I took the 7 to Mariah Motorsports - turns out theres a rotary shop in town after all! - to get it checked out for recent roughness and choppy idle. Plus I was just plain curious to check out the kind of shop they were running there, considering they've been building rotary race cars for years . Pretty cool place imo, they really believed in rotary power for its incredible power/weight ratio... like that of their 500hp, 2100lb 2nd gen that they were prepping up the day I was there.

I figured it was worth it to have a rotary expert look at the car for a solid hour - so far only my dad had checked it out, and the last rotary he ever dealt with was an rx-4 . The test run was a failure...none of the symptoms I had noticed occurred during the run (pretty standard), even though they had popped up 5 min before and then a half hour afterwards again . They did find an oil leak, red flagged by a large amount of oil smoke under the hood. We jacked it up and saw oil drip lines along the rear turbo...immediately I regretted pushing the car as hard as I had been the past few weeks.

So now I'm 350 miles away from my dads mechanic shop with a car I 'shouldn't push or boost for now' and going to need to make the trip back home next week. I'm set on driving it home - towing it is out of the question. What should I do to keep this fragile beast alive the whole trip? And what should my plan of attack be once I get to the shop?

Some background info: The turbos boosted perfectly a month ago (10-8-10) and still feel that way; Some vacuum lines and solenoids were replaced last summer when I first got the car, successfully putting the 2nd turbo back online past 4.5k rpm. The car is stock under the hood, and has a downpipe and exhaust added.

Thanks for any help!

 

Ok, so you're leaking some oil and you're going to drive it home anyway. And you're already at a rotary shop.

Any reason they can't locate the leak? It should be pretty easy to fix if it's a leak around the turbos.

But if you insist on driving home, carry a few bottles of oil and check the oil level a couple of times.

 

I heard off of another oil leak post that I'd need to replace the return line gaskets...Where can I get these and is there anything I should know about taking out the turbos? I've done some mechanic work at my dad's shop but never on a car with turbos (or on one as sweet lookin)

 

The gaskets you can get from the dealer or Ray at Malloy Mazda (phone number in the FAQ).

As for removing the turbos, check this thread:

https://www.rx7club.com/3rd-generation-specific-1993-2002-16/stock-twin-turbo-nuts-bolts-locations-485829/

It will have some hints for you. If its your first time doing it, expect it to take about 4-5 hours to get them out unless you have someone helping you who has done it before.

 

I think the post you're refering to was mine i think. I just went to my local Mazda dealer and they had some in a crusty old box in the back (LOL!) Gave them to me for free too. It was quite time consuming to replace those though, but it wasn't too hard.