Hi there, I'm new here, so please no flames for posting in the wrong section, just point me in the right direction and off I'll go.

I've been looking at RX7s and today I saw a really sweet one. Silver 1993, Jap Import, Touring.

Interior and exterior were in excellent condition, a bit of marking on the front rubber skirt, nothing serious.

The engine was rebuilt only 500 miles ago so everything in the engine bay looks good and it passed all the checks I found at:

http://rx7.voodoobox.net/infofaq/bguide3g/bguide3g.html

However, when it started it was loud with quite a lot of black smoke from the exhaust, enough to mark the fence behind it. This calmed down within a minute, but it still smelt quick rich. The dealer said it was normal and just needed time to warm up. So I gave it time, the idle speed was good. Stationary I took it up to 3k rpm and releasing the throttle instanly caused a backfire. This happened about 3 or 4 times until it ran smooth. After that it seemed ok and the second turbo happily kicked in at 4.5k rpm. Again the dealer said this was normal for an RX-7 with a fat exhaust, but in my opinion backfiring should never occur. Is this a car that I wouldn't be able to drive for at least 5 minutes when starting it up, even really slowly? And if it is simply running too rich, is that something that can be easily rectified? And there was no sway strut/anti-roll bar in the engine bay, but most of the pictures I've seen have one. Is that a standard part that's gone missing?

Oh, and it's auto so I couldn't check 5th gear synchro problems. Is there anything else I should look out for?

Lastly, is this a car that with regular reasonably simple maintenance will run well on the road? Or should I go buy a one year old Yaris? I don't mind doing my own work, I enjoy it, but I don't want to spend hundreds on it every month just for road use.

Thanks for any advice in advance! I need it.

 

Read the stickies at the top. Lots of really good info there.

Some backfiring is normal.

 

The tower strut bar was part of the R1 package. You can get aftermarket ones.
What I read in the buyers guide said.....if it smokes, don't buy it.
The car will run like a bat out of hell, but there's nothing simple about maintaining it.

 

it sounds a little shady. do you know what it has in mods? sounds like it's running a full open exhaust which is loud annoying and can lead to a blown engine w/o having a proper ECU such as the Power Fc or boost controller. usually a car with a fresh engine like that had it's engine blown for a reason. whether or not that reason was repaired in sometimes dubious.

 

Thanks for the answers so far, they're very helpful. The smoke did disappear after a minute, so I'm not giving up on it 100% yet. I'm sure it's not oil smoke.

The story behind this car was that the owner had to move out of the country, and on the way to the dealer he broke down. The maintenance sheet said something about low compression and so they did the rebuild. Possibly a finally ragging before he had to give it up that killed the engine.

I've also managed to find a guy with an RX-7 just round the corner from me so hopefully I'll be able to find out some more from him.

They are sweet sweet cars!