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I'm looking for a clean car, no rust, RUNNING, stock or modified rx7 in California (or close to). Let me know if you have one or know of one for sale.
My wife was a huge Mazda fan and kept her 1981 RX7 literally like new. It's always been a California car and garaged for it's entire life of the last 40 years. It's pretty much all original and just passed its CA Smog Check with 76,200 on the clock. Interior is flawless. Most of the options like power mirrors and fuel door release still work, but known problem areas like the cassette deck and air conditioning have not been used in many years so probably do not. Sadly, my wife has severe medical problems and her care is quite costly so I must liquidate her beloved baby. I see similar cars listed for $12-15K, and I'm open to offers. The car is presently garaged near Redondo Beach. I can give you more details if you like.
My wife was a huge Mazda fan and kept her 1981 RX7 literally like new. It's always been a California car and garaged for it's entire life of the last 40 years. It's pretty much all original and just passed its CA Smog Check with 76,200 on the clock. Interior is flawless. Most of the options like power mirrors and fuel door release still work, but known problem areas like the cassette deck and air conditioning have not been used in many years so probably do not. Sadly, my wife has severe medical problems and her care is quite costly so I must liquidate her beloved baby. I see similar cars listed for $12-15K, and I'm open to offers. The car is presently garaged near Redondo Beach. I can give you more details if you like.
Yes, more details and lots of pictures would be nice as well. Thanks
OK, here’s a poorly organized and overly wordy narrative on the car, with supporting info on its one and only owner, my wife. She has a horrible disease that prevents her from ever driving a car again, and her care is quite expensive. I must unfortunately sell her baby, and it’s just one more heartbreak for me in 2020.
She used to do timing and scoring for IMSA races back in the day, and had some very close friends associated with Mazda. Her actual career was as a registered nurse, and she worked in the field as a visiting nurse for a number of years while flying out to score races on weekends.
I believe she bought this 1981 RX-7 in December of 1980. We didn’t meet until around 1988, so here’s all I know about that period.
One of her good friends from the Mazda camp was Jim Mederer, a co-founder of Racing Beat in Anaheim. Jim set the RX7 speed record in Bonneville at 242 MPH, and was a good friend to me as well, until cancer took him way too soon. We utilized his guidance and resources for all things to do with her RX7. I think my wife got him to change her oil regularly, before I came into the picture and assumed that role. You can read about him on the internet. Here’s one article I just found: https://www.hagerty.com/media/people...of-the-rotary/
At some point when the car was still fairly new, it was stolen in Malibu while she was having dinner with friends at Gladstone’s. About 3 weeks later, she received a call from the police that the car had been found. Apparently, the thief had simply driven it over the hill to a high-end hotel in Beverly Hills and left it there. The parking supervisor eventually noticed it had been in the parking structure a long time. The only damage to the car was the steering column lock, which was easily repaired. All her belongings were untouched. It was, in her words, a miracle!
At some point, she had a rain water leak in the tail lights, and a mechanic squirted some RTV around the edge of the lens. This is ugly and visible from outside of the car if you look closely. The car hasn’t been out in the rain in 30 years, so I cannot say how well this fix actually works.
Shortly before I met my wife, (mid-80’s) I think she had a scratch on the original front bumper cover and had the car repainted at the same time this was replaced. The finish is very smooth with no visible ripples like you see in paint jobs today. I may have the old bumper cover in the garage. If I find it and you want it, it’s included.
I believe the car got most of its mileage between 1980 and 1985. I have to assume she used it as her fun daily driver for these years. She later bought a 1986 Mazda 323 to use as her daily driver, and mileage accrual on the RX7 slowed to a crawl. She kept it garaged and mainly used it on weekends. I would say that it probably had about 70K miles at this point.
