my friend bought an rx7 last week with a coolant problem. the car and it pulls really good and has good compression all the way around, except for an internal coolant leak wich we were gonna fix. in the process of taking the accesiories off to pull the short block, the rear throttle body to engine block hose broke off taking the nipple with it. so now instead of a small tube coming out of the block, there is just a hole filled with rust. he wants to bite the bullet and just buy a new iron, instead of finding a used one or buying a whole new engine. since the motor ran good before, i was just gonna reuse all the seals, but now with a new iron, should i use the old seals or get all new seals for that face? my guess would be to just buy all new seals for a new iron but im not sure

 

Uh...all new seals for the whole engine..pleasssseee..unless the seals have like less then 5k miles on them...

 

agreed with adrock, since its open u might as well do a complete overhaul on the motor. Besides its only like $300 for a new seal kit without the hard seals, IE. apex and such.

 

If the one iron is that corroded, imagine the rest? Replace it all

 

well, i was gonna replace all the soft seals, and reuse as much of the hardseals as i could (in spec and such). hte thing is my friend is tight on cash so he doesn't want to do a full rebuild.

but we thought about it and now the plan has changed, once we get the block opend up, if the rest of the iron is ok, then we will just retap that hole, and put a brass barb in it to run the hose. if the whole iron is shot (were praying its not) then he will get a whole new one. i know, keeping costs down + new iron doesn't make much sense, but thats how he wants to do it. so im guessing new seals for that face is the way to go?

 

as a ghetto fix he could just tap the iron and put in a pipe plug so he doesn't have to worry about it happening in the future. the AWS coolant lines don't really do much anyways unless you live in extremely cold climates and rotaries do not exactly like cold weather anyways..

 

Stop assuming...

If you can afford to, tear down the block first.
Inspect all the parts and housing.
Then go buy parts to replace.


-Ted

 

were already in the process of tearing the block down; its out of the car but not taken apart yet. when we do take it apart, if the whole iron needs to be replaced, and a new one is put in, do i need new hard seals for that surface or can i reuse the old ones? were trying to avoid complete overhaul since my friend is broke.

 

Pull the parts - if you got a dig cam, it would help to post pics.
Even replacing just the "soft" seals, it's still going to come out to like $500 minimum.


-Ted