Hey all,

Long time no post. I've been pretty much out of the rotary scene for a long time (got into old school Datsuns for a while, have a '72 240Z in the garage ) but recently a friend of mine decided he didn't have time for his project TII and offered it to me.

It's been over a year since I've touched the car so I'm just going by memory here. Hopefully it will be enough info to at least get a general idea of what's up. If it needs an engine rebuild I will probably tell him to throw it on craigslist as I just don't have the time for that. If it needs a turbo rebuild or something else minor, I'll probably snag it. Anyway, the symptoms as I remember them:

- The car will start okay, idle fine, and rev freely while parked. Sounds like it's running well. When driven, however, it has almost no power and appears to not be building any boost.
- It smokes. If I remember right, it smokes all the time, not just when driven.

To me this sounds like a turbo issue, because if the motor is shot I feel like it would be obvious whether it was parked or being driven. The smoking and lack of boost are telling me it's a turbo issue. My last car was an 86 base so this is my first foray into diagnosing turbo car issues. Am I at least on the right track here?

Thanks.

-Darren

 

I would suggest starting with a compression test, and go from there.

 

Unfortunately I don't have the car here, otherwise I would have definitely done it already.