Is building a rotary tough?
 

I'm looking into getting a 89 and my friends tells me it's expensive and a hard motor to work on. I just want to know if I would have problems with it, if it's costly, and anything else that would be useful in my decision. Any personal experiences would be great.

Do you have experience working on motors?

No not really.

then it's probably not going to be the best car to learn on.

are you mechanically inclined at all? i worked on a few cars before my 91 rx7 which was the first rotary i dug into and like any car it depends on what you are willing to learn and if you are good with cars and mechanics in general. i would have to say the rotary is as easy as anything and probably easier than my flat 4 wrx was which was alot to do with room

first of all, welcome to the board. :)

i'm just going to be blunt. you can't ask questions like this and expect useful answers. you need to provide some information on yourself and your situation and so on, if you want any semblance of a meaningful response. i mean, as it stands right now, the reflex response would have to be just forget it and move on.

anyway ... here's my input:
... and if your friends were rotorheads they would probably tell you that it's really not that bad. like most other things, you can get by if you know what you're doing. consider your sources and remember everything is relative.

probably ... it's 24 years old. even a well-kept car of that age is bound to have issues. if you have no mechanical inclinations, then you probably need to look at something else. if you don't have access to money on whim, then you will NOT be happy. things wear out and/or break and (to paraphrase something i saw Clokker post recenty :)) they don't care how convenient or inconvenient it is for you. they just need to be fixed.

depends on what you need and who's going to do the work. you've already said you have little experience with engines and that would probably be the single, costliest item that you'd have to fix in one shot. could range from a few hundred to thousands.

Rx-7s are great, fun, and RELIABLE cars! the caveat is that they require attention and common sense. if you lack either of those, then you can get in trouble really fast. keep it filled with clean oil, make sure it's getting oil to the chambers and keep it cool. i won't get into modifications here because it's a subject all to itself.