Hey all ,

I know it is kind of a sensitive subject around here since you all love teenagers that are going to college and are looking to buy an rx-7. However , I thought there was no better place to ask for advice than this lovely , amazing and adorable rx-7 club .
First of all , I may be a stupid teenager but I have thoroughly read through the forum and have made an opinion for myself - I have come to the conclusion that owning an rx-7 (fd) is not really a cheap or painless way to keep my teenage fizz going , so I've decided to ask this wonderful forum if it deems it possible to own an fd and not end up in a prison in North Korea for fleeing the tax collector.
I was also interested in rotary repair shops , are there a lot of them ? are they notoriously hard to find ?

voila , all has been said. Please don't answer with great violence and hate.

 

I am 31 yrs old. If I were a teenager I would not purchase an rx7 for a car. It's too costly to maintain for a kid that young. Too much to worry about and when you are young you shouldn't be worrying about that stuff IMO. Find a car that is cheaper to maintain and more reliable for a young kid.

I always loved RX7's since the first time I drove one. My roommate in college drove an FD and I drove a prelude. My prelude was a handling dream for the set up I had and all I did was feed it gas basically.

My roomies car was a lot faster but much more finnicky and he didn't maintain it like it should have been. so his car ran great and sometimes we had to do some surgery to get it started. he ended up crashing it into a canyon wall trying to keep up with my little prelude because he didn't know how to rev match.

Anyway I would say wait till you have some good amounts of cash. That is my opinion.

There are a lot of things that need updating on a rx7 if you want it to handle and drive like a supercar it is.

 

There are a lot of posts exactly like this. You should SEARCH before you post new threads.

 

The search function works so well on this forum that I ended up in the rx-8 club.

But even if the fd is really not within reach , is there another wankel powered car that could be more affordable and cheaper to maintain ?

 

Yeah. A NA FC would be your best bet.

 

Here is the deal.


These cars cost around 8-20K depending on condition, mileage, etc.

Now most of these cars have some sort of problem with them, regardless if they run or not. You will most likely need to redo the suspenison bushings/pillowball bushings. Most are old and worn out, some even make noise. The pillowballs with dust shields cost around $500 or so. The other bushings are about $600 or so if you overhaul everything.

Now you have other items that get baked out with age, Vacuum lines, plastic controls, etc. You also have an origional engine harness that gets baked out and has problems with time. So if you have trouble you purchase a new wiring harness $800 or so, you redo the lines $100 or so, you redo the controls boxes/valves for the turbo's, another couple hundred. You then realize your turbo is going out, so you sink $3,000-$5,000 for a single turbo, etc...etc....etc and it explodes upwards.


I am not sure how much an FC costs, but you run into the same problems. It's also best to change out a lot of other things when doing maintenance so you know they are good running parts. like radiator caps, coolant lines, changing the tranny and diff fluid, etc.

If you buy an FC for like $5K, expect to put in another $2-5K to get the old parts replaced, bushings, vacuum lines, brake lines, pads, rotors, etc....whatever is needed. These are things you want to do to obtain the best performance enjoyment out of the car IMO.

 

Age has nothing to do with it, I have met quite a few very mechanically gifted teenagers. However if you cant handle all the repairs and maintenance yourself or are on any sort of limited budget then the FD is not the car for you. You also will need access to a full set of tools and a proper workspace, something not always available when you are away at college.