From 1989 to the present day, I have been the primary mechanic for the car. I’ve kept no maintenance records at all, so I have little in the way of documentation to support my claim of decent maintenance other than perhaps a receipt for a part now and then. I’m just a weekend warrior who likes turning wrenches and building things from metal. I have a BS in Mechanical Engineering from USC, have designed electronic instrumentation, and written software for decades. Now retired…
Up until 2019 when my wife’s care escalated, I tried to replace the motor oil and filter about every year regardless of mileage. In accordance with Jim Mederer’s advice, we used Amzoil 10W-40 for a long time, then switched to Royal Purple 10W-40 in the 1990’s. I always used Mazda oil filters. I know some people say that synthetic oils don’t burn as cleanly as conventional oil, but Mederer’s opinion was that they all burned about the same, so we stuck with his recommendation of synthetic oil.
The most recent oil change was back in 2018, I think. The car sat nearly 2 years with less than 100 miles on fresh oil because of my wife’s illness. I’ve started driving it again to prepare it for sale (and get a smog check) so I thought about doing another oil change. However, Royal Purple no longer makes an API-rated oil in this viscosity. I’m considering an API 10W-30 versus their “HPS” 10W-40 which is not API rated due to high levels of ZDDP that this engine may not require. I do not want to poison the cats on this car, so I think the 10W-30 will be the best option in this climate. In any event, if you look at the car today, the tag on the oil filter will show the oil has too much time but very few miles.
I also replaced the coolant about every 3 years with Prestone in a 50/50 mix with tap water. This ended up logging less than 1,000 miles per change. About 12 years ago (guess) I replaced the water pump, fan clutch, coolant hoses, and belts. The hoses and belts have seen very little time at operating temperature and are still fine. Since a failing pump bearing can damage the fan clutch or vice versa, I replaced both to be sure.
I’ve had my share of troubles in other cars over the years with corrosion in hydraulic service brakes arising from the hygroscopic nature of DOT3/DOT4 fluid. I’ve had great luck with DOT5 Silicone in my Ford, but the more conservative solution for all my wife’s cars has been to retain DOT3/DOT4 fluid and flush the system every 2 to 3 years, so this interval is typical for the RX7 as well. In the 30 years we’ve been together, I believe I’ve rebuilt or replaced all the cylinders (master or slave) twice, and all the hoses once, about 10 years ago. I put metal tags on many of items with the date, but the car is buried in the garage and I’m in the house so I cannot recall the most recent overhaul. I think it was just a few years back. This car has front disc brakes with drums on the rear.
About 5 years ago, I noticed a drip on the floor which came from a small crack in a fitting on the oil cooler under the radiator. Rather than weld it up, my wife insisted we replace it. Once again, our friend Jim Mederer was able to get us on the short list of special VIP customers, and Mazda made a small batch of new oil coolers even though they’ve been out of production for years. I used stainless braided Racing Beat oil lines on this, one of the few non-stock items under the hood.
About 8 years ago, I think the alternator had one of its diodes fail, so I replaced it with a remanufactured unit done by Bosch.
The transmission and differential oil were both changed about 10 years ago, and have less than 10K miles on synthetic oil. I’m pretty sure I used Royal Purple.
The tires are just a few years old. I changed out the old ones due to age, not wear. It was hard to find the required size so I went with a Japanese brand that was rated higher on traction and lower on wear with a slightly smaller OD, to the speedometer reads very slightly high. I can go look at the tire brand and date code tomorrow if needed.
The battery is a Sears DieHard AGM type, installed less than 4 years ago (just out of its 3-year warranty, of course). I keep it on a float charger so have never had any issues with batteries. The charger is installed in the car at the end of the battery so all you need is a line cord with a small socket end to fit it.
About 10 years ago we started having issues with flooding when starting the car after it had been sitting a long time. It turned out that the problem was a stuck bowl vent solenoid valve. When the fuel level rose, the entrapped air pressurized the bowl. I cleaned off the gum from dried gasoline and the problem went away.
About 5 years ago, my wife had the window channels on the driver side door replaced, so this window is slightly harder to roll up than the passenger side. Yes, manual crank windows.
