what's the highest mileage ever obtained on a single FD motor?
 

I heard that if you are lucky these motors will last you up to 120k if you don't drive it hard and most of your driving is long distance driving and the car is never driven hard.
thjis is what i heard more frequently:
the average FD motor lasts about 70-80k from the average FD driver

the average FD motor has bad water seals at about 100k

do you guys agree? What's the record for the most mileage ever gotten on an FD motor guys?

mine has 129353 miles on it :) sotck 93, precat still on there(downpipe goes in soon!). stills runs fine and idles smooth :)

Randy

I think JD got 100+ on his before it was destroyed. The seals were wearing down making it hard to start if left sitting but it still ran great. I also heard of a guy in Australia that got 200+ out of his and then decided to get a new one. The place that did the work said it still looked great inside.

well some are still going, so it changes everyday.

John Duff had 141K on his when his son balled it up.

I don't think it's so much babying the engine as it is doing sensible
(or no) mods and following routine maintenance religiously, especailly replacing the fuel filter and the coolant, and of course oil changes every 3,000 miles or sooner.

In fact, many say you need to rev the engine to the max fairly frequently to keep the carbon deposits from building up inside the rotor chambers.

Mine has a 109k on it and it still runs but I have decided to rebuild it over the winter..

129K mi?!!! How the heck did you pull that off?

Are you the original owner? Have you had your turbos replaced?

What kind of pro-active work have you had done, i.e replacement vaccum hoses, radiator, turbo timer?

What kind of repair have you had done?

What is your "care" routine when you drive the car? Do you open the hood after driving it long distances? How often do you get oil changes?


Very interested in hearing from you.


Regards,


SH

No i'm not the original owner, I bought the car in march this year. No, turbos haven't been replaced. Humm vacumm hose haven't been repaired, alot of them are loose, that's why i don't get alot of boost before, stock radiator, no turbotimer because I use my butt timer everytime, 3 minutes idle with heater on full. repair, not really, nothing broke yet. My care routine, i hardly ever drive it to the redline since I still have my precat in there and I'm worried about it trapping too much heat. Yeah i do open the hood when it's too hot. Oil change every 2k miles.

I think BATMAN has over 180,000 miles on his (yes original motor), BATMAN, where are you?

Nope BATMAN is on engine numero 4 as of now and he's going to go onto engine numero 5 soon

Aww Randy ... you didn't buy it ... mommy and daddy did for your "good grades." That's the first time I've ever heard of your mileage. I thought you kept that a closely-guarded secret. And you can go on and admit to everyone that until a couple months ago when you asked me, you didn't even know where the turbos were on the FD or how to find them! ;)

Get real. he has had about 4-6 motors in that thing.

Doh,
I know its someone on here, he has a black car with black powdercoated wheels, is it A51 Batman, those aren't the same people huh?

My car has 111,000 mi on the original engine and rebuilt turbos. Unfortunately, the engine is about to go. It gets hot it I get on it even for a short amount of time or if it's a hot day out. I also found quite a bit of oil in the coolant tank recently when checking coolant levels.

I'm not looking foward to replacing the engine so if anyone is interested I'm taking offers.

griffin_lowenthal@hotmail.com

PS: Anyone who inquired about it before, I will post pics soon.

Mine's running on 157,000+ (odometer/speedometer is broke currently). From what the last owner told me, it was re-sealed sometime before he had it, there was only one owner before him, I'm the third owner.

I have 115,000 on my 93 touring. I am the second owner. As far as I know the engine has not been replaced.

I did find the #'s 5/98 stamped on the engine cover serial tag when I was replacing the oil injector lines, as well as 96, and 97 stamped in the rotor housings (no one has been able to figure out what that means). So, am hoping it was replaced in 98, but it probably was not.

Dustin

Sup Vic, I'm at 111000, but "O" rings are going bad.....

Someone posted on the rec.autos.rotary newsgroup just a couple of days ago about his '94 with 133k miles that seems to have worn out its original engine now. He mentioned that he's the original owner. It sounded as if the car's unmodified.....

This one is SOOO coming back to life haha. I wanna know!!

The fact that this thread is like 3 years old makes baby Jesus cry...

Ramy, you rat bastard! Hehe. Actually, there is some good drama on the first page, with Batman's many motors and DK shooting down his buddy, so resurrecting this bad boy is ok with me :).

Here's my contribution: Chris at RP recently told me of an FD that came into their shop for a motor build. Female driven, 166k on the first motor. He also told me of an 86 n/a rx-7 with *444k* on the original engine. Crazy.

This thread is so funny! I thought that this guy was ready to sell his rex today, 08/24/2004. Then I looked at the recent thread and how it's been going on for 3 years!!!! LOL

BTW, I still want your car! Blown motor! I'll fix it! Maybe.....

