I just got the car, and for the life of me I can't find the oil dipstick. Coolant, PS, AT, I have found everything but. Where should it be?


93 Auto trans.

 

On the driver's side of the engine, right below the silver intake elbow, you should see a yellow loop. Pull up. It really IS that burried and rediculous... like they didn't want us to check the oil or something!

Congrats on the purchase. You will find this forum REALLY REALLy helpful when problems occur.

Note that I said when. It'll keep you busy

 

Found it, THANKS! (I can't believe I bought a car without checking the oil!) The price was way too good too be true, so I counted the engine as bad. It runs great! (little miss at idle and some light popping off throttle never under load) 10-8-10 boost pattern. 119K miles for $7K! (I was just hoping for a good body!)

 

nice car, miles are high but really good buy for a rebuild. check the top of the 3rd gen thread for relibility mods that will come in handy.

 

congrats

 

Awesome, good luck with it.

 

Some other "silly" questions, what is the "hold" button for? (this is an automatic) should I look anywhere different than a piston engine for the Burble/miss? (plugs,wires,timing etc...) Is there a wiring diagram on the net anywhere (dash lights are int.) Both parts houses in town didn't have a manual. I am going to go over the car tomorrow checking the normal stuff (fluids/brakes etc.... Is there anything rotary/turbo specific I should check?

 

here you go good luck...
http://www.scuderiaciriani.com/rx7/shop_manual.html

 

Pretty sure hold is to keep the tranny from shifting until you release the button. Allows you partial manual control of the auto.

A more complete wiring diagram can be found at
http://www.iluvmyrx7.com/

intermittant dash lights are often caused by the dimmer starting to go. It is the little roller wheel on the radio panel.

Make sure you look at the threads on this forum that deal with cooling system issues. If your car is not modified, risk of tossing an apex seal is less than having your cooling system fail and having the engine overheat, which typically leads to a new engine if it occurs for a prolonged period or happens often. This also includes getting a temp gauge, or linearizing the stock one to get a realistic picture of engine temps. The stock gauge (non-linearized) does not tell you the engine is too hot untill very late in the game, when you usually don't have time to shut the thing off to allow it to cool. Don't forget this car has electrically driven fans, and Mazda programmed them to come on at a higher temp than many of us think makes sense, so you might consider one of the two fan mods that can be found around here, or swapping the thermoswitch for the Miata one. At a minimum, you can drive with the parking lights on which will cause the fans to come on at 210F, rather than 226F (most folks feel 250F on water/glycol mix is the upper saftey limit, though running NPG+ seems to allow higher temps. Ongoing debate, that one!).

Make sure your air separation tank (AST) has been replaced. The stock ones are plastic and are known to split and dump your coolant. Stock radiators can fail in a slower fashion, but still allow overheating due to pressure loss. Bad rad caps will do this too (the one next to the alternator is supposed to be a flat cap, no spring, and the other one next to the intercooler is the pressure cap with the spring, and it is mounted on the air separation tank which I mentioned).

Anyway, there are about 150 things that are priorities on this car that can really make for a bad day if you don't make sure they're ok (and sometimes will fail anyway!). There are some good posts on reliabilty issues, which oil makes sense to use, which fluids to use, when to change the fuel filter (IMMEDIATELY if you can't confirm it was done within the last 20,000 miles), and many more things. Search forever....

 

Think of what else you could get for 7K. You did great.

Good luck.

 

congrats on the buy i just got mine a week ago to and it took me a little while to find it to so dont feel alone in the world

 

yea, the hold button keeps it in the gear that is listed on the shifter. drive or"D" uses all gears, and pushing the hold button will downshit into 3rd.
sport "S" uses 1st 2nd and 3rd gears. pushing it while in "S" will downshift to 2nd.
low "L" uses 1st and 2nd gear. hold will put it into 1st gear... dont do this while moving... not good for tranny

looks like this:

3D <hold goes to 3rd
2S <hold goes to 2nd
1L <hold goes to 1st

does that help?

 

congrats!! welcome!!

 

Was it the black auto fd that was on ebay. looks nice if it was. when i saw that it was only at 7k with one day left i got excited and wanted another one. but it was an auto good buy.

 

Hello fellow Automatic owner! Good job on the purchase. All the advice given so far is very good, plus hang around here for all sorts of good info. As for your intermittent burble/miss...if it is just at idle it is pretty common on a cold motor. If doing it after warmed up I'd suspect (as you did) the spark plugs. It is getting harder to find the plugs too, by the way. Don't know what part stores you have, around here it is O'Reilly's, Autozone and Pepboys. None of these places carry the NGK plugs we use anymore, though they used to.
Get yourself a factory service manual, they are about $100 or so, but worth their weight in gold in my opinion. I wouldn't bother with the online copies, get a hard copy original.
Congrats and good luck!