well, as some of you know, i traded my nice white 89 TII with 62k miles, full t04b, haltech e6k, brakes, suspension, 1000 miles on an engine i built, etc. for a 93 silver FD with a "recently rebuilt" engine and a salvage title.

well, i got the car home, got insurance for it, and started planning for all the things i was going to have to replace: gauge cluster, turbos, clutch, brakes, shifter, AST, downpipe, stereo, and several other things i'm sure i'm forgetting. Well, a couple months go by and i finally, after my fun clutch install, i am DONE with my list of things that needed to be replaced or upgraded on this car to get it back up to par. the engine has good compression. infact, during the turbo install, i actually noticed a little hylomar on the outside of the block from the "recent rebuild"... everything seems well until the other morning.

i start the car up and the add coolant buzzer is on... "hmmm" i think, as i go pop the hood to top the coolant off. "just for ***** and giggles" i thought, "i'll do the coolant seal test..." SO, i leave the fill cap off the thermostat housing and start her up to find a steady stream of bubbles coming up through my coolant system, making their way up, pushing coolant out as they reach the top. OK this is bad, but as the engine starts to warm up, the coolant bubbles slow down and nearly stop, so i am somewhat relieved. i let the car fully warm up and even go for a drive so i can turn it off while it is warm and make sure that it fires right up on a "hot start." it does. SO, at this point i am almost relieved and go about my day as normal.
THE NEXT DAY:
same as yesterday, but this time when i start the car, it is running on one rotor. ".........." "ok maybe its just a fluke" so i get out and pop the coolant fill cap off to find lots of bubbles and lots of coolant being pushed out. I stand there and **** my pants as i hear the other rotor begin to fire, as if the coolant in the combustion chamber had been drowning it out until it alllll got pushed out by the rotations and heat. now that the engine is running nice and smooth on both rotors, i sit in awe as i let the realization of a blown coolant seal sink in...
you may think "hey, no big deal, its an FD. whats new?" but this is a new thing for me... now that i have finally gotten over my tuning woes in the TII, detonating hard atleast once every 2 months, i get an FD to treat nice and NOT destroy and now it has a bad coolant seal. all i have done since i got this car is shower it with gifts, replace broken stuff, buy a new shortshifter, downpipe, gauge cluster, clutch, etc... now it has just made me **** the back of my pants (and maybe a little pee in the front of my pants) thinking about what i am going to try to do in a week or two when i have NO transportation, no job, and have to travel off to school to start the new semester. I understood all the previous trouble i had with rotaries, detonating, preigniting, big turbos, tuning, lack of fuel volume, etc. but i did nothing wrong with this car. i've never overheated it -not once-.

the question is, what the hell is a fella to do now? i mean, i cant sell it (its a FD that needs a new motor, albeit a cheap rebuild, with a salvage title) i doubt i can trade it... i'm no stranger to engine teardowns (i've torn down countless rotaries) or rebuilds (i've rebuilt 4) but i just cant afford it, not even a soft-seal rebuild...
what should i do!?!?

 

you wonder why people say fd's are like girls?

my deepest condolances, but muster up a few bucks for some coolant seals and give it a quick n' durrty.

yes it sucks, and yes it'll hold you over until later.

 

how much does the quick'n'dirty rebuild cost? the only thing i've done is a typical rebuild with sides/apexes/springs/corners/etc and its around 800 bucks just for parts

can i buy JUST a rebuild oring kit for an FD?

 

if you re-use everything. Coolant seals = $100, and maybe a front cover gasket...block off plates, new fuel system, go stand alone, single kit...new IC, etc...$10k or so.

 

i dont believe in front cover gaskets, or oil pan gaskets.

 

Same thing happened to me. Tough place to be. I can relate. I tried to sell the shell for several months with no luck. I had to sell my bike to fix the fd... I wish I still had my bike

 

last one i did on mine was $80
but i've got buckets of spare parts, so all i REALLY had to buy were outer coolant seals and oil, coolant, etc.

 

Buy a bottle of radiator stopleak and cross your fingers? lol...I would over-extend yourself slightly, buy an 85 toyota tercel, then put the money away slowly and surely to buy yourself a nice rebuild. Just my opinion, but the "pain in the *** factor" of having to do it twice...one quickly then another one carefully would not be worth it.

 

I would seriously do the coolant o-ring fix using the liquid/copper block weld. I did it and mine has been running good for over 6 months. I have had my FD for a little over 3 years and I've been driving it for over 2 years on 5 apex seals. And I have put some miles on her within those 2 years including RR 2004, round trip to Orlando, numerous trips to Atlanta, B'ham, Chattanooga, Nashville, plus weekend duties around town. So don't give up, patch that sucker and get every last drop out of it untill you can save up to rebuild it the way you want it... I am

 

I agree with dubulup. If its only coolant seals and you've rebuild 13bs in the past, I would just replace the coolant seals. That will save you TONs. Just open it up, clean, spec, and build it back.

 

look at it dis way. at least you dont need a full rebuild, and you can port it once its opened.

 

i just thought of something... could a bad thermostat cause pressure to come out of the coolant fill cap when the car is started cold?

 

UPDATE:

well, it appears that the running on one rotor was due to my rear spark plug being nearly fouled out. so i cleaned both of them off after the car had sat for 3-4 hours, reinstalled them and its purring like a kitten again... i also went for a 20 minute drive around town and nothing was out of the ordinary, no add coolant buzzer, no trying to overheat, and i have yet to see any coolant get dumped into the overflow reservoir...

this is strange. what else should i look into when troubleshooting for a bad coolant seal?

 

I would do the block weld trick. Did it on a customer's car a while back, and he's still driving around no problems. It'll take the better part of a weekend to do right, but it's MUCH cheaper and easier than a motor, and will buy you a LOT of time before you really need to tear into it.

All your symptoms point to a small coolant seal leak, which the block weld trick will fix quite nicely.

Dale

 

buy the product in this link and use it to make sure all the air is out of your system. its also a lot easier to see air bubbles when using this thing once the air is bled out by running the car.

https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.p...ighlight=lisle

might also want to pressure test the system for leaks. sometimes you have a slow leak out of a clamp that no longer has the torque to clamp and you think the worst.

i was paranoid about my FD for the 1st year that I got it thinking everything was suspect. some of it was and i found a bunch of small issues like worn out hose clamps and such. go through the car slowly and methodically and you'll work the weaknesses and worn out stuff out over time.

 

when winter rolled in, i had an add coolant buzzer. thought the same thing. i got out and checked. i had no bubbles, but it was obvious that the car may have been operating on a slightly lower coolant level for a while. my only buzzer problems were when it was cold outside, so i figured that out. i added more coolant, and its all good. we all know how hard it is to burp a rotary. . . and with your car having a recent rebuild. . . id expect it to do somewhere around the same. top it off with coolant everymorning until you dont have to anymore. then, see if the add coolant buzzer comes back. or, just hook it up to a coolant system pressure tester. . . thatll tell you if theres anything up rather quickly. if the pressure drops and you dont see anything leaking. . . well, im sure you know the rest.

 

we pressure tested the coolant system today and it held 13.5psi for a good ten minutes! so it looks like i'm off the hook... we also burped the coolant system and i'm assuming the problem was a big air bubble or two or three...

 

Glad it turned out good.