Earlier this year, my dad's FD started to experience symptoms of coolant seal failure. It had never been overheated, so I was mystified as to the cause.

Well, I tore down and inspected the motor last night, and the cause of failure was pretty evident. Come to find out, he had *never* changed the coolant in five years/~43k miles of use. He also had been running a 70/30 mix of water to coolant, which might have contributed as well. The intermediate iron is now a doorstop, and I'm wondering about using the front and rear iron. One rotor housing shows deep pitting as well.

It's a shame, because the car ran strong with no problems over the years before this......now I've been suckered into giving him a streetport, free o charge of course. As if I don't have enough cars to work on

 

what kind of coolant mix do you recommend, rich?

 

That's really ugly.

Mazda recommends 70/30 water to coolant mix. I dont think that was the problem. Perhaps the 1% sand mixture was a bad idea

 

I usually run 50/50 in my FD.

The sand is actually rust from this engine basically breaking down. It was in a lot of the coolant passages, partially clogging them up.

 

Damn that's actually pretty scary.

 

Just remember to flush your coolant...

 

hey its your daddy u gots to hook up da fam

 

Just cut your losses and buy him a volvo. All I've had to replace on my father's car is a CV-axle at 210,000 miles

 

Do you use tap or store bought distilled water?

 

So i was reading the entire FAQ today becuase i was bored...

It was staying that most 13b-rew water seals go at 50-75 000 miles... Is this because people neglect to change their coolant? or just low quality water seals? Or both.. haha?


-Ben

 

i flushed my system with some coolant flush product i found at superautobacs then did a 60 to 40 water to coolant ratio. also added a bottle of redline wetter water and used only sparklets distilled water.

 

So in addition to taking that bottom screw of the radiator are you meant to take off that other bolt above the oil sump to completely flush the system?

 

You'd have to meet Mr Farrell to understand how funny THAT image is....

 

Use distilled, never use tap.

 

i would remove that plug because quite a bit of coolant is left if you just drain the radiator.

Distilled as it contains no minerals, etc.

 

Are you out of the loop?

You're supposed to travel to Kyoto. Climb the mountain, melt the snow. Boil it, collect the steam, boil IT, collect the steam. And use THAT water in your FD.

 

Luckily I took the time to do that over the summer. It'll blow if you do it any other way.

 

Well, i **** in my radiator.

 

Ok this might explain why I mixed a good 8 litres worth of coolant and my car took no where near that amount when I filled her back up. I only took the drain plug from the radiator only.

 

dam that sucks goodfellas.

 

Rich,

You know that you will not make his car as fast as yours!

Chuck

 

Mr. Farrell as in Peter Farrell?

 

No - they're definitely completely different people

 

LOL @ kyoto remark... just for those who want to picture this..
here is what a deserted mountain in Northern Kyoto looks like. This area is fenced off to the public at ALL times. The only way to get to it is via a motorbike, the top is an old WW2 bunker that overlooks one of the important Japanese naval harbors.


about 100metres up from that pic is where the snow started to get really thick on the ground, i had to stop and go back cos there were all kinds of fresh unfriendly footprints in the snow.

 

This is indeed a good lesson in preventive maintenance. Something SO easy and simple to do, yet....it doesn't get done that often.
In ANY engine that has both aluminum and steel/iron parts, you simply HAVE to change the coolant as there is an inherent galvanic corrosion action native to the system. But even in full aluminum or full iron engines, it is a good idea to change out your coolant every 3 to 5 years MAX, as the various chemicals break down and you lose corrosion protection.