Is it a kettle? No it\'s my water seals :(

[RemarkLima]

http://i34.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vid34.photobucket.com/albums/d131/RemarkLima/FD3S/16082007004.flv">

For some reason the sound track is totally out of synch with the video... But either way, looks clear to me now that my water seals are totally fubar\'d!

Now, can I drive it around as long as I keep topping up? It\'s not struglling to start, I pulled the plugs out today and gave them a good clean and it\'s running absolutely grand... And the weird thing, there\'s never any sweet smelling white smoke from the exhaust, just noxious death as expected!

That said I did change the coolant a while back, so there could be air in there still? Unlikely however! Also never overheats and never has... C\'est la vie.

Still, guess I\'ll dip into the ol\' savings and go from there... I fancy giving it a go myself, except we\'re just in the process of buying a new house that\'s going to need a lot of work to that as well Plus with the mini-recession looming

It never rains, but it pours!

[Grizzly]

If you want a basic test if its the water seals, Does the rad pipes go hard very quickly after starting from cold? Does the Expansion bottle fill up and overflow? another test is get the motor hot with the rad cap on, let it cool right down then remove the plugs and turn the engine over backwards slowly, if the water seals have gone you will see fluid leak out of the bottom plug hole.

Out of intrest does the rad get hot?  and how long ago did you do the Coolant?

To me that doesn\'t sound like a water seal failure, when they go they go in such a fashion that withing seconds of the motor starting the Pipes are realy hard (even though its still cold) and it starts pushing all the water into the Expansion bottle, obviously because there is air in the system and it doesn\'t absorb heat in the same way as water it will get hot and the symptoms will get worse the hotter it gets.

I hope Rixio doesn\'t mind i put this up here, this is how a water seal looks when it goes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43bdGs4ePlI (note the pipes are very hard and the amount of water it pushes out)

I think if i was you i\'d have a really good look at thinks like the Water pump (make sure its not weeping) and things like Thermostat to make sure the Rad is not full of air still before you pull the motor out.

[B9 KLF]

When mine went it started to dump the water and it would not start from hot.

Eventually morning starting gets tricky cos you can hear the water in the chambers which is pushed in after turning off the engine by the pressure in the coolant system (thro the duff seals). As you try and start it the water gets chucked out and then away you go and it will run ok. Try not to get it too hot since the plates may warp at the hot spot.

Another test is to run it up, stop it, take out the plugs, leave rad cap on and let it cool, have a clean sheet of paper underneath and turn it over. Any water will be ejected out onto the paper.

Try a new rad cap also first.

Hope your ok

Keith

[RemarkLima]

Hmmm, sounding a bit positive there! I like that

I topped it up with distilled water, then drove to the garage at my old mans place, while I was waiting for it to cool I took out the old plugs (black as sin!) scrubbed up some other plugs and put them back in. However they were just covered in black carbon really... The top plugs "traling right?) looked like they were burning OK, greyish colour to them, but the leading were covered and they were 7\'s... Anyway, didn\'t spot any water, should it be obvious?

Once i\'d finished it had cooled down enough to open the rad cap, where it released some pressure and gurgeled a bit. The only times it\'s over flowed the expension bottle is when I\'ve kept topping up the water and it\'s finally got too much, always after switching off.

I\'ve replaced the AST cap and there\'s no signs of leaks around the filler cap.

With the stock air box it\'s hard to get to the rad pipes but AFAIK they\'re hard when hot, but not instant from starting up.

And as said, never has been over heating and no instant fans like that with Rixio\'s vid there... And my vid was with a warm engine so it was pretty much up to temp on the stock gauge there.

I\'m booked in to get a pressure test and a few other bits done, I\'ll see if they have an emissions probe as well to test for HC\'s in the coolant... You\'ve given me hope

[RobbieRX-7]

Is it loosing water?

[RemarkLima]

When mine went it started to dump the water and it would not start from hot.

Eventually morning starting gets tricky cos you can hear the water in the chambers which is pushed in after turning off the engine by the pressure in the coolant system (thro the duff seals). As you try and start it the water gets chucked out and then away you go and it will run ok. Try not to get it too hot since the plates may warp at the hot spot.

Another test is to run it up, stop it, take out the plugs, leave rad cap on and let it cool, have a clean sheet of paper underneath and turn it over. Any water will be ejected out onto the paper.

Try a new rad cap also first.

Hope your ok

Keith

Thanks Keith, again sounds promising! I do hope it\'s just an obscure leak, or the AST not sucking water back in or something like that!

