Gir

I am making sure to look into as many avenues on the Rx7 as possible, and I have been reading as many posts as time will permit and I wanted a general consensus from the Rx7 Community on the money pit factor of these cars. Its been recommended to me to buy a higher milage car and budget in a new engine, which may or may not be possible since the pick of rx7's are slim out here. But If one were to put in the proper cooling measures and put a new engine in it how much of a money pit will the car be over the years. Also what if I were only to find one with 40K original miles on it for about $15K, would it probably turn into a bigger money pit over time?
Any comments would be helpfull, thanks.

Gir

*bump*

zyounker

If you buy one with 40-50K have at least ~$5K to spare for a new engine if you really need the car to be reliable. If it is a weekend fun car and you can put your own engine in keep ~$3K around.



I just do not trust people, Almost every RX-7 i have ever seen forsale has blown up within a couple thousand miles of being sold..

So you spend $15K it will cost you an extra $6-8K to make it reliable with a new engine & a little extra power.

Buy a $7-13K car with possibly a blown engine and keep around $6-8K to make it run again...

You probably know what i think so i'll let other people answer this now..


-Zach

Gir

zyounker I am glad you commented
I always appreciate your opinions, and am glad you guys are willing to put up with my barage of questions

zyounker

Thinking more on it, it could cost more.. Depending on the shap of the turbos.. When a rotary goes, it usually chucks an iron apex seal through the turbos... You can get these rebuilt i think for about ~$500


A car with 60K+ miles on it will probably need the turbos rebuilt anyhow...


one thing you need to decide though is if you do want to make the car fast is how fast.. A single turbo will always be faster & doing it from the start will always be cheeper..


-Zach

Gir

My overall plans on the rx7 are to have a fast fun great handleing car, but the reason I am picking it are because I want to learn how to maintain a turbo car propertly and how to rebuild the turbos and engine and whatnot.
When I test drove this care (which to my understanding has 250 hp at the flywheel) it felt really good. And from my previous post people were telling me if I wanted to keep the twins and not run engine management (which I will want to run a programmable ecu but prolly not for a while till I have the rest down) that I can get it to 315 RWH which is probably blow the doors off most things fast. So if I am missing anything in this equasion please let me know. But this is sort of the plan so far as long as I dont spend tons of money keeping the car afloat so to speak.

zyounker

Well, if you want to go with a programable ECU the easyest would be the PowerFC.. It is a plug & play ECU. IT costs around $1200


Rather than buy a Remaped ECU when upgrading do a PowerFC..


You are not missing anything.. The stock block & turbos can get you over 300 RWHP....


If you really want to learn about turbo rotarys i would sugest you buy a TII RX-7.. You can pick up a nice one that has been modded... Check out http://www.thepartstrader.com under mazda (rotary)

-Zach

zyounker

TII RX-7 was made between 87-91 i believe... IT is a second gen RX-7... There is a 11 second RX-7 forsale on there right now for ~10K...


You will not find a better deal than that...


-Zach

Gir

I appreciate that, but I am not looking for a turboII because I love the third gen bodies so much. And I want the expeirience of building up the car myself, I dont want someone elses build.

Magnificent 7

I've always felt that way myself. I want to do my own mods. Even if I do use the same intercooler or cat back or whatever that a thousand other FD owners use. It's still my (or your) particular mix of mods that makes the car uniquely mine (or yours).

Gir why don't you contact me about mine. It's for sale and only mildly modded.

It has about 2500 miles on the Mazda reman. engine and NEW factory turbos, and about 6500 miles on the recently replaced stock clutch. Hell, it's already got a Power FC, so with a couple of fuel mods you'll be set to make gobs of HP. The only other mods are a midpipe and downpipe.

You still get to choose what type of cold air intake, intercooler, cat back, suspension, brakes, wheels, body mods, interior mods, and stereo system you want. You can even change the new sequential turbos over to true parallel twins, or a big single. You can swap the new clutch and pressure plate for an ACT if you want to. It's basically all stock, and all new (at least all the parts that would be likely to go on a higher mileage car). Plus, it's exceptionally clean, inside and out.

