Mazda Rotary Club

Ok. an American story-teller is in the house:

I\'ve been in the Uk for 5 years now and have watched the RX7\'s as my dad had the old RX3 back in the early 70\'s.

He bought a 1992 RX7 Turbo second hand with 60,000 miles on it in Florida.     I virtually drove the thing 6 feet under every time I went home for Christmas   ( including losing it sideways at 140mph on the Highway trying to cut across 3 lanes to make an exit.... ah  the good ole days.     What a car!

Anyway.. to the point.   He drove it to 240,000 miles before the tan leather had all but completely peeled away  finally giving it to the local scrap yard for $50 2 years ago.   During this time he went through 1 transmission ( probably thanks to me ) a couple of clutches.. one new paintjob...

BUT.,......  no new engine/tips.  yes that\'s right.. no engine rebuilt.. and it passed emmissions every 2 years.

I drove it 700 miles at 180,000miles on the clock and it still seemed very quick passing cars like they were farm tractors on the way to KeyWest....

SO..  What\'s UP,  with this british fascination with rebuilding these engines every 50,000 ... ????  I bet there are plenty who rebuild every 35,000 just to be safe!   Just seems like middle-aged bed-wetting...

Feel free to let loose with the American jokes.  But please,,  ultimately,  enlighten me.

*** WOW.  some good Reading.  I think we have a well rounded picture now.   Ultimately, It appears we are DOOMED,  and should enjoy the smiles in the time these beauties  continue to pump them out  :p   ***

yup I agree it\'s a load of bull, people seem to latch onto numbers and quote them as gospel.

I\'ve got a feeling this could go on for a while!! lol
Starter for 10 anyone?

well to expand further US engines are going to last longer due to the nature of US roads BUT the idea that 3rd gen rx7 engine will only last 60K between rebuilds is nonsense.

Hi Boomin and thanks for the post.

I have known these cars do this mileage in the States and know of an FD with 215k miles on it out in California, but then you Guys tend to start em up an drive them looooooooong distances which the Rotary obviously loves.


But with the FD over here we seem to lose them at around 60k !

This seams mainly due to water seal failure rather than anything else, and this l personally put down to the stop start nature of using a car in the U/K and all the constant heating up and cooling down that goes with it.

Is it do do with the majority of of UK RX-7\'s being modified in some way, increasing the stress on the engine and thus shortening the life?

Or the nature of their origin?  The vast majority will come from Japanese auctions where it is never easy to find out how stressed the car was by it\'s previous owner.  I\'ve heard a few stories of imports going pop early on because the importer wasn\'t clued up on the rotary engine.

"I bet there are plenty who rebuild every 35,000 just to be safe!"

I wish we could, but not at £2-3k a rebuild :)

one of the reasons for these engines going pop early could be put down to modifying them without adjusting the fuelling, therefore causing the engine to run lean and consequently it goes bang :(

do you think what we are seeing is accurate ? we only got 120 somthing FD\'s originally so we havn\'t seen a great deal of them until recently. (like the last 3 years) is that enough experience of properly built and maintained engines to be certain?

if we we\'re loosing them due to the heating/cooling why doesn\'t it do the same with the older cars ?  I\'m not trying to be argumentative, just interested in whats going on.

I personally don\'t like the arbitary number stuck on the engines life (as you may of guessed
:rollin )

In my experience as an engine builder over here I find that very few engines are rebuilt other than because they have actually gone wrong.It is pretty irresponsible to get people to spend their hard earned money unneccessarily in my opinion.
I also think that alot of the mileages on the imported cars are very dubious,not all, but some cars with supposedly very low mileage do seem to be very tatty.On the other hand,the cars that have low mileage maybe going wrong due to that very fact,a lack of use in Japan with long periods of inactivity.
Too,at the ports these cars can lie for months on end not being used and suddenly they come here only to be thrashed hard with the inevitable happening.
Many Japanese also drive their cars quite conservatively to,not using them hard as we do,which could also contrbute.
The engines in the States would be used in a different way from the use over in both Japan and here.
I am convinced that the water seal failure is caused by lowish compression and low battery power,at the docks the car gets moved a few yards and switched off,the next person comes along to move it and floods it,then the petrol seeps into the water seals and corrodes them,car arrives here and in a short time the seals give out = rebuild time.Water seal failure is largely in the bottom of the engines.
Regards
Carl

Interesting thread,

i guess if your engine goes pop theres no alternative than to rebuild, i think the person with best knowledge on this here subject will be the person who has had a rebuild and then had to do another rebuild on the same car without any other owner in between.

