Hello All,
I wonder if you could give me some price guidance as I am a newb to the RX7 scene. An RX7 that I know of has come up for sale, I am not explicitly looking for one but I get interested in exciting cars that come up for sale that have good history and are genuine examples - which I think this is.
My problem is valuing the vehicle, as in my opinion you gotta be following the rx7 market to know how much a car is truly worth - using autotrader gets you no where.
Anyway the car is as follows :
UK Car,
2 owners
1994 M reg,
56,000 miles on original Engine
FMSH upto about 44,000 then non mazda serviced.
The car is genuine - you can tell, its in extremely good condition, it has a slight knock on the door which is hardly noticeable.
The car has been lovingly cared for, the chap runs it on mineral oil and lets her warm up properly.
I saw the car yesterday, it is due a service but he took me out in it and power was mostly smooth and delivered consistently. The engine oil pressure sat around 30 at idle and was anywhere between 60 - 110 whilst driving.
Coolant temp was just a touch over half way, although it was quite hard to gauge as I was sat in passenger seat, but it remained in same position througout the run.
At idle she was a little lumpy perhaps (only occasionally) thou but this soon smoothed out after a run. There were no funny noises but there was a ever so slight hesitance/flat spot around 5k rpm which he put down to spark plugs, which he is due to replace.
On warm start up the car seemed to fire up no problems and belched a little black smoke from the exhaust for all of .5 of a sec but looked just like exhaust build up to me?
The oil was clean and so was the filler cap. After killing the engine seemed to gurgle thou, which he said he hadnt heard before, it was like there was air in the coolant system somewhere, it seemed to go on for about 10mins off/on.
I dont doubt the cars authenticity at all or the seller for that matter, I dont doubt the engine but from what I can gather from reading various buyers guides its pretty impossible to gauge the engines condition - I have asked him to get a Mazda Engine report with compression check which he is more than happy to do.
He says he wants a little over 6 for her. I know he will take 6 but I would be happier with 5-500, but I dont know if 6 is a good price or not, which is where I hope you people can maybe offer some guidance.
I would also appreciate any other pointers you may have.
Thanks in advance all.
The market is pretty low at the moment. I think the rediculous cost of insurance may have something to do with it!
The flat spot around 4.5-5k rpm is the transition over to the 2nd turbo and completely normal. Gurgling after a blat is also normal unless it\'s excessive.
On cold start you should get a reasonable amount of blackish smoke, on warm a small puff - this is oil burn-off and normal.
The compression check will show up and problems with compression (obviously) but may not show up other problems nor guarantee that it won\'t pop the 1st time you boot it. That could happen with any car though.
As you can currently pick up standard cars with recent rebuilds in the 8-8.5k region somewhere in the 6k region is probably about right if it\'s decent all round. Don\'t forget suspension etc. are alson important and not just the eninge!
At the end of the day you pay what you think it\'s worth and hopefully get some good motoring out of it before anything major needs doing. Always a good idea with any performance motor to have a pot of cash available for engine work and mods :-)
Iain