Tell Tale Signs

[kenpau]

Hi to everyone on the site,

I\'ve recently bought a 1992 series 3 twin turbo efini import, unfortunatly with no history from Japan (foolish on my part maybe).

However everything seems to be working ok, I\'m a mechanic and have it up on a ramp at work once a week to check everything over, so no problems.

My question is that I\'ve got 65k on the clock and are there any tell tale signs that an engine rebuild will be required in the near future (loss of performance, difficulty starting ect.), or will it just let go...?

Also are there any tests that I can do to check the well being of the engine itself, such as a compression test?

Excuse my naivity on the subject but have been on many forums (not this site) and not sure how reliable the threads are, where as there seems to be a lot of very good knowledge on this site.

Thanks for any advice you can lend.

Paul

[RobbieRX-7]

you can compresion test the engine yourself but it wont be 100% accurate. you need to keep the little button on the side of the gauge pressed in and kinda see where about the needle is reading, to be honest i think it would be worth the £20 or so to get it professionally compression tested by a mazda dealer or even better a specialist,that way they would tell you how healthy the engine is. The main thing these engines suffer from stock is over heating which causes water seal failure.you will notice this when you start losing water,but have no visible leak anywhere on the engine..tell tale signs are lots of white smoke from exhaust on start up and champagne bubbles coming up the filler neck when the engine is running.in my opinion as long as the cooling system is in good shape or even better and is modified for reliability such as a larger alu radiator and alu ast, replaced hoses ect, then the engine will last for many miles as long as it is kept in stock form and not had the arse ragged off it. best thing to to on this site if you have a question such as `compression test` or `water seal` `oil change` do a search and you will get many answers. good luck :wave