Any body ???? :)

Gurj

i don’t believe the re-builders are out to rob us of money! as Carl says we don’t know how the cars bean treated in Japan.

It would also be interesting to hear from owners of UK FD3\'s as well as owners who have had to do two rebuild on there cars.

agreed on the water seal failure. Most people I know who have had a rebuild is due to seal (water that is) failure, rather than chucking a tip or other. I wonder if our climate may have an effect aswell. Not having to have a rebuild and not fully aware of the internal water structure, I\'m assuming that there is a rubber O-Ring sealing the water at some point. As we know cars rust a lot worse in this country than they do id Italy for example (yes I\'m talking about Alphas), I guess the point I\'m getting at is that do the temperature and humidity levels of the climate here help perish the theoretical O-ring that I\'m assuming exists. For instance if you keep your car outdoors and it freezes at night, then you take it out for a spin and it gets hot as **** and then you leave it outside work all day and it is misty and wet and then you drive it home and it gets hot again then freezes again at night, that can\'t help the situation at all.


Would be interested though, as Gurj rightly pointed out, to know of anyone has had subsequent rebuilds on the same car and how many miles / under what circumstance they did between builds.

QuoteOriginally posted by Carl

I am convinced that the water seal failure is caused by lowish compression and low battery power,

Regards
Carl

low battery power? should you upgrade the battery then? i dont know if anybody else has noticed but these jap batteries are tiny, same was in the skyline i had before the rx, uk ones are far bigger in size

im new to the rx scene so explain in full please :D

I\'m with Carl on this one.
 Lack of use is a killer. My TT in Guernsey had 48,000miles on the clock, but had sat and done nothing for months (it was laid up on the dealers yard for 6 months over winter) lack of use causes your vacuum systems to cease, oil and fuel drain all the way back into the sump/tanks etc. Aluminium starts to corrode and get eaten away both outside and in.  
 Most of the cars that go pop (from my expereince) are the ones that are weekend/sunny day cars and those that are modified both sensibly and and stupidly.  Pretty much any mod will affect engine stress.
 A prime example of how engines go wrong due to lack of use can be seen in the 2nd gens.  Most TII\'s/Egi\'s were purchased as Grand tourers by company execs etc.  In the there first 7-10 years of life they probably covered around 70-100,000 miles with no problems.  Then as they get sold on to the people who aped after one but could never afford a new one (and only used it for a fun weekend car etc) the usage went down.  My current 2nd gen covered 115,000 miles between 1988 and 1998. Between 1999 and 2003 it only did another 7,000 miles.  Hence all the vacuum control systems and the oiling system corroded and took the engine with them circa 125k.
 Thrashing \'em or abandoning \'em = the same.

Blimey, that was a ramble and a half.......... :rolleyes:

QuoteOriginally posted by chrisBoid
Is it do do with the majority of of UK RX-7\'s being modified in some way, increasing the stress on the engine and thus shortening the life?

Hi Chris, yes you have a point, but if you get into the mod debate then all the boingers have the same problem as a Rotary.

Its also worth noteing that  a fair amount of mods actualy make these cars more reliable, by removeing a lot of the junk off the engine and intercooler/ radiator mods also help because you releive the engine of a lot of heat which is a killer with the Rotary.  

l also agree with Mike that its unfair to "tag" the life of these engines.

Aparently a lot of engines in Japan get lost at 40k due to lack of use.

BTW my car is a UK car and l lost the unmodded engine at 53k after three years.




Then with a lot of help from Carl we modded it just a little :D :D :D :D :D

could we also bear in mind that the japanese and americans also have lovely high RON fuel, and most of us run on 97 or lower, (even if optimax says 98).

the cars are mapped for the higher RON of the mother country, so the do say 40k in one condition, then we stop them for 4 months (while shipped) and then try to suddenly thrash them on weak fuel which has completely different characteristics.

