Evening. Just scored a "non running" 1986 rx with a manual transmission with ~~110k. A friend of mine had a rx with lots of miles so I knew about the oil in the rotors startup trick.

Anywhoo. I filled up the water, added about 2~3 table spoons of oil to each rotor, pulled the fuel fuse (forget what one but I know it stoped the fuel), cranked'er for 10~20 seconds 4~5 times. Plugged in the fuse and tried to fire'er up. Put put put put, vroooom. She fired right up, oil pressure went to the middle of the 60~100.

I let her warm up till the temp gauge was 1/4 way up if that. She shakes a good bit (motor mount??) but idles very well (don't think it's an apex seal). The transmission sounds real bad.

In the next couple of days I'm going to do the following:

Do the ATF motor trick.
Change the motor oil
Change the transmission oil (maybe synthetic or atleast lucast depending on what I find)
Do a radiator flush (some cheap rad flush stuff from the store????)
Prolly change the sparks to new ones (keeping the old till the motor is strong and after the atf burning)
Install a temp oil pressure gauge (I need to be carefull on this one, 120psi stock on cold startup on rx's right?)
Possibly install my temp gauge to make sure things are not going to blow up.
and possibly drain the fuel tank (this will be for a custom swap so the tank is not needed)
Do I need to do the oil pellet mod? I do not know if the front seal is leaking!! I've heard that can cause my strange oil pressure problems (not gauge verifiied!!!). I'll do more reading so I don't anoy everyone.


Somethings that I am seeing:

The oil pressure seems just fine on the startup. Once she's warm I get 0 pressure!! If I rev to 3k ish she'll come back up to 30 and slowly drop!!
Also seems the engine gets hot quickly. I had the rad cap off, granted engines run hot (over 170*, doesn't seem it'd steam that much, it was 40 though.).

Could I get some input? I'll be checking often and posting results too.

So far so good

 

ttt

 

My car ran at 180 normally on my GReddy gauge. And in 40 degree weather do you really expect no steam?

 

sounds like youre on the right track. the oil pressure issue might just be from the previous owner putting in a light oil like say a 10w30 or even a 5w30 which get realy thin when warm and dont develope as much presure. id do the oil change woth some gtx 20w50 then see if the problem goes away.

 

Thanks for the heads up, I'm in for a fluid change either today or on the weekend. I'll be sure to post