I need some help. I was wondering what you guys think I should do.

I found a 93 rx7 r1 for really cheap ($6k). The owner said there's a lot of white/grey smoke coming out and the engine probably needs to be replaced. Well I tried to test drive it today but it wouldn't even run.

The outside condition is decent (paint has some scrapes and scratches but no dents). The inside condition is mint. The last owner had it for 6 years and have all the documents for services.

Should I still buy the car even though it doesnt run and just fix it up? How much am I looking to spend here (rough estimate)?

I included a picture of the engine bay.

Thanks everyone.

 

that engine bay looks really rough... $100T2 you don't live in NH do you ???

 

Seriously!


That's what I was just thinking!

 

Man that FD looks like it has flood damage. Or its been sitting in the rain without a hood. I say pass.

 

that looks pretty nasty. engine alone will cost you ~$3.5k including labor. other others that need to be done along with the motor include a clutch, fuel system refresh, AST, vac hose job (since that car looks original) and whatever else might be wrong. exhaust and cats are probably ratted out and there must be rust in various parts of the car. i'd say run away.

 

let it go...don't even bother with an engine that looks like that. It's not what you CAN see but all the corrosion and rust along the piping/fuel lines and other stuff deep within the engine bay that you cannot see that will probably cost you a lot of money to fix. Not even worth it unless you can get him to sell it to you for $3000

 

talk him down to like $3k-$4k and then part the f*cker out... it might be worth it if you are going to sit down and COMPLETELY rebuild the thing i suppose too (i don't mean just the engine either i mean, ground up resto for the sake of doing a resto). i think you're just asking for ALOT of trouble, more than the $3k suggested above, more like $10k-15k in replacing stock parts, labor, time, aggrevation, etc.

but that's just me... and i was happy to pay too much for my car because i thought it was in good condition.

p.s. if its and R1, where's the strut bar? did he already try to start parting it out? might wanna look into that before you move also.

 

I don't know if this is the same car... The ad for mine said it's a base model, not an R1.

 

Take a look at the carpet and seats - I'll bet it's flood damaged. I've never seen an engine bay look that bad.

If it happened to have an excellent exterior and interior, and for some reason the engine is the only thing that looks so shitty - then maybe you can buy it cheap and swap in another engine, wiring, accessories and come out well ahead. But I'd have to see it in person and REALLY look at it well. But for parting out the engine - that looks like a heap of junk to me - I'd never pay for stuff so rusty.

Dave

 

my engine bay looked like that after driving around in winter with no fender liners. took me a couple hours to clean up, but that aluminum oxidation only took about a week to occur.

 

If the turbos are still ok it may be a good buy. They may be, after all they caused the engine to blow. Remember, a Malloy Mazda rebuild is only $2 to 3 thousand, $500 to $800 shipping, $400 for new vacuum solonoids, $500 for wiring harness - you supply labour. You'd have a car. If you suspect the transmission may need work (I'll bet it has a cracked sycro ring at least as most do), for under $1000 you can have it professionally rebuilt. Spend another $1000 for "other stuff", such as new vacuum hose, Efini "Y" pipe, Greddy elbow, Apex'I PFC (ok, more than $1000). Then you'd have a "nice car". Spend another few thousand on suspension stuff and you'd have your dream car.

 

I bought my car with a blown engine (what I was looking for) Only planned on "getting it runnin"... $7k later (only planned on roughly ~$3k). I ended up upgrading a few things and replacing old stuff while I was in the engine bay. Still waiting on to get the engine back... Hopefully tomorrow... Tired of it just sitting in my garage feeling neglected.

Edit: The body was in good shape and int/ext was completely stock. No major dents, just a few very small dings on the drivers door that can be taken care of fairly easily.

 

to restore that thing you are pretty much going to have to replace everything under that hood. probably 10k worth of stuff

 

you guys can tell all that from looking at a manifold? amazing!!

the previous owner probably lived close to the beach. you've all seen j specs, right?

all you can see from the pic is that white **** on tha manifold and other aluminum parts.

where did the flood damage come into this?

 

The manifold, the alternator and air pump housings, the pulley wheels, the back side of the belts, the hangers, ABS actuator and heat shield, brackets, every visible bolt head, etc. Every metal part is heavily corroded.

Maybe if they drove the car on the beach...

 

this reminds me of a thread a guy posted about some rotor housings he bought from kevin landers.

they were covered in grease and he cut the exhaust diffusers out with a torch, so that part looked kinda assey.
EVERYONE jumped in and said they're junk and trashed and he should get his money back... the wear surface turned out to be just fine--they were just dirty.

seeing corrosion on the manifold and bolt heads doesn't indicate flood damage. it doesn't indicate the car was poorly maintained (the rubber parts looked not too bad). it doesn't mean much of anything except the external metal parts have corrosion on them.

guys here are pretty quick to judge things based on external appearance.

say that same exact car had a polished intake manifold. i bet people would tell the guy to buy it because it's "obvious" the previous owner took care of it, etc etc...

unless you've seen the car in person, there's really not enough to tell just by that one picture. it might possibly be a great deal and everyone's turning him off of it.

but then again, it could be a beat-down lemon. my point is there's not enough info presented to make that decision.

 

True. It could run fine and be in decent shape otherwise.

I generally avoid stuff like that, because it does show that the previous owner(s) must not have cared about it as much as they should. I consider FDs to be enthusiast cars - their owners should take care of them and keep them in as good a condition as they can. Otherwise, they don't deserve the car, IMO.

FWIW, I had a flood damaged CRX a couple years ago. Bought it as a disposable temporary beater for $700. The car ran great, but the engine bay looked about the same as the one from this thread. The only real drawback I ran into was that all of the bolts on the engine were a nightmare to remove, even with a generous dose of PB. The water had gotten down into the threads on a lot of them, and the mineral deposits acted like thread locker.

 

I agree with DigDug; avoid that car. I've seen lots and lots of FD's and all the corrosion on that one just seems fishy. It's not just the engine, but all the accessories, electrical etc and that will cost much more than an engine. There are plenty of other blown up FD's to buy. Skip this one.

 

Flood damage......thats a easy 1 to figure out

 

wooooooow yea that looks like it was definitly sitting in water

 

what makes you say that?

 

The car has been maintained well. The owner has all the service records. She also have the huge service manual for it. She lives in NE, so thats why the engine bay looks like that. Also, carfax came out clean for the car.