racerlinkfc

alright so im a newb to the rx7's but i've been on the forum for a while . well my 86 rx7 n/a is slowly starting to show signs that it wants to overheat i recently switched out my water pump and it gave me no problems after that .until recently . so i decided to go to the local mazda dealer and order a new thermostat.since that was the only thing i could think of might need replacing . my question would be . iwhen i opened the small package it came in with it also came with a dinky gasket looked like black double sided sticky tape the one thats on their now looks like the liquid gasket should i use the gasket mazda provided with no liquid gasket or should i use the liquid gasket if so any recommendations on which one i should use ? sorry i dragged on just wanna make sure i do it right . thanks !

j0rd4n

i use good ol rtv i had a gasket that came with the water pump i ordered, but it was really bad quality apparently and didn't work well

racerlinkfc

well i just came back from the local auto parts store and bought the rtv thermostat gasket stuff should i put the rtv on each side of the thermostat housing and sandwich the gasket in there? sorry to ask such stupid questions just being overly cautious!

Jedsterama

I've been going through the same thing in a way.
My water neck - thermo housing had a small leak that would run down the front of the water pump and evaporate early in this game, wasnt sure where the coolant was going.
I bought the OEM thermo and gasket (included) from my local Mazda dealership.
I installed the new gasket with the sticky side to the waterpump housing and put that same fancy RTV on the water neck.
After re-fillling with 50/50 I let the engine warm up to normal operating temp, halfway on my stock gauge. Checking my work for leaks it looked like it was still leaking around the same spot (top of water neck) but as bad as it had been.
I drove a week or two and was adding coolant every other ride.
I ordered two more gaskets from the dealer and the new gaskets came without a sticky side so I RTV'd both metal surfaces, let it 'skin' a bit then torqued the bolts down. Same leak after letting the car sit 24 hours before adding new coolant.
Tear it off again and this time I really looked, sanded and found a hair line crack in my water pump housing.
I read pros and cons of dry or paper gaskets vs RTV. Many treads out there if you search a bit. lol, Look up thermostat, thermo, RTV....
On USED parts I would use both RTV (on both sides of the gasket or mating surface) but for brand NEW parts only use the paper gaskets. The new metal surfaces are theoretically perfect.

A pix of my crack. You can see it about 1 O'clock.
Otherwise not sure why your car is starting to overheat.

https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1187076178

j0rd4n

if you're just going rtv without the gasket (as i have), you really only need to put rtv on one of the surfaces, as long as when you press, both sides are going to be covered.

when it comes to cooling (or any system, really), too much rtv on the surface can turn out bad because, remember, you're squeezing these surfaces together so only a very thin layer of rtv is staying between the surfaces, the rest is being squeezed outward (and inward), so if you put too much you may end up with pieces coming off from the coolant flow and clogging your system...BAD

i think of it like mating a cpu to a heatsink via thermal compound/paste. too little and you aren't making good contact, too much and you're going to make a mess and possibly damage parts if the excess gets too far off of the chip itself and makes contact with the board

harley71105

The Radiator flow could comprimised....could be a bunch of trash in the A/C condensor and or the Radiator cutting down on air flow....wash out with a water hose with some pressure (all outside of the sytem) or could be that the radiator needs flushing or replaced