Well, I've searched around and couldn't find anything on this. Here is the situation. I am planning to buy a RX-7. The person is going to let me test drive it. Now, I I hear of members of this board still can drive their RX's even though they claim their apex seal has blown. So the here's my question; How can you tell if an apex seal has blown when you're driving it. Sorry if this is a dumb question.

 

hmm driving with a missing apex seal eh?.......i gues anythigns possible......

its been my experience that if you blow one of you apex seals, the car wont run, or gets a piece of seal stuck inside it, siezing the motor.

the only real way to tell is pull the leading spark plugs and crank the motor over, if you hear three good wooooosshes then you should be fine (really a compression test is the best)

but if the car runs, drive it, get it warm then wind it out good a couple of times, if when you let off you hear tremendous backfires, i would be leary of it - if your still dead set on buying it with really bad backfiring upon letting off from wide open throttle, try and cut his price in half or something

.....man i would think you should have found something on this in a search............

 

yup

 

car will run like ****, period....

 

Do a compression test.

It is possible to drive a car with a "blown" motor... I did for a long time.

 

i have drove 2 cars with blown motor that lost all the apex seals on the front rotor. they drive but not very well.

you would know, wont idle, wont hardly start, and REALLLY SLOW feels like your driving a 40 hp car.... also revs really slow in nuetral, and you gotta rev up to like 3K and feather the clutch just go get the car going.....

compression test is the best way to tell the condition of the motor tho.

 

Thanks.

 

The car will have so little power it will hurt. I had to make a 20 mile jaunt home, and could barely hold my speed in 4th gear... and uphills couldn't hold in 3rd part of the time on the highway.