Things to look for when buying a blown 7 (yes I searched)
 

I found an FD with a blown motor. The ad & the guy say it is an apex seal (though i'm not sure if he's certain, I need to ask). College kid.

He's asking 8500--66k, new clutch, minor exhaust/intake/suspension mods , records, clean title, silver/black...Going to see it tomorrow.

Now I understand that this is a gamble--as there are so many things I won't be able to test without driving it myself. My question to you all--ESPECIALLY PEOPLE WHO HAVE BOUGHT A 7 WITH A BLOWN MOTOR--

is are there any sort of other mechanical things I can look for, since I can't test drive it?

All of the buyer guides mainly focus on what to do while driving or while the engine is running---but, yeah.

And another thing. The guy calls me this afternoon saying that he went outside to start it, and it wouldn't even turn over. Said it's been sitting for a couple weeks--for obvious reasons. Now when he tries to start it, it won't. Is this a much worse thing to be worried about? Or is it sort of 'expected'? WORST case scenario, how much could I be looking to put into this car in order to get it to run WELL?

I hope that this thread can be a good searching point for others out there when buying blown fd's. So any input will be helpful.


Thanks very, very much. I've waited so long for a decent ssm..and this one's pretty close to me, but I dont want to be in it for 20k all together.

I realised I forgot to add a question mark after the post's title...I hope this doesnt get overlooked as a guide, lol

Only thing i can think of is compression test. It would read something like 100 - 40 - 40 with a cracked apex seal.

if you don't know what to look for in the first place, why are you buying a 7 with a blow motor.

it's not a good idea for a rotary noob to just randomly buy an FD with a blown motor.

i see you have a '99 BMW m3. stick with the M3. my brother had one. they are fun reliable cars.

my advise: get a running FD and learn about it from the ground up and have a lot of extra money put away.

you should get a compression test on any RX-7 you plan on buying, but especially get one on a "blown motor" car.

I bought my RX-7 with a "blown motor" and the motor wasn't blown. $13k later, my car's on the road lol

ouch. did you have someone else do the labor? i think my total rebuild cost came out to about $3k...though, i did all the labor with my friend.

dang, i hope i can manage to get mine fixed for cheap. its been sitting in my garage for 3 months so far.

yes, but the labor was less than 1/3 of the bill.

There were a lot of performance parts I had decided to get as well, but the point was, my motor wasn't blown at all. Maybe I should have said that a little more clearly in the first post...

The car turned out to be an electrical nightmare, though. Basically in my "blown motor" car, the motor was the only part that was usable(which I had rebuilt anyway, at that point why not?)

haha nice.

yeah...a $15 compression tester would have saved me at least the money for the rebuild :)

I don't mind so much, because I'd rather start with everything fresh, but that was the moral of my story for the OP...

well it was supposed to be, I'm an awful story teller.

Can a comp. test be done even though the car won't even start?

yes. you don't start the motor to check compression.

http://www.fd3s.net/compression_test.html

okay. I'll talk to the guy.


However I feel that something's fishy and chances are i'll be listening you yall and getting a RUNNING one.

Back to the book i go....



thanks everyone