52/50 ...

 

you beat me to it

 

I guess that includes math...

 

They did take the time to carefully bend the coolant temp gage calibration. That says it all.

 

if your not breaking ****, your not racing

in anycase, cost and performance and emmisions is pretty much the answer. if the car cost 50k starting, then perhaps some of these issues would have been taken care of but it was not. in reality, nearly all relibility mods can be done for about 1-2k and you can buy a new engine for 2-4k so its not really that much considering a new entry level import (ex: camery or altima) will cost you more then the car+relibiity mods+new engine+new turbos. i have been seeing FD's go for less then 8k and that is pretty cheap... especially when you consider 240's cost about 3-13k and 86's go for like 2-5k. hell i have seen civics (the old boxy type) go for 3-6k

 

lmao 52/50 :-)

thats what i get for typing fast and not reading it over for mistakes. Good times.

 

Fan temps are probably all about emissions...

 

Here are my guesses on each...

Fuel mileage.

There is no single turbo that spools as fast with the same peak power potential as the stock twins, even today. Yes, you can get something like the RX6 to spool nearly (but not as) fast if you open the exhaust, etc. I wish Mazda made the control system a little simpler or more reliable, but the sequential twin setup still offers an unbeatable combination of quick spool and capacity. And that's coming from someone who had an RX6 single and is now installing a bigger single.

The stock raditor is light and works just fine for most purposes.

It keeps the throttle response snappy, but I generally agree that it should have been larger. Sucking the intake air from the same duct was not a good design choice, either.

This doesn't make any sense. There is no such thing as ceramic *coated* seals, ceramic seals are very expensive, and they don't offer a lot of bang for the buck.

And that's from someone who just bought a set of ceramic seals for his rebuild since the other alternatives available in the marketplace when I had to choose (Mazda's new 2-piece, and the RA seals) were not yet proven enough for me to be comfortable with them.

I've never heard of the oil passages being a problem, and I suppose the upgrades would cost money.

-Max

 

I don't know about your race car, but mine drives a lot better when it's NOT broken... It's called 'testing' and you're supposed to do it before the race.

Ask Ferrarri how they win so much, and they will tell you 'more test time than anyone else.' It's very possible that the RX-7 was somewhat lacking in the long-term testing department, I'll definitely agree to that. But I still feel that those issues were resolved in the later models, the ones that we didn't get because of various socio-economic factors that were beyond Mazda's control. I guess there is one thing that they did to shoot themselves in the foot: they did such a good job on the Miata that people weren't willing to spend the extra money on the RX-7. Miatas are pretty darn fun, I recommend driving one if you get a chance.

-s-

 

Well my only grip about the Fd was the design of it's rats nest. I know the Fd was the first production vehicle to have a sequential turbo system, but they could have taken a little more time to develope a less complicated set-up. You would think at some point Mazda would have stepped back to look at their design and say......."**** we can design something less complicated than this"! Hell Toyota got theirs working right the first time. Mazda was capable of doing the same.

 

Yea... why didn't they let some idiot in NY design the car that has no idea what goes on in the background of car design.

 

The stock sequential system itself is not very complicated. If you look at the sequential simplification diagrams, you will quickly find that a large part of the vaccum system (when simplified, there are only 25 vaccum lines and 7 solenoids) are related to emissions. So, that answers one of the questions -- emissions.

 

You forget, soon after the FD's arrival Ford bought out Mazda... what buying power?

 

'



You must of forgot too. Ford owns a percentage of Mazda.

 

Yes Fumanchu, but if they possessed so much buying power and been such a powerful company, why would they sell even a fraction of their great business? Your point is invalid, whether the entire company was bought or a fraction (which BTW is something like 55% making it Ford) they still wouldnt give up any of their company if it was so powerful.

 

hmmm.... Actually it's 33%. But who's counting