saeedm

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!

dgeesaman

iTrader: (7)

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.

saeedm

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)

Mahjik

iTrader: (1)

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.

drew32

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.