Hey Ramy, I know this guy personally, and the mileage on his car is his screen name.

https://www.rx7club.com/members/150kfd-40822/

150K+ on the original motor and still going strong. :bigthumb:

a friend of mine has 120k+ on his all org turbos, vac lines, only thing he ever replaced was the radiator. plus he drives it like he stole it. Completely stock even the damn precat. LOL on mine with 41k org, i swaped the radiator, waterpump,turbo boots had bad selinoids, turbos smooking so i swaped engines. Then I had more sequential probs so now im remaning an engine porting all new parts with a small single. Got to love th ole Fd. ohh and when i pulled the first engine i found out my engine mount was bad! and the ps pump was leaking on the bottom of the resv..hehehehe

Shane

LOL...I feel the love Rich! haha. Maybe I haven't caught on to it yet...but is there some unspoken rule that it's a no-no to revive dead threads? haha

166K?? That may very well be the highest so far! W/ the guy Gil knows being right behind him! That's awesome...

hey ramy, you thinking about seeing how much more you can get out of yours?

LOL...no. I'm pretty sure mine is on the edge. I bought it w/ low compression, and I remember a few months back when I was @ PFS, Ray commented on how he noticed the compression was low (but not too bad). She still pulls hard as hell, but it's only a matter of time...

So the short answer Neal is no, I'm just curious who holds the record ;)

BUMP!!! (Back from the dead) is 166K the highest thats out there?

I had 111K on my (and numerous track days on it) before I lost an apex seal on it (although it was eating alot of oil and was burning some coolant right before that).
It lived a glorious life before replacement ;-)

Well I had a 17k original mile engine blow up on me. By original i mean, thats how many miles the stock engine and chasis had on it. Then my friend and I put a downpipe/exhaust/intake and hks fcd before we knew not to. This was before I found that there was a problem with too many mods with a stock ecu. Now i have 3000 miles on my new motor with 20k on the chasis.

123k

145K and still going strong when I decided to have my '93 FD rebuilt in Aug '04 (due to white smoke blowing out the exhaust during the first few minutes or so during startup each morning). Was more embarrassing for me than anything performance-related actually.

Chris Ott at RP-Garland did all the work for me. Chris even remarked how unique it was that I was able to get so much mileage out of the car. But nobody ever told me what actually caused the white smoke problem. I'm still curious to this day. Was it a turbo seal...or apex seal...or still some other seal??? Btw, that lady's 166K+ FD was at the shop at the same time mine was if I recall correctly.

Note: I also had a first gen RX-7 with 100K+ miles on it, too. Never understood the fuss about blown rotary engines. But I guess I've been quite lucky. That, and most of my mileage has typically been of the highway variety.

my '82 with a 12a in it had it's original motor replaced around 172k. high mileage n/a rotaries aren't unheard of. it's when you boost them that they loose durability (relatively)

BACK FROM THE DEAD!

edit

White smoke suggests a coolant seal.

If you live on level ground and drive highway you won't see much boost in daily driving.

It's the boost and heat associated with strapping those turbos on that cause lower reliability. The n/a rotarys don't really have any durability problems.

Dave

152k on my 90 n/a s5.

peace

I looked at one (a 95), it was the original owner with 162K, he worked at a mazda dealer, and when he purchased it, and it had several mazda comp parts, (radiator, y pipe, maybee intercooler and others), he had replaced all the vaccum hoses with silicone early on, and he knew how to work on it and maintained religously.

Its not uncommon to see NA 1st and 2nd gen's go over 200K, the T2 also comonly go past 150, its the complexty of the FD turbo system, and the design and nature of its engine controll that makes makes reliability suffer so much.

you guys know this is a 6 year thread resurection......... one for the records :)

I had to post... neighbore just sold his 1993 touring, red, with 187k. Original Motor and Turbos. I dont know how, honest to god. He bought it in 95 with 17k on it.

142K and going strong on '94 with an original engine.

PJ

What I'm picking up from this thread is that there is no reason an FD engine has to die at 60,000 miles. I'd like to see more info on exactly how these engines which went considerably past 100k did it, but I don't think it was a matter of blind luck. It appears good maintenance and a low level of reasonable modifications are the key.

It seems as though most of these motors that last this long are original, for the most part. i never knew they could possibly last that long, period... i hope mine goes that far.

any reason why this thread can't be brought back from the dead again? Any other high mileage FDs out there?

Thread should be sticky, it's a good counterpoint to the "ZOMG rotaries explode!" bullsh*t

I wish we had a "Like" button so I could "Like" your comment....

139K on mine before the coolant seal started to go. Could have kept driving, but decided to rebuild.

How did you drive it and what kind of maintenance did you to keep it running that long? Also, any mods?

there was a really nice local car that went about 120k on the original engine, and from new it had literally just had the scheduled services and front brakes (if there was a radiator hose or something in there, i wouldn't doubt it), and while it wasn't driven very hard, it seems like keeping the hood closed is actually very good for reliability.

the car was sold around 120k, and the next owner went single, aftermarket ecu, and then burned it to the ground...

I love a good thread resurrection. I wonder where all those fellas are now, the ones back in 01,02,03,04 etc. Lots of names I don't recognize. In fact, j9fd3s is one of the few I do recognize.

Only 43k on mine. I had 125k on my 1980 GS but that is not uncommon.