well about a week ago i raced a red NSX from a stoplight onto a straight two-lane flat freeway on-ramp and ended up at around 150 on the freeway. the NSX was on my *** the whole time. i woudnt call it a kill even tho i was ahead most of the time. i felt that he could've just passed me any time he felt like it. went home and didnt drive my car for a couple days.

my motor just hit 90k.

now all of a sudden i smell gas in the engine bay sometimes strong.. sometimes not at all.

i also sometimes see very small wisps of steam coming out from the driver-side part of the hood and sometimes out of the driver-side headlight and would smell that sweet smell of coolant and after a bit more driving it would go away.. sometimes it dosent do it at all.

engine bay is dry from gas and coolant (from what i can see crawling around over and under the car)

this sucks

 

Gas might be a fuel pulsation dampener. Search for it on the forum, it comes up a lot. As far as coolant, check all your hoses for small cracks... Sometimes it might look fine but when they heat up, the hoses and their cracks expand.

I saw a NSX on the highway a few days ago. I was looking for a run but he wasn't.

 

90K on original engine? If so, should be time for a rebuild, these engines are not like the old NA ones. They do not last that long. Consider yourself lucky that it has lasted this long.

 

Hey cewrx7r1 - he might not be due for a rebuild quite yet..... the problem he's describing doesn't sound like a typical blown engine sympton.

I hope to have my original engine hit 90k without missing a beat!

Qball - is the car losing coolant? If not, it isn't coolant that you're smelling.... Is there any chance that you spilt some fluids recently in the engine bay, which might be evaporating? Did anything out of the ordinary happen while you ran upto 150 on that occasion? Engine miss a beat or idle rough afterwards, etc?

My '93 has sprayed a few ounces of gas/oil out of the stock intake elbow/throttle body joint, but only after several laps of track driving. Perhaps you could check for such a spray; you should see some remains of the spray on the underhood liner.

 

That sounds like a logical solution to the problem.

 

have some faith, man. intermittant fuel and coolant smell does not = engine rebuild imho. they may tend to smoke and drink a little more, but the 3rd gen can go well beyond 90K on original engine.

i don't really see that there is a problem...jumper the f/p on via diagnosis connector (see WSM) and smell and listen for fuel leaking out of the pulsation damper off the backside of the intake manifold. My guess is you probably blew open some clogged injectors on your 150mph run vs. NSX and your car is running a little richer than its used to as a result. or maybe you overheated the plugs and cracked the porcelain or something, but you would probably notice performance degradation if that were the case.

 

I did not say his engine was toast and needed a rebuild. I suggest that if he got that far (90K), he was lucky. I would not trust an original RX-7 engine with that many miles except for normal driving. If he wants to race as he did against the NSX, he should have rebuilt it sooner if he wants it to be reliable and fast.

You should not drive any engine until it blows or goes bad from old age or high mileage. It is better to rebuild before it gets that old.

It is called preventative maintenance. The aircraft industry does it all the time. If owners did this, there would be fewer surprises. Does any one pay attention to all the post about engine failues caused by old parts failing. I think this is a conception beyond most humans reason.

But I am a fanatical purest!

 

It's got to be due to the 99 tail light mod. The problem developed after you installed them, that's conclusive enough for me.

 

I had a similar problem with the smoke from the passenger side. It turned out to be the small coolant hose behind the airpump formed a little leak when the system heated up. The coolant dripped onto the hot exhaust manifold and smoked, so there was no evidence. Good luck

Chris

 

Water pump gasket may be bad. When you drive around lightly it will not leak. If you drive hard then the water pump will flow alot and it'll leak through the seal. It's very tricky and this is what happened to me.

Tony S.

 

If you have 90k mi and havn't changed coolant hoses yet, look at the turbo coolant hoses. The coolant smell was the first sign before I blew one off.

 

nah... i just put the lights on last night.. but i swear it feels like 50hp faster now

 

You know, I had a similiar problem once. I'd smell coolant but couldn't find the leak. It ended up being a hose under the TB. It had a pin hole, but the hole was enough for enough coolant to spray on the engine and be able to smell it burning off.

 

Use J-B Weld man, it can fix anything!!! It even cured my Impotence! And fixed my POS passanger door handle. Stuff doesn't taste bad either. Think I will have to smother myself in it later.

 

i had the same coolant smell/steam. first, it was a hose that was simple enough to replace, but the 2nd time it was a metal line that had developed a stress fracture - ironically enough four days after i had to take it to the emissions station and watch some dumb lady run my car like she was trying to kill it...but that's a different story.