Iirc americans have a lower ron fuel than us!

sorry, the point was that we use the wrong stuff. :)

This is the thing that niggles me about the false impression that you should only buy a low mileage car. I\'ve had no reliability issues (except for a leaking oil injector feed pipe) on 3rd gen RX7s, they\'ve all shown really good compression, and not a single one would be considered to be low mileage, and all the ones I have sold have been used as daily drivers by their new owners. (OK so one has since had to have a rebuild but that was through the owner unfortunately leaving the coolant filler cap off).
 
The same is true of other cars - eg the 2.8TDi engine in the Mitsubishi Delicas and Pajeros. I prefer to import those that have done a minimum of maybe 6000 miles per year. And I have never had a problem. Fuel pump seal failure is one of the weak points on these engines and it nearly always affects the lower mileage vehicles. Which sort of tells me that the rubber o ring seals in the fuel pump (diesel) go brittle and shrivelled through lack of use. It\'s using them that keeps the seals lubricated. I\'d hazard a guess that this is a contributing factor to water seal failure on RX7s as well - probably not helped by the fact that petrol in the bottom of the housing from flooding would wash off any lubricant and contribute to perishing of the seals.

Another problem that seems to occur on mainly low mileage imports is engine overheating and subsequent cylinder head failure. Again lack of use contributes to blocking of waterways within the engine.

And another thing, short journeys (like less than 4 or 5 miles) don\'t give the engine time to heat up properly. This means that moisture accumulates, destroys the lubricating properties of the engine oil, and contributes to internal corrosion.

Anyway, I\'m just off to Southampton to pick up a 1994 RX7 with 28000 miles on the clock - wish me luck guys :rollin

From my experience, my motor would have done a much higher mileage if a corrosion inhibitor had been used more often in its history! i dont know if they use any such thing in Japan, they may not need to, and If not this may explain why so many import engines fail, and not through tips breaking up, or mechanical failure,
Bob

Personally i don\'t mind that my engine needed a rebuild, and £2500, on a 12 year old car is not a lot to pay for peace of mind,
if i replaced the car for any reason for another 7 i would allow to have it done anyway, after all most seem to be 12 years old, and you could spend that much and more on any old engine,The unknown factor here is that being an import we can never know what general maintenance these imported cars have had, especially with regards to cooling system, so it\'s a bit of a lottery buying an import for that reason.
Bob

QuoteOriginally posted by ro284
From my experience, my motor would have done a much higher mileage if a corrosion inhibitor had been used more often in its history! i dont know if they use any such thing in Japan, they may not need to, and If not this may explain why so many import engines fail, and not through tips breaking up, or mechanical failure,
Bob

This picture you have supplied is more often than not happening on cars that have been over here for a while.
The cause is the use of cheaper blue antifreeze,in Japan most cars seem to have the green antifreeze in them that inhibits the side housing corrosion.
The blue stuff seems to cause this kind of corrosion.
Often though the engines seem to have only the water seals failed and the side housings are fine if they have the green coolant in them.
My comments about low battery power earlier were saying that when the battery of a car is run down through lack of use in japan,then flooding is more likely,especially on the Docks in Japan.So the car may well have been fine when over there in use but then it sits with fuel eating away at the waterseals for the few weeks trip over here,cos everyone who tries to move the car keeps on flooding it!
As for the fuel being different here,that too can contribute to detonation and subsequent apex seal failure.The cars in the States were obviously setup for their fuel,and the same in Japan.The fact that the UK cars had a lower power spec tells us that the UK cars were also tuned slightly differently, for the fuel and conditions here.
Regards
Carl

Putoline produce a really good coolant/corrosion inhibitor that I use in my 2 stroke enduro bike. I\'m thinking something like this might be pretty good to use.

Never touch the cheap blue stuff myself.

