity (caused over time by heat), you might end up blowing out a rad hose.

 

right like i said the test is for leaks...your best bet is to just replace the hose it's prob. just old and hard and if you are realy concerned you can always check the thermostat when your changing the hose as for the shifter bushings no you don't have to drop the trany use search function to find oput the procedure it's pretty simple

 

my friend had a "high pressure" rad hose on his GXL, white pearl paint on the car...was nice....was....

But the rad hose blew up on him while driving, engine lasted that hit, but power and compression suffered (major overheating).

I say "Was" because he later rolled the car over 6 times and miraculously survived. He says RX-7's are pieces of crap, but when he told me that he was having problems with the rad hose's and the oil lines etc I realized he didn't understand that Rad hoses and oil lines are the same in every car (he has since bought and blown the engine in 2 other sports cars with over 260,000 kms (165,000 miles) on them.

Best bet to avoid disaster, replace the hose. (if it feels harder at all then any other stock hoses then it needs replacing).