I am looking to purchase a 1993 Mazda Rx-7 with ~48,000 original miles on the body and drive train.

I am concerned that I continue to read about the Rx-7 3rd generation engine requiring a rebuild at around ~50,000 miles.

Also I have been looking at alot of Rx-7 1993 vehicles that have around 100,000 miles on it and they seam to all have rebuilt engines and turbos.

Can anyone give me any insite into this problem and some advice.

 

Intense thermal loads due to the tiny turbos, combined with insufficient cooling capacity. When you burn the candle at both ends...

It doesn't help any that for a while anyway, it seemed like the standard dealership repair for anything was "replace the engine and turbos", since the turbo control system was awfully complex for the dealerships. To their defense, the FD sold in rather limited numbers, so it wasn't as cost effective to specialize in their quirks.

One reason why I hope Mazda never makes a turbo rotary again. My daily driver has only 160k on it (!st-gen) and it has the original engine, still has excellent compression.... Mazda spent years trying to prove their rotary could be reliable in street use, and then they threw it away with the FD.

 

on of my FDs has 114XXX on it. It starts right up runs great i haven't had any problems at all with it.
My other FD has 82,5XX on it. its alot faster than my 94. Most likely from the full exhaust.

 

My engine HAD over 123k on it, before my garage fell down and destryed it a coulpe of days ago!!!

 

my fd has 93,000miles on it and the engine has never been out, the turbos have never been off.

it has a lot to do with your driving and maintanence habits.

 

I would agree

 

50 is a really low milage for a stock 13b-rew to fail, that milage shows a big lack of maitanace
90k and up is a normal failure rate

 

You should have checked the oil at least...but one should be changing the oil on a regular basis. My friend sold his FD with 178k all OG...it smoked a little and some what beat up, but ran pretty good.

 

All about maintanence!

You **** on it, it will **** on you!

 

Actually I'd say its mostly about how you drive the car. If you keep your foot in it all the time (like I do) then dont expect it to live to see 90K....especially if its modified and running over the stock boost.

Hell I'd start getting worried when it gets to 70K if you drive the car hard. Now obviously if you granny the car around everywhere and never get into the boost it should live a long time...more like a N/A car.

STEPHEN

 

I agree 100% with this comment, I just don't understand why you would have a turbo car drivetrain as a factory sports car, and then think someone is going to granny shift it, and baby it. I say show me an engine that takes 100K of abuse and then put that in a sports car. Especially in the day and age of 200K not being a hard thing to get in NA motors. Just doesn't make sense. Now if you took a quick NA factory car, and Turbo charged it to be a monster then i understand a short life span, but not straight from the factory. A previous post was good as well. Mazda threw their rotary out the window when the FD came out TT versus 3 rotor NA. They might gain peoples trust again with the NA RX8, but that will take time.

 

i bought mine @75k, and my friend who bought his at @80k had the engine pop on him. so i was like i'm happy if it goes to 80k, so after it hit 80k it got used hard, and i got another 13k out of it, without doing any maintenence! the engine is still good btw, i crashed the car, and its almost done being fixed