QuoteOriginally posted by Carl
This picture you have supplied is more often than not happening on cars that have been over here for a while.
The cause is the use of cheaper blue antifreeze,in Japan most cars seem to have the green antifreeze in them that inhibits the side housing corrosion.
The blue stuff seems to cause this kind of corrosion.
Often though the engines seem to have only the water seals failed and the side housings are fine if they have the green coolant in them.
My comments about low battery power earlier were saying that when the battery of a car is run down through lack of use in japan,then flooding is more likely,especially on the Docks in Japan.So the car may well have been fine when over there in use but then it sits with fuel eating away at the waterseals for the few weeks trip over here,cos everyone who tries to move the car keeps on flooding it!
As for the fuel being different here,that too can contribute to detonation and subsequent apex seal failure.The cars in the States were obviously setup for their fuel,and the same in Japan.The fact that the UK cars had a lower power spec tells us that the UK cars were also tuned slightly differently, for the fuel and conditions here.
Regards
Carl

What make of green coolant do you recommend carl?

Cheers,

Paul:)

am I not right in thinking that the colour is purely a post production additive? and that there are no rules or regs governing what ingresients are related to what colour product?

Surely you should be looking more carefully at the Glycol content and chemical structure of the coolant, rather than the colour of the liquid.

Well my car was imported early last year, assuming the blue stuff was put in when it arrived (doubtfull) then it certainly does damage quick!as the car only did 6000 miles before the seal failed! i have a newly rebuilt motor and filled it with blue stuff!oh dear!what else is there please?
Bob

Oedipus Rex - your comments re coolant are quite correct.

Also bear in mind that what comes out, in the way of coolant isn\'t
necessarily what did the damage - if corrosion has occurred due to coolant neglect, it is likely to be discoloured and therefore perhaps renewed prior to sale.

For info my car is a \'94 UK FD... engine rebuild at 80k in 2002 (before I purchased it) having been dealer serviced. History is fairly comprehensive though minor services (for oil) either not recorded or not done as regularly as I do now. Now at 88k.

I wonder if the high mileage US owners share our paranoia with
oil change intervals - I suspect not.

QuoteOriginally posted by memski
Iirc americans have a lower ron fuel than us!

not true, the US uses the road octane rating which is derived from a test with harsher conditions being run on the test engine

The scale we use which is the Research octane number and the testing is done at a lower rpm etc. etc. resulting in a higher rating for the same fuel.

you can also rate fuel using the motor octane number which I think is an average of the two !

Durn, I assume that when you say your rebuild was done at 88k, you mean 88000 MILES, which is 140000km - yeah?

QuoteOriginally posted by petemillis
Durn, I assume that when you say your rebuild was done at 88k, you mean 88000 MILES, which is 140000km - yeah?

Pete, yes I meant miles but rebuild was at 80k so around 130,000km

I bought my car and within 3 months of ownership had to rebuild, the water seal broke at 48000 miles, the car is 12 years old though, hope this engine lasts another 12 years.

Does anyone know that once the engine has been rebuilt, it becomes weaker or should it be as strong as it was brand new???

When the water seals went on my engine, I was pretty sure it was a fan problem - even if I left the car to cool after a long run, the fans stopped as soon as I stopped the engine - on most cars I\'ve owned, even with the engine off, the fans would run after the engine stopped if the car was hot. I did some web searching on this issue and noted that a recall in the States changed the fan control significantly - including fixing the issue above, but couldn\'t find any reference to this issue outside of US websites. I wonder if this has a bearing on this discussion. Any UK owners here noticed whether their fans stay on after the ignition is turned off, whether it is a UK car or a Jap import?

Andrew

QuoteOriginally posted by boltoa
Any UK owners here noticed whether their fans stay on after the ignition is turned off, whether it is a UK car or a Jap import?

Andrew

Mine\'s an import and the fans do go off immediately after switch-off.

Mine\'s a jap import and the fans go off straight away.  Think I\'ve seen about 104 on the PFC after a spirited drive followed by a brief break whilst I have a quick spin around Tescos (goes back down into the 80\'s immediately the engine\'s running).

Thinking about the fan thing, unless I\'m mistaken, there\'s pretty much no point in the fans coming on after the engine\'s been switched off.  If the engine ain\'t turning then the water pump isn\'t pumping, the only thing it would do is cool the radiator!