I\'ll be great if it\'s OK!

Oh and now it\'s on YouTube, so the sound synch\'s with the video, it was warm by this point so maybe the temp explains some of the bubbles... Can you loose water into the turbo\'s? As they sometimes sound like a tractor, I think it\'s them anyway!

[RemarkLima]

Is it loosing water?

Yeah, the buzzer goes off more and more often now, but no visible leaks that I can see, no puddles I can spot under the car either...

If I keep topping up however, it does eventually blow out of the expansion bottle.

[RobbieRX-7]

Seals have gone mate. Same thing happened to me. Has it been rebuilt and how many miles on it?. You can\'t see any puddles because it\'s burning it off and leaking from the etank whilst driving along.

Try topping it up from cold, take her for a 10 mile drive, park up and watch the front drivers side. Mine started to **** out after a couple mins.

[Grizzly]

Thats it, you know when the seals go. There is very little confusion it blows the water out of the system with so much venom that if you try and stop it blowing past the rad cap it will Blow your Rad,Heater matrix or Coolant Pipe.

Don\'t get me wrong Bubbles are not good. There is obviously a problem but looking from the point of view It starts well hot or cold, Rad pipes are not hard when cold and its not showing overheating signs. I would seriously look at other things maybe a water seal in the Turbo or dodgy Pipe??? Its worth checking first.

Word of warning about Pressure testing, unless its done by a Rx7 Tuner its been known to not work. (read this thread http://www.mazdarotaryclub.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28308&highlight=overheating)

[Grizzly]

Basically what i\'m trying to say is there are many things that could cause the same sort of Symptoms as a water seal, your best of doing some reading (because its common ) and check all the easy stuff first before you commit your self to a rebuild.

[RobbieRX-7]

When did you top it up? Did you bleed the system properley?

[RemarkLima]

Not been rebuilt AFAIK. And approaching the magical 60K miles... So it wouldn\'t be entirely unexpected, I\'d just hoped for a little longer

The only time it overflowed from the expansion tank after stopping is after constantly topping up, right to the brim of the filler, and then just assumed it was because I\'d overfilled the system with constant topping up... My first suspecision was that the AST wasn\'t drawing water back in from the expension tank, but I\'m not so sure now.

When I replaced the coolant, I had the throttle body hose off, and slowly filled up, head loads of gurgling from the TB area which is good, but then didn\'t seem to need to "burp" the system, not 100% sure how to do this, or if they just mean run the engine with the filler cap off and top up as needed?

If I can get a vid of a cold start and jump straight round to the exhaust I guess that would help as well? It\'ll have to be tonight as I\'m off to work in a sec!

[Grizzly]

You have of course got the caps on the right way round

[RemarkLima]

If only it were that easy! Yep, defo the right way round, the sprung cap (0.9 bar, new from Clive) on the AST, the solid cap on the filler neck...

[RemarkLima]

Right ho, I\'ve been out and checked it cold starting... Part of the problem is that my plugs are fubar\'d, and I was getting it starting on 1 rotor before any water problems sadly, but I changed the plugs to 7\'s and 9\'s and that cured it.

I just put the 9\'s and 10\'s back in which it came with, it runs much better but obviously is much harder to start!

Anyway, vid 1 is the car at cold start:


The coolant pipe didn\'t go hard at all and no expelling from the expansion tank... Exhaust has some steam in but don\'t know if that\'s just condensation. Last time it was driven was Thursday evening and it\'s pretty much not stopped raining the whole time

OK, vid 2 is after about 10 minutes driving, stopped to get some cash and it\'s a restart with the engine warm.


No real problem there, even with the 9\'s and 10\'s in... I\'ve ordered some fresh 9\'s all round to go in and see from there.

Also, with the engine warm and running, probably after 30 minutes of driving or so should the top of the AST and AST cap be cool? I\'d have thought that there would be hot water being pushed out of the AST hence it being as hot as all the rest of the hot water pipes?

And it doesn\'t over heat at all! Even when giving it some beans not a hint of getting hot... Sadly I\'ve only got the stock gauge but it sits just below 9 O\'Clock and doesn\'t go up to 9 O\'Clock at all.

Confused, but expecting the worst!

Oh, also I\'m booked in to get a pressure check on Thursday so will have some more info. Basically it should be able to hold 0.9 Bar on the filler neck and a bit more on the AST cap right? If it slowly drops pressure and no visible leaks then the water has to be pushed into the combustion chambers :/

Has anyone got a spare AST I could try out? Happy with the cr@ppy plastic job