KansasCityREPU

iTrader: (9)

Since you are running straight water, it may not smell sweet. It will cost your $15, but buy some cheap wal-mart 100% green coolant (not the 50/50 stuff). Drain the rad and add whatever the rad will hold. Do not add any water. After running for a few minutes, you should be able to smell that anti-freeze. This will also help keep the engine safe until rebuild is done.

My money is on a bad seal.

This might sound funny, but you could try using a plastic sack to capture some of the exhaust. If it's water, it will condensate in the sack.

Rx7Ay07

Hi guys,

I appreciate all the help, this community is awesome.

To answer RX7_Renesis : the low-coolant light is on because of a missing coolant-level sensor. I have one to replace it just haven't done so. The coolant is not low.

Toruki : no it does not smell sweet nor does it smell like burning oil. It smells like...exhaust? it's very hard to tell you what it smells like but I've had another car-person confirm it does not smell sweet nor does it smell like oil. It smells like what the exhaust would smell like in normal conditions if you got low and put your nose there. To let you know I have already done a champagne test where you take the rad cap off and run the car and look for bubbles in the coolant. There were none and the level is maximum the coolant goes right up to the cap.

KansasCity : No the coolant is not 100% water, it is 100% coolant in the reservoir. I am not sure if the last garage who did a flush did a proper mix of coolant and water for the radiator or if they did 100% coolant. Considering it looks mighty green inside the radiator when the cap is off I'm leaning on 100% coolant instead of the mix with water. What I had screwed up explaining before in previous posts was that when I noticed the coolant level in the reservoir (the plastic reservoir near the rad) was not exactly in the middle line between low and full I would top it off a bit with 100% coolant straight from the bottle.

My next move is to get fresh gas and drain the tank because in my experience (I also have a vintage motorcycle I built, old 1982 Honda CB125S) when a perfectly idling engine suddenly dies it is usually because the tank ran empty. Again, the fuel level gauge is not working in my car and it is very hard to know how much gas was left in it when it went to the garage. I know they did some test-driving but they were not specific with how long or how far....since they didn't add anymore gas it's possible I literally ran out of gas in the car today while making that video. If it is very low or empty that bodes well for me because I don't have multiple or large enough jerry-cans to empty it. Tomorrow I will go buy one large can and try to siphon everything out then re-fill with fresh gas from another jerry-can I already have. If the car still does this with freshly premixed gas then yes I will assume the worse.

That is a good idea though Kansas, when I get it started again I will put a plastic sack over it to see if it condensates. Still I imagine that much water vapor would mean some sort of crack in my engine walls or something?

Thanks for everything guys

Frogman

Is your car an automatic by any chance? NVM, you have a stick shift, I don't know check the pipe that comes out at the base of the carb to ensure there is no fluid getting sucked up there, no idea where it connects on a manual but that's where my engine was sucking up ATF fluid big time and causing smoke as bad as yours at idle .

KansasCityREPU

iTrader: (9)

Did the person that did the carb work by chance remove the intake manifold? There are two water o-rings that can cause water to get into the exhaust.

RX7_Renesis

iTrader: (1)

I thought about the o-rings in the intake manifold as well .. however the OP assured us he had performed a pressure test. He wasn't loosing any coolant out of his rad or overflow which lead me to think it might be some sort of fuel additive in his gas tank.

His mechanic mentioned that compression was down in one rotor (possibly a stuck apex seal) .. but then engine performance improved after diving the car (with lots of white smoke) .. which may have been the apex seal freeing itself up with a little help from some sort of fuel additive.

If it's not coolant .. and it's not oil .. then it's got to be something in the gas.

Rx7Ay07

Hello everyone,

I want to take the time to thank you all very much for taking the time to read my thread and offer up advice and help. It was very kind of all of you to try and help me out.

I have a sad update however, but at least now we know what is up. Sorry about the delay in my response, I got a new job recently and with covid etc life has been extremely busy and I get home too late to work on my cars. I had time this weekend with my close buddy and his Audi mechanic friend.

We got some fresh gas and mixed it correctly and filled up the car. I turned it on and expected white smoke which was still there but drove it just a few meters to a spot where I could let out the smoke without it washing over my neighbor's windows. We let it idle for a while and the smoke just kept coming and coming. I gave it some revs and a huuuuuge amount of white smoke came out. The Audi mechanic guy was like 0___0 he had never seen such smoke. Sadly though he has way more experience and his nose immediately told him it was oil.

I was sitting in the car keeping an eye on the oil pressure which has always been perfectly in the middle at 60. It dipped just a bit lower than 60....then a bit lower again. I turned off the car and called the time of death.

My 12a is dead.....it's eating it's own oil at a fast rate now so yeah the oil-seal has to be gone.

I can't rebuild it, the cost is too similar to buying a whole other engine. There are tons of Regensis Rx8 engines available at around $1200 CAD that I could easily buy from Montreal but I hear it is very difficult to get those engines to work with the electronics of an FB. Someone else is selling a 13B engine (sans modified oil pan but I can get that from Racing Beat) for the same price but I am very weary on buying a used rotary that they claim "ran fine when we took it out" (Yeah right). I don't wanna pay ~1200-1500 spend a lot of time dropping it in and then have it die the same way shortly after.

Frankly I don't know what to do, I don't think I can find certified rotary engines in a price range I can afford...built ones are around 3000 CAD + probably more like 4k CAD.

I could go V8 but I have no friggen idea despite really wanting a V8. So for now I have to do a lot of thinking but yeah I can at least tell you that I have no inclination to sell my car or get rid of it. I wouldn't get much for it and I have invested enough in the car that the only thing really wrong with it is the non-working fuel gauge and the engine. I have fresh tires I wanna use !

I'll likely use this forum as a good source of knowledge on engine swaps so I will be doing a lot of research over the winter I suppose.

Thank you all very much. I am very sad that my car is dead but I loved every moment I drove it. Hated every moment it wasn't working but the car is too much fun, too unique, too amazing to just get rid of. I'd like to keep it rotary so I'm looking into that 13b maybe I can get more info on it's condition.

Cheers for now

midnight mechanic

time for >>>-----> engine oil leak stopper