The day after my last post the beehive started to severely leak oil. I suspect that it has been weeping for a while judging by the grime. The bottom two o-rings were the cause of the leak, they were dry and cracked badly, the upper two were in ok shape however I chose to replace everything. I ordered the o-rings from Atkins, they were $5 each and haven't leaked.





After that I have been driving the car a lot. I have driven it the hour drive to work numerous times without too much trouble. I do have what I believe to be a fuel problem under heavy load. The holley fuel pump is underperforming.

My biggest question right now is what's next with this car? I really want to build another autocross car. I am thinking about building a NA Miata, but it may be fun to do something more with this car. Neither a Miata or the FB would be competitive, but the Miata certainly would be faster. I don't know...

 

To keep it short and not very sweet. My 12a is blown. The oil control rings have definitely gone out. The car will run and runs well however it smokes heavily on startup, idle, and worst on decel. Once warmed up from a drive, idle oil pressure is ~17 psi, when revved it varies from 45-55. All of these pressures are way out of spec. It is also fouling the plugs with oil in less than 150 miles of driving.

I have some spare engines, however they have all sat for years and could develop the same problems. Currently I am pulling the car off the road to focus on fixing it, I have other things besides the engine to fix anyway.

Oil pressure at idle. ( I didnt let it idle at this for very long)

 

It has been almost a year since I made my last post here. August of last year I bought another project and... well it became more of a pain than I had figured. And so the rx7 has sat patiently waiting.

Said project:



There have been a few Miatas as well but thankfully they are a lot less of a pain. For the rx7 there has not been any progress, I still start it regularly and when it gets up to temp its oil pressure still tanks. I still have plans for the car however no real timeline. However daily driving a v8 has me wanting the rx7 to be quicker, either in literal speed or making it a very good handling car. Just wanted to update my thread here with hopes yall can motivate me.

 

Sounds like a good time to either rebuild the 12a with a street port and carb or swap in a ported 13b w/carb. Both would be fun!