I just recently had the cat replaced with a magnaflow, and now the car smokes at idle... smoke is white/blue... gets really bad when sitting at a light after some driving... anyone have any ideas as to what can be the cause??? Oil was changed yesterday... still having the same problem...

 

Coolant

 

worn out turbos oil blows into intake.

 

Are you asking about the presence of smoke, or the fact that it's getting out the tailpipe?

Does your magnaflow have a catalytic element in it? Does it have a pipe for the secondary air injection?

Dave

 

hey I dont want to sound stupid, but how long before the oil change was the magnaflow installed?? the reason i asked was that I had my cat cut out and the car serviced at the same time and my car started smoking, it turned out they had just overfilled it with oil and this was causing the smoking lol Just a thought

Mark

 

could be a blown Apex seals. Try putting back your old cat. Cause I remember when I still had a rotary engine that had a blown apex seal, and had put on a Midpipe the car would continously smoke like a bitch. But then when I put my stock cat back on it didnt' smoke anymore. Check the compression on the engine. But it can also be something else. Does your engine shakes and vacuum low, like around 10hg or so?

 

What..the..****..

Dude, if he had popped a seal, he would KNOW IT. The car would be super sluggish, have no power, and smoke like a FIEND all the time.

He wouldn't be on here complaining about a wee bit of smoke after a midpipe install if he had lost an apex seal.

AHMYGOD!

 

Seriously have you even seen an RX7 or driven one with a lost Apex seal and still boost and drives normal. I personally know people, and myself with a blown apex seal, and still makes full boost and drives fine. And the car does not smoke if I have my main stock cat on. But when I switch to a aftermarket cat with more flow, it started to smoke like a bitch.

If you read what he wrote...

NOW DOES that seem to fit with my discription????

 

Apex seals are a possibility.

Depending on how violently they break they may not be noticeable to the driver.

Dave

 

How many miles are on the new exhaust?

I recently installed a dual borla muffler setup on my fc vert and it smoked at idle for the first 10-15 miles or so. It was simply the new exhaust breaking in.

Oh, and broken apex seals by themselves most definitely will *not* cause smoke out the tailpipe. Reading a few of these posts, it seems like some of you guys are just tossing darts at a dartboard......

 

It's possible this is it. Most exhaust parts, especially if they're made out of aluminized steel, or steel, have a coating of oil on them to prevent corrosion while in storage. They can smoke a little bit at first, but it should be burned off after 3 or 4 drives.

 

I love all the posts saying" it's your apex seals"
installing an exhaust componenet does NOT instantly kill your apex seals, lol.
Im assuming since he said Magnaflow, i'm gonna assume it's a hi flo cat, not a midpipe
Installing a midpipe on a stock ecu FD3S CAN cause issues due to boost creep however if you simply installed a hi flo cat then look elsewhere for your cause....

oh, and yes, unlike some of these other "internet rx7 experts" i actually own a 3rd gen as well as a 1st and 2nd so ...

 

Well, I have driven some rx7's with blown apex seals, NO not that i blow up, when picking up project cars and such...anyhow, they definetly didnt drive fine dude seriously if you can't tell a blown up engine from a 100% engine then you must be and then you go one to say you HAve a blown apex seal and then all of a sudden you put on a stock main cat and it drives "fine" with no smoke yea
either you DO have a blown apex seal and your a nutcase for continueing to drive your car, or YOU DONT even know what a BLOWN rotary engine is. either way you sound like you have a really fast 3rd gen lol, with your stock main cat....
ok, right, so next time someone blows an apex seal ill just tellem to put on a stock cat, lol, and they can drive on wtf

 

LOL... Look at this kid. ARE YOU ILLITERATE.?? Can't you read what I post. It's not like I'm here to tell a story or a lie. My car had a blown rear apex seal long before I even put that midpipe on. The only reason I had put the midpipe on was because I just wanna see how the car would react to it. And what do you know. It didn't stop smoking. Put the stock cat back on and it stopped smoking. Go read the post again illiterate kid. You must have a fucked up motor for it not to run. Compression reading on the rear rotor had a consistent pulse of 95, 35, 35... Front rotor had a consistent pulse of 95, 95, 95... The reading 95, 35, 35 indicate a blown apex seal. And even after that I still had put in another 7,000 miles or so on it. The car will shake violently and vacuum as high as 10hg everytime I'm at a stop light or so... If I hadn't done my LS1 swap, I know I could of had driven it for much longer.
Now go do your homework.....shheeeesshhh.

 

I took it to CLR today.... was told it can be one of two things.....

If I'm lucky.....
The turbos are bad... worse than how they were when i bought the car a few weeks ago. I have only been boosting 5psi since i got the car.... and there hasn't been any spiking... didn't think too much of it.... I did the oil change a week after i put on the hi-flow... hoping it would make a difference... it didn't...

If I'm I'm not so lucky....
When the motor was rebuilt 45000 miles ago, its possible that the original seals were used. If this is the case, those seals have possibly cracked. You all know what that means.

Plan to try and get rid of the smoke...
I need to find some turbos. Keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that I'm lucky, I plan on replacing the turbos... so if anybody knows anyone in SoFLA... that might have something available.... I'm interested.

 

To disprove a possibility takes a lot more than one person's experience. Nobody said the blown motor was a likely cause, but the possibility positively exists.

That's not necessarily a good assumption just yet. Lots of folks get full exhausts or resonated midpipes put in with no idea what it will do to their car.

High flow cats are very prone to making boost spikes, which can be just as bad as creep. As with any flow mod, if you install it and run the car hard without monitoring your boost levels it's entirely possible to chip an apex seal or damage stuff. The natural response of pretty much everyone is to pull out onto the first highway and gun it, yes? Another possibility is that the shop did something they shouldn't have and the installation is not related to the smoking problem.

Blown motors can smoke due to incomplete combustion and blowby. Especially if you don't have a main cat in place with secondary air injection to help burn off the extra junk.

All that said, if the original poster would step in and provide info about the mods on the car, the boost level (before and after), other engine behavior, change in vacuum, etc, it would really help.

I also like the idea that there is junk in the pipe that is still burning off, it can take quite a while if it was spray painted or dirty from something else.

Dave

 

new exhaust system have so many chemicals and oil and **** impregnated into the metal that when it heats up for the first time its bound to smoke slightly for a while. of course more so with mild steal stock type exhausts, but even SS is gonna have **** on them. just wait for about a few weeks

 

Stuff like silver spray paint, lol. I guess the average person has no idea that stainless steel isn't supposed to be shiny and perfect like silverware.

Dave

 

i mean oil from being impregnated into the steel. i havnt been around too much ss tahts why im not sure. but mild steel. i'll tell you what, there is so much residue and **** on the metal