About 3 years ago we started having more issues with flooding after sitting a long time and the float bowls drying out. The needle valves were simply not closing. I tried a number of things, including making a set of needles with stainless steel tips instead of the rubber ones. Eventually, I solved the problem by reducing the float travel so that each tang always pushed the needle very parallel to its travel. I think that the needle was jamming from lateral force when the float was fully down. The stainless needles are still in there, and I’ve not had any problems since. A couple of carb kits are included in the box of parts that goes with the car.
With few exceptions, I can say that the car has always been garaged since 1988 when I’ve known it. I think it was fully garaged before that as well. As a result, there is no visible sun damage to anything. It’s been driven so little in the last 10 years (maybe once a month or so) that it has not been washed in that time either. We put a flannel cover over it in the garage, then some inverted carpet remnants as padded protection from falling objects and mishaps.
The original owner’s manual is in the glove box, and we have an official Mazda shop manual as well.
Now, for known bad things…
The dome light lens is missing. It might just be cracked and in my storage cabinet, or it might be gone forever. If I have it in my cabinet with all the other RX7 parts, I will provide it along with them.
The stock AM/FM radio appears to work and the antenna goes up and down, but we never used it so it’s not tuned to any station. I’m pretty sure the cassette deck does not work.
Since we live in a temperate climate, the air conditioning has not been used in 20 years so it has probably lost its R-12 coolant. I do not know if a retrofit to R-134A is even available.
I have not tried the rear window defogger. Since it’s resistive electric, it probably does still work or would be easy to fix.
The steering wheel has about an inch of free play, which is slightly more than ideal but typical for a car like this. I believe the idler arm and ball joints are fine, but I have not checked them thoroughly with the car in the air. The steering box uses a recirculating ball screw on the steering wheel and a highly loaded rack/pinion arrangement to drive the Pitman arm. Some adjustment is possible on the latter, but all the wear occurs at the center of travel and you cannot have any hint of binding at the ends so I have not attempted to adjust this.
The original clutch is still fine but I have seen my wife have problems with chatter under very specific conditions of load and slip speed. I have rarely encountered this myself, but then I always drive the car gently.
This car has always been close to the HC limit on its biannual CA smog check. I have 20 years of historical data here. 3 years ago we had trouble getting through the check so we took it to an independent mechanic who used to work at the local Mazda dealership. He charged us a bunch of money and got the smog certificate so my wife was happy. However, it has since become clear that he simply bribed his friend at the Smog Check station to test a different car because the engine RPMs listed on the test printout cannot be achieved with the transmission ratios and tires on this car. For its most recent smog check, I took it to an excellent rotary specialist in Santa Ana, CA who performed some minor adjustments and got it to pass honestly. I think a part of his standard procedure might involve an Italian tune-up, but that’s OK. This smog check was done Wednesday, Nov 18th, 2020. A CA buyer would not have to deal with this again until around the beginning of 2023.
As for the title transfer, I want both buyer (you) and seller (me) to be totally comfortable with the transaction. I have a Durable Power of Attorney authorizing me to manage my wife’s financial affairs. I would probably need to accompany the buyer to a DMV field office in person and show them the original copy of this document, then sign over the title to the car in the presence of a DMV officer. Given the state of COVID-19 and the DMV, this would involve several hours of waiting in line. I might want to similarly visit the bank from which a buyer’s cashier’s check is drawn, perhaps even during the process. So… this would be an all-day affair.
I’m sure I’ve left out lots of details you might want, but it’s late and I’m tired! Here are some photos:
The car is still available. I've had many delays in getting death certificates for my wife so I can assume ownership, so I have not pursued the sale. The certs just came through yesterday, and I plan to visit the DMV this afternoon to handle the title. If you're still interested, you should come have a look. It's more important to me that I find a loving owner than to get every last cent out of the car's presumed value.
11-18-20, 08:35 PM
1981 RX-7 for Sale