I've even got the stock parts (ECU, pre-cat, and main-cat) if you wanted to put them back on. I even have a stock R1 spoiler. I kept the original sequentials. If you wanted to get a set of upgraded twins, you could have them rebuilt or at least use them for core without having your car disabled.

It even comes with a transferrable bumper to bumper warranty, so even if something did go wrong you're covered.

Sounds like a good match to me. Let me know.

newRX7fan

iTrader: (1)

One thing to keep in mind when hearing the horror stories in this forum (or any forum relating to anything that is purchased) is that it is mostly the people who have problems who make the most posts- I mean you hear "my engine blew after only 50k miles", and never "my engine has 80k miles and still hasn't blown.

That said, I think zyounker has a good idea. I bought by '93 with 48k miles on it, 1.5 years ago. I first did a tune up, then reliability mods- bigger radiator, removed AST, J&S, replaced all vacuum lines, etc. Then power mods. I have been going to track events, but it has never came close to overheating and I've always used a mixture of pump and race gas. I now have 62k miles on it.

Tonight I am going to start the process of removing the engine from my car, since I have all the symptoms of a blown O-ring. So my engine needs to be rebuilt.

My advice would be to either do as zyounker says, or if you do buy one that is running, make sure you buy it from an original owner who can prove he has maintained it regularly- not just oil changes, but also coolant replacements, along with everything else. And don't go for the extremely low mileage ones or that are driven very infrequently since having the engine sit around for long periods without being run is a bad thing. You sometimes see ads bragging about having only 8k miles or something ridiculously low for a 6-8 year old car- stay away from those.

Coulthard Fan

This is true in many areas of life and equally true on this forum and on the big RX7 List. My turbos lasted over 100,000 miles, and even then I only replaced them because they were coming off the car anyway. Since I pay for labor I figured if they were off it was cheaper just to put on new ones now. Who knows how long those things could have kept going!

Also, the first owner of my FD replaced the engine at 39,000 miles for an unknown reason, but the turbos did not go, they obviously lasted another 60,000+ miles. I think that O-Ring failures were one of the leading causes of popped motors (due to overheating) and as I understand it this does not spew chunks of metal, i.e. apex seals, into the turbos like a detonation/apex seal failure would.

To get to your original question of whether this car is a money pit: that depends on how you look at it. I've spent more on mods and repairs in the 3 years I've had the car than I did on buying it. But, it is a much better car now than it was 3 years ago, and is cheaper than getting a new car that comes anywhere near the level of performance I currently enjoy. I think a Corvette Z06 is probably the next closest thing I would be interested in getting, but I'd rather have fun with my 7 now and maybe step into a Viper in a few years.

Gir

Magnificent 7, I sent you a pm, or you can email me at lcoleman@dentrix.com

EunosFD

In my opinion FD's are definately money pits...then again what supercar isn't (okay, other than a Supra)? I strongly believe that Mazda really cut corners on these cars to keep the price down and performance up thus shortening the lifespan of the engine. With that being said the price of an engine rebuild/replacement isn't so bad...especially if you get a great motor built for you by a pro like KD Rotary. If you keep in mind what the car is and what it was designed to do then the moneypit factor isn't so bad...you gotta pay to play and FD's are a blast! If I had the chance to do it all over again I'd probably buy a car with a blown motor so that I could build it up myself and make it strong and as reliable as possible. Unfortunately I got mine from an owner that didn't quite treat it too good...or at least not how it should have been (babied it too much...carbon deposits and overheating are killers)....I bought it with 36k miles and the motor went out at 48k. I'm selling it now because I can't afford to keep paying on it, fix it, and go to school full time (plans changed), but I'll likely buy another after I graduate and do it right next time. Just make sure you're ready to assume the responsibilities and maintenence on the car and you should be fine...oh and you might wanna get a beater car just in case