Hey everyone, I'm new to this site aswell as the world of RX7. . .I bought a 1987 F.I. RX7 off my buddy about a month ago. The motor has 147k but the body and interior are near mint, and I'm fallin in love with every detail already. When I bought it, it didn't run..it start, but once you accelerated the car spuddered dead. In doing this and a little bit of reasearch I discovered the problem was the mass air flow sensor. It was swapped with another that came from a 6 cylinder car from a junk yard. I replaced it with the correct one, and she ran smooth for a couple days, then every time I tried to feed some speed into her, she'd bog down. I'm only 20 and just getting into cars but I knew only three things could cause this problem. The mass air flow sensor, the TPS sensor or the second fuel injector. Since I had already fixed the MAF sensor, and the second fuel injector only comes into play around 6k rpm and this problem occured say when I was at 25% throotle and I'd suddenly floor it, I pin-pointed it to the TPS. I switched that out with a new one and it turned out I was right, the car runs like new, engine's clean and I was looking forward to upgrading it. . .yet while I let the car idle for 20 min. with a few revs here and there, it started to over heat! I checked the cooling system and discovered that my radiator was freezing cold on one side, and burning hot one the other, and the previous owner took the thermostat out so the water would be constantly flowing in the motor. .which someone would do if they couldn't figure out why it was over heating. I took it to a mechaniic buddy of mine and he said i need a new radiator and all my problems should be solved. .but I'm starting to get frustrated. I love this car but I want to upgrade and fine tune it, not blow my wad keeping it together. I need advice from experienced RX7 drivers on what I should do? Is this car going to be a chain of problems or should just give up? The car has amazing potential, and I feel I'm close to a great stock RX7 that I can really build upon. . .any suggestions?

 

this car is always going to be a chain of problems, especially if it's turbo. but it will always be worth the problems when you are behind the wheel. as far as upgrading, you should upgrade the radiator and air intake and other "reliabilty" mods. these cars have a tendency to overheat especially when idling for long periods of time.

 

Second gens have the shrouded fan that's hooked to the main crank, it definitely shouldnt overheat at idle. Get the radiator replaced and keep on truckin', based on your post I think you'd be crazy to give up on the car after such simple problems. It's a 20 year old performance car, what do you expect?

 

You were going to replace the radiator anyway when you begin to upgrade the car... Your car is forcing you to upgrade early, it wants the mods, and it knows you want to mod it!

Good job getting the car to where it is. Hopefully you didn't let the car overheat enough to take out a coolant seal though. Get a nice aluminum Koyo radiator and you should be set if your seals are ok.

What are your goals for the car?

Wrong section btw.