Not a Happy Bunny!!! :(

[Grizzly]

Lets see now, people dick around with fuel pumps,change the ecu, put in single turbo, change the exhaust, etc....

and then when it breaks, its the Rotary engine thats cr4p, eh?

Well yes they are as Trex says Disposable, they simply are too temprimental for any sort of power.

Don\'t get me wrong my car has lots of mods and there not just cheap bolt ons and it was set up by a pro. That said i\'ve had three Fd\'s now that have not seen 70k on the stock motor with No mods so theres a clue for you i supose.

[Grizzly]

hi chris you have my sympathy but having now experienced my first engine failure after owning 1st,2nd and 3rd generation rx7\'s which have been used in both formats being daily driver and as a 2nd car at which i think over the past 6-7 years have been extremely happy with the rotary engine it has been fine until now and if anyone would like to know i have lived on the isle of man in which everytime i took the rex out it was never a case of pottering around it was driven as it should be aswell as many trouble free trackdays and now a couple of trips to the ring so my point is i think the rotary is superb and would definitely say despite my 1st engine failure i am not going to say they are unreliable.

just my 2p worth

And yes i am missing my car already hehe:)

You will proberly find you have started on the slippery slope, simply i find the Rotary needs to be hammered more than most other cars, i\'ve always had more problems when i\'ve been trying to save fuel rather than with some spare cash to burn.

Don\'t get me wrong there is allot going for the RX7 but luck is a Major part of owning one, take Adrian he had his car build from day 1 with no expence spared and towards the end when he sold up he went through 3 engines in a year?? all built and tuned by a well known builder, so i would say if you have to be prepared to rebuild your motor quite often if you are running anywhere near twice the stock hp (for example).

[Grizzly]

well i spent all day messing with it trying to find out why a motor with 2000 miles on it, all the fuel mods done etc etc went pop and the only thing i can find is there is 7 volts at the Pump at wot so i\'m guessing there is a Bad connection some where?? I guess you get these sorts of Faults with 14 year old wiring..

Hey at least i\'m getting good at running them in now

[strange_days_uk]

real sorry to hear of your pain...

[Tiger_kpt]

I\'ve got to agree with oldone...

I have owned a 1993 UK spec RX7 FD for a year now. She is my only car and used as a daily driver. I bought her standard with 115k miles on her (rebuild 45k beforehand) and have since spent alot of money on her, not just performance and chassis tuning... but making her more reliable (mostly cooling and coolant control - and the necessary Apexi PFC) as a priority. Left as sequential twin turbocharger set-up, standard bodywork due to her being a UK spec. Service her to the recommended level. All work carried out by specialist. She runs better now than ever. Not a single problem. Never missed a beat. Never even flooded. Touch wood!

I have learned the BIG difference between the rotary and performance piston type engines. Both can be driven hard. A performance piston engine would rather NOT be driven hard, but will do without complaining. A rotary engine NEEDS to be driven hard and hates not being opened up fully during each run.

A story I heard from Pip... Two brothers. Two FD\'s. Both needed rebuilds. Both came to Pip for them. Both rebuilt to same specification. First brother was a lunatic driver, always drove his cars like he stole them - kept it as much above 3k as much as possible. The second was a very conservative driver, always drove conservatively - kept it below 3k as much as possible.

First brother\'s car went on to see a further 90k miles from rebuild. The second brother\'s car didn\'t even make it to 19k mile. When stripping the second brother\'s engine for rebuild... the rotor housings were so caked up in carbon that the apex seals were either shattered or seized and the rotor housings didn\'t look safe to re-use.

First brother\'s engine only failed due to water seal damage. The rotors, apex seals, housings were in top condition.

Rotary engine running lean = BAD NEWS.
The rotary engine is designed and tuned (even in standard form) to run rich, overfuel. More so when tuned with parts and mapped by specialists (who map them not only for performance but for reliability also). Hence why the low MPG readings and expense relating to fuel.
Another reason why when driving the rotary sensible compared to driving it hard - you won\'t see such a great difference in fuel consumption - against piston engines.
When driving sensibly... which isn\'t a problem for the majority of a trip... not all of the fuel is being burnt. The fuel that isn\'t being burnt is either being kicked out of the exhaust system (hence the BANG BANG POP when introduced to a hot tailpipe and air). The rest is either partially burnt or not and ends up forming carbon, which builds up on the rotor housing walls. When driving it hard, this build up is basiclaly cleared off of the walls. If left to build up, the deposits get thicker and thicker - harder and harder, until they obstruct the path of the apex seals - give you a guess at what happens then.

I always warm my car up, cool her down (not really that important) and drive her quite hard, and always open her up heavily once every trip. When I first got her... everytime I opened her up heavily...a cloud of crap was exhausted from my tail, the owner before me did push her every once in a while, but was pretty conservative. Pampered her. I caught her at the right time, as a few months later, I open her up... and nothing, clean as a whistle.

I also think alot of the problems people have are also due to the cars not being used as the daily driver - but a weekend or show car, etc. These cars love to be driven, hate to be stood. I have used mine nearly every day for the last year, averaging around 50 miles a day. Alot of the people needing rebuilds seem to be people that don\'t use the car as a daily or drive it conservatively. Obviously there are exceptions though such as poorly performed rebuilds, poor servicing, long servicing intervals, ancillary part failures and the like.

Just my 2p worth. Anyone got anything to add to that or disagree with?

[Grizzly]

The thing i have learnt in my years of owning Rotarys is don\'t tempt fate. i had just saved up a bit of cash to spend on more mods and BANG my motor goes, thats how it works for me.

I found years ago that the more you tweak a Rotary the more Unreliable it becomes, i guess that common sense really but i had a Stock T2 that i tried to blow up for four years (hammering it from cold and engine braking it of the rev counter etc) and that was the best Rotary i have owned for Reliability.

Nice write up by the way, was it aimed at me? or is it a General thing. The brother thing, I am No.1 but with 14 year old Fuel pump wiring i am led to believe.