I\'ve seen some electric pump modifications which do keep the water circulating after the engine is switched off.  The seems like a very sensible mod, but I\'m not sure how expensive it all is.

HTH
H

QuoteOriginally posted by Spotlamp

Thinking about the fan thing, unless I\'m mistaken, there\'s pretty much no point in the fans coming on after the engine\'s been switched off.  If the engine ain\'t turning then the water pump isn\'t pumping, the only thing it would do is cool the radiator!

I\'ve seen some electric pump modifications which do keep the water circulating after the engine is switched off.  The seems like a very sensible mod, but I\'m not sure how expensive it all is.

HTH
H

the coolant will thermo-syphon to an extent but yes, advantages are limited without an aux pump. Can\'t but help components generally with underbonnet heat soak though.

...actually I\'ll set myself a task for the summer to log tco after key off with and without fans operating. This obviously won\'t provide metal temp but should give a rough idea...

My fans turn off when the engine is off but will come on again if you leave the ignition on (ie : lights still on on dash board)

The fans will only come on if the sensor tells them to.  When I come home and turn off the car and put the ignition on to get the fans running they wont always come on.  If you leave it for a few mins then they will come on because of the heat soak triggering the sensor.... but like you say, without an aux pump then it only has a minium effect.

I have bought idetical drums of antifreeze in blue and green, even the batch numbers were the same. Same with all things; "you get what you pay for". Next, there will be some clever bugger importing engine oil, petrol and antifreeze from Japan, as though it will actually make a difference.:rolleyes: Engines blow because they are not looked after/ built badly/ made with poor quality componets. Mazda Rotarty engines are hand built... surely that\'s enough of a variable for there to be no conclusive evidence as to why 2 engines blow at different millage for different reasons?

It is interesteing to note that Matts comments about poor quality components is true,I have had an engine fail through a poor made rotor housing and Mazda stumped up for the cost of the parts in the rebuild.

Also of note is that on the newer 2 piece apex seals for the FD RX7 there have been some that have been made over size and have caused problems,this has been noted in Australia, and the said seals were sent back,so quality control can be a problem.

As for the Antifreeze colour,i am talking about cars from Japan coming in with a green coloured antifreeze that are doing better mileages and if they do break due to an apex seals failure it is possible to see that the side housings are in pretty good condition.Also where a water seal fails I have noted that the side housings using green antifreeze fair much better than the ones with blue in.What make of green or blue is being used I don\'t know.But I know whatever it is it works.
I use the Halfords 5 year stuff which is pretty good.
Regards
Carl:)

I watched the Bruce engine removal vid last night, and yes the american said he does not know of many RX7\'s that have done more than 100k. You must have an exception.

Moving back to the subject of the antifreeze, if this uk blue stuff is so bad/corrosive, why does it not eat away the housings in the 2nd gens I\'ve seen?  I\'ve got a pair of housings sitting on my bench now that did 155,000miles over a 14year period and the water ways are fine....  Is it that the water ways have thinner sectioned walls on the 13B-REW, hence are more susceptible to heat soak/expansion which causes fatigue, then lets this coolant impregnate the surface causing a quick break down of the alluminium?

 Have any of you guys rebuilt a 2nd/1st gen engine with water seal failure/breakdown?

With the fan thing, you can keep the fans running with the engine off and ignition switch on as long as the air con is also switched on.

And yes, I understand your point about the water not circulating, but the convections currents caused by heat differential would probably be fairly significant, and blowing air over everything has got to help.

Any US owners reading this who knows anything about this fan control recall? US owners who notice whether their fans come on with the engine off?

Andrew

QuoteOriginally posted by col collier

Does anyone know that once the engine has been rebuilt, it becomes weaker or should it be as strong as it was brand new???

my first gen 2  had an engine built at 60 sumit thousand. i bought it with that new engine and it lost a corner of the apex seal at 37000

the other car had an engine at 80000 and is still going stong at 131000, thats 51000

both cars had good maintanance and were thrashed cenceless
i cant imagine the engines being rebuilt in the same way that they were assembled at the factory so, no