Hello everyone,

Thought I'd introduce myself to the forum! Like the title of the thread says, I've been reading this forum along with others for quite a while now and have just recently bought an FD. It's an amazing car, been my dream car for awhile now and I'm thrilled to have finally bought one. The amount of knowledge people have on this forum is outstanding, nearly everything one could want to know (About FD's, not life :P) can be found here or be linked to from here. So first off, thank you for that!

Now I know people might bark at me and tell me to use the search function right away but I do have a question so don't jump the gun yet. :P

Like I mentioned in the first paragraph, I just bought an FD. Best thing about that is that it's totally bone stock with around 34,000km. (Yes, KM's.. it's an import from Japan and I live in Canada) So with that in mind I've got my upgrade path totally mapped out, mainly shooting for reliability (Downpipe, AST, etc.) with a few performance things along the way.

Anyways! To my question; a few of my friends and others i've spoken with have mentioned a few things to do with driving habbits and RX7s. The single most important thing to me is keeping my car alive for as long as possible. (Even after it dies, which I know it will, i'll be swapping another 13B in.. I can appreciate people going the LS1 route but it's not for me.. bought an FD for a reason :P) So.... back to my question, haha.

As far as driving habbits, what does everyone here do to keep the FD healthy? I've heard letting it hit high RPM's (Durr) every trip helps to clear out any carbon sitting inside the engine. Another thing mentioned to me was that if you don't rev the car up the engine will be flooded, not quite sure how that was meant to come accross but I don't understand.

Thanks in advance to everyone! I really appreciate this forum and the contributers in it. This site rocks!

 

well congrats on yer purchase...here is a site for wat you need to get started, regarding reliability.

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

here is also a how to site for future reference.

http://www.rx7.org/Robinette/index.htm

hope this helps you find wat your looking for

 

Carbon buildup is a non-issue in FDs because they're turbocharged. While the engine can high revs in great amounts, there no need to redline it or anything.

Flooding happens when the engine is not tuned well, the injectors are not working perfectly, something ignition-related caused the engine to not start, or compression is poor. A well-running engine should not flood. In the 4 years I've owned mine it's flooded exactly one time due to injector problems. I start/stop it to move it around regularly without any issue.

To take care of it, focus on driving easy for 5 minutes at the start of each trip and at least 2 minutes easy before the end of each trip. Idling IMO is not as good as nice easy driving, so unless you live at the bottom of a big long hill there is no need for more than a few seconds of idling warmup. If you have the stock AWS system that revs the engine when started (I think JDMs didn't have it), just blip the throttle to shut it off because while the high RPM idling period is good for emissions, it's bad for your engine. If you have water temp and oil temp gauges, then use that to determine when the engine is fully warmed.

Dave

 

Dave, I wouldn't necessarily say carbon build-up is a non-issue (although it is less of one than in older N/A motors). I've rebuild quite a few 13BREWs that had a decent amount of carbon build-up.

One of them was a 29k motor. Car was driven mostly by an extremely nice little-old-lady who barely brought the motor past 5k rpm (Car was brought to me by her grandson due to failed coolant seals). You wouldn't believe the amount of carbon build-up that I found in that motor (it had one apex seal, and 3 side seals completely seized).

But I do agree that it is generally less of an issue than most people make it out to be.

-Rob

 

Wow look at all the replies haha, just got to work and checked the thread and there's already something to read. Thanks much for the info, i've checked out Robinette's site and it's very helpful. Like I said a few times earlier, reliability is the biggest thing for me. Any other information about the routines people go through would be greatly appreciated, i've pretty much figured out what I need to do as far as mods go. Thanks again!

 

When did this become the standard? I've always heard that you had to redline your FD to blow out the carbon periodically...

This picture was posted in here earlier this year from a guy who always babied his FD...

 

Carbon can be an issue, however, "needing" to redline it every time you drive is a little bit extreme. You may want to redline it every time you drive it, but that's a different problem. If you give it a good romp every now and then getting on the highway, that's more than enough. If you ever do any track events, you'll be on it enough to do what you need done.

The main issue is that rotaries run pretty rich at idle with the stock mapping. I've never needed to do this procedure. I did have my car flood once, but I believe it was another problem. The worse situation is when people start their cars up, move them into the garage and then shut them down. Cold startups throw the most fuel out there, so an early shut off can flood the car. It typically good to run the car for a few minutes just to make sure. Again, I have done the mentioned "pull it out, wash it, pull it back in" and never flooded the car.

 

I would replace the fuel filter, and do regular oil changes you can make up your own mind on the synthetic vs. dino oil debate.

 

Regarding the carbon, I think it's clear that pretty much anyone here is going to rev the engine well sometimes. I assumed that nobody on this board is going to baby the car 24/7, and probably should have mentioned that.

It's unnecessary to make an effort to do it every drive.

Dave