Good evening everyone! I\'m a new FD owner as of this morning, purchased a \'97 import RS from a nice chap up in Essex... what a car! What. A. Car! I\'ve loved every second of it so far.
I have a couple of questions for other FD owners.
First up, my brake caliper is really close to the alloy wheel. By really close, I mean I can just about push the nail of my finger between the two... that close. I\'ve attached a picture of what I mean, I\'m unsure if the brake caliper is OEM or not? But I was surprised to see how close they are. Can anyone else confirm if it is OEM and if so if theirs are the same?
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/33/brakealloy.jpg/ (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/33/brakealloy.jpg/)
My second question, hopefully an easier one... heat related. :flamed Now I know the RX-7 runs hot and perhaps this is normal but after a drive down the M20 today, I had a look under the car just to check on the exhaust system and so on... upon looking under the car, I was greeted with nothing but heat shimmer. Hard to explain but imagine looking over the top of a furnace, well it was kind of like that except under the car. Also the normal \'exhaust ticking\' noise that everyone gets after a hard drive where the exhaust is retracting after high temperatures... but as before, it was constant. Not just a \'tink... pause... tink\' (OK, that might not have been explained best by text... but I\'m sure someone knows what I mean :wiggle) but a constant \'tink tink tink tink tink tink\'. Not overly loud but it just gives me the impression the exhaust system has some SERIOUS heat and I\'m wondering if it\'s too much? To make life a little harder I can\'t recall what exhaust sytem is on the car so if I get feedback indicating this isn\'t normal I will get under there and grab some pictures tomorrow.
Any feedback appreciated!
Again, I must state... What. A. Car!
Thank you for reading! :WaveBye
Excessive exhaust heat is usually a blocked cat, check see if it\'s still there
The tinging noise woried me at 1st but have been told it\'s normal.\'
First up is welcome to Mazdarotaryclub and good to hear you already love driving the car.
Caliper is not a problem and looks like painted OEM anyway from the small picture
Yes as already said, the noises are fine and Its an idea to just let the car idle for a couple of minutes to let the Turbos cool down a little
my fd gets really hot when running, you feel it on the transmission tunnel and creeping up the gear stick then when you get out you feel the heat coming out on your legs when the cooling fan is on and mine has been decatted, so yea heat is perfectly normal. i found replacing the stock radiator with an aftermarket aluminium one helped keep the temps down
Many thanks for the information guys. And hello Clive! We met a couple of years back, the Mrs. and myself had (still have!) a silver RX-8 in need of coils, leads & plugs. You came over to meet us and showed us to Adam, we\'ve been taking both our cars to him ever since!
Anyhow, onto my story!
I have a few further details to add having driven it again yesterday. Upon arriving at my destination I let the car idle for a few minutes as suggested by Clive, so far so good. I turned it off and went about getting out with that stupid grin you have after having driven this car... you guys all know the stupid grin, right? :King After 10minutes or so I came back to shift it up onto the driveway so I could get it up on a ramp and have a look at the exhaust system, however it didn\'t want to start the first turn of the key, it *almost* caught but then just gave up. I tried again, this time it caught after a couple of spins... idled rough at ~750-800rpm so I helped it out a bit to 1.25k and it seemed to catch up with itself, temps started dropping (apexi hand control) and returned to normal idle (about 1050rpm-ish for my car). Once it started, all was fine, water temps continued to fall (they were high 90\'s when it first restarted) and I had no further problems with it.
So, after that short story... fuel evaporation was a thought, is that a common occurance with these cars? I don\'t think there\'s anything out of the ordinary with the engine, it\'s a recent rebuild (still under Hayward warranty) so I tried hard to put compression out of my mind and had a think about other causes and since heat has been one of my major concerns so far since owning it, that\'s what I came up with. Do you guys think there\'s anything to that idea?
I\'m planning on taking the car for a full check over soon with areas of interest being the radiator, down pipe and I believe it still has a cat fitted after having a look under it yesterday and my first idea for modifications have been battery relocation and an improved rad.
Air temps on the car seem fine, whilst driving with good air flow they are fairly ambient, under hard boost it goes up to mid 30\'s. In traffic and when not moving they do shoot up a lot, I think I\'ve seen mid 70\'s.
Water temps seem to get to mid 80\'s and sit there without changing much.
I have no oil temp reading.
How do those temps sound to everyone else? The car\'s not heavily modded. Engine is street ported, it has apexi intakes, turbos are OEM but changed to non-seq. and that\'s about it on the engine side. Does that match up with anyone else with a configuration like that?
Perhaps I\'m obsessing but after having the car take two attempts to start yesterday I am quite concerned about it and want to do as much as I can to keep temps down.
Thanks so much again for reading guys, all input welcome!
Now to go make a post on the RX8 club about the electrical gremlins my 8 developed last night... it\'s now sat on the drive with the battery disconnected as the stereo turned itself on yesterday and sat playing at a fair volume for an unknown amount of time and now the stereo does not turn off with the car! I was on a winner too... it\'d been just over a month since fixing the last problem. Longest running streak without issues.
Take care all!