93 R1 Smoke On Startup? Any Advice?
 

I am currently looking at a 1993 R1 , the car is in excelent shape. It has a new Pettit Street ported motor with new housings, rotors and 3mm seals. It has a new downpipe , midpipe and a 3in Greddy exhaust. It has a ton of new parts , it has the stock factory turbos with about 100K on them.

Everything on the car looks perfect , but the owner says that it just barely smokes from a cold start , and that it is due to the Down / Mid pipe and the modified exhaust system. Since this will be my first rotary , I thought i would ask for your guidance and see if this was anything to be concerned about. I have read most the FAQs out there and in the stickys. Any info and or advice here for a rotary noob , anything else I should look out for?

Since the car is quite a ways away from me I havent seen it in person yet , but I plan to throughlly look it over before handing over any checks. Thanks in anvance for any help and advice . its much appricated!

Welcome to the family.... check out my thread on "Unfortunate Rx7 buyer" ... read the FAQs on this site, and look at the color of the smoke that comes out ... it could be related to your engine needing a rebuild from an o-ring or coolant leak.

Despite all the nice new parts on the car, be sure to look at other areas of the car that may have been neglected. Also, get the car to a good mazda rotary shop so they can run a compression test and coolant pressure test... good luck!

Or, you could SAVE the $500 you would spend going to check out a car that you may not even buy, and do the compression check yourself ..... if you can change a spark plug, you can compression check a car..


Cooling system pressure check? Turn on car, let it warm up, hold it at 2500-3000rpm, and look for leaks. More money saved! Woo hoo!


Edit: My best guess (with the little information given on color of smoke) is that it is the turbos going out. 100k is stretching it on the stock turbos.

I spent $150 at MazdaTrix to check out my car and that included a new battery and a new coolant cap, plus 3 hours of their time :)

Unfortunately, the engine had an o-ring failure within a few days of normal driving, but MazdaTrix doesn't have a crystal ball ...

3 hours?! It took me like 10 minutes to do my compression check x.x

Changing a battery + coolant cap, roughly 5 minutes :-X

FD smokes on start up! Oh my! You better sell it to me, it might blow at any minute!

Seriously, all FDs smoke at start up if they've been sitting very long.

all FD's don't smoke on start up. That's not a good sign when it does, because it can mean a number of things like a bad turbine seal.

If the air pump is removed, full exhaust, and running rich then you might get a little smoke on start up, but after the first thirty seconds to a minute it should go away. I also agree with the stock twins not making it to 100k. I would ask for ALL paper work to verify the work.

i donno about yall but my car has a 30k reman in it with downpipe and seems to run pretty rich...when i start it in the morning after sitting all night at non-reg temp on the aftermarket gauge it smokes a little white for about 1-2mins with a little condensating on the tailpipe and then its gone for the rest of the day...if the car sits all day in the parking lot for over 10 hours and i come back in start it no smoke...only smokes in the mornings at completely cold start i find this to be normal condensation...

Most, if not all FD's will smoke(white/grey) a bit at start up if the car has been sitting a bit, especially overnight(it's just condensation). If it's blue, then you're burning oil, somethin's wrong. If the car is hard to start and/or the smoke smells sweet like coolant, then you have an issue.

Ask for paper see if it has new housing,seal and all the stuff you said. If everything is true then it's the turbo bro.. That all i could say.. Good luck and have fun


East Coast Drifter

Thank you so much for all of the info and advice guys ( and gals? )! So let me ask you all this. In the event this was one of the signs of a failing Turbo system , generally how much is this to replace / rebuild? Again thanks for everything , this really means a lot to me.

turbos aren't that hard to rebuild, but it depends on what's damaged. If nothing besides the turbine ring seal is gone, then just buy a rebuild kit and do it yourself ~200.

Turbo install, reinstall labor can be quite high though. I'd budget at least 1K