SlingShotRX7

Mazda did great job designing the FD's exterior and interior,
and put alot of effort and research in doing so..
But sometimes I wonder WHY mazda did/didn't do the lil simple stuff
to make it a better car like :

WHY:

Why Mazda didn't set cooling fans to lower temps, to reduce heat and coolant seal
failures??

Why Mazda even go with the complicated and failure prone TWIN Turbo set up?
When a Single turbo system would of been simpler/easier and less failure prone.
espcially when some single set ups spool as fast and able to get bigger power?

Why Madza didn't put in a better radiator, than the POS skinny radiator that they
put in?? Knowing the heat the Rotaries make??

Why mazda put in such a WIMPY stock intercooler???

Why mazda didn't ceramic coat their Apex seals??

Why mazda didn't upgrade the oil passages..

and Im sure there is more that could of been done, as a simple
fix and etc.

Just a thought

Elevation7

I would believe that costs is your answer.

Though things look easy to do on paper, my guess would be even the little things you talk about would certainly drive the cost of the FD up, in a market already tight to begin with.

95R2-89TII Ground Zero

Why didn't mazda make a relay that didn't burn out on the wiper system for the 2nd gen??

Gamezilla

That one I really cant explain

You'd have to get one hell of a small single for it to spool up as quick as the stock system. Most singles spool at 4k. The stock twin spools up much faster. Thats why most autoxer's leave the sequential twin setup intact - its great for a lot of low rpm power. That, and last thing you want is it to spool up right though a turn, and all of a sudden you get gobs of power and out goes your rearend

It did the job. Do you want to pay the price of a Supra? Mazda wanted to make a car that was comparable as a sports car, but didnt want to throw a $50k tag on it. The stock rad did the job. May not have been great, but it cooled it just enough that it wasnt a problem. Also, I know people running very modded cars (one with a T78) who still have the stock rad with no probs.

It cools just fine for the sequential setup. Plus, its all about saving money too

Again, do you want to pay as much as a supra

$$$


Pretty much all car companies will make a car with parts that are just fine for stock performance, but not much more than stock. Its to save money so they dont have to charge the consumer a crazy amount to buy it *cough* supra *cough*.

ptrhahn

iTrader: (9)

In almost every case it was costs, though i'd say in the long run it might have cost them less to do some of those things right, and not have paid for all the warranty work, or earned the bad reputation that slowed sales.

SlingShotRX7

Granted cost is a big factor but..
As much buying power and etc, Mazda has..
I am sure something could of been worked out..

Like cooling fans.. Its a programming, its FREEE

as expensive as OEM parts are, I am sure they could of
gotten a good deal on a WORTHY radiator and Intercooler.
as a matter of fact aren't aftermarket SMIC cheaper than
OEM Intercooler?

And I believe that a simple single turbo set up would be cheaper
than the TWINS.. Deduct all the aculators, charge valves, vacuum hoses
prespool this and that. and the expensive *** Hitachi Turbos. and etc.

How about the Oil shaft upgrades?? and coolant lines??
its just a matter of tweaking during the building process, right??

I realize in hindsight everything is 20/20.. BUT
geeesh.. IF they R&D like they supposed to.. They would of
come up with this like we have.

Only if Mazda put as much effort into the motor, as they did in the
weight saving..

Ironic thing is the FD was made for the sports car purist, right??
but they went out their way to make it as vanilla and for the masss's
Thats probably why they went with the TWIN set up. Because of Granny
crying about Lag, because they scared to tach it up past 4K and drop the
clutch.

anyways.. just a thought

Mahjik

iTrader: (1)

Simple answer: Everything they did was for the performance/price level they sold the car at.


If you take any car and start trying to increase the performance, you are going to break stock parts if they weren't designed (and you know they aren't) for that level of performance.

lopedl

iTrader: (1)

Exactly $$$$$. Why do you think there is so much plastic under the hood. Metal is more expensive.

Also you got to remember the twin sequential system, was the first ever mass produced. It was there first time got to give a break right?

Black97VR4

I often wonder why they didn't make both windows have an Auto Down feature. Having all the cars come with twin oil coolers would've been nice too. And if they were going to put the gauges there, the oil pressure and temp. gauges could've been accurate. Otherwise they did pretty good with the car for the price you would pay brand new.

Gamezilla

The twin setup was a great system in theory. Very nice powerband and nice power at low rpms. Single turbo is not meant for that. It needs to spool up before it can really pump out power. This is inefficient in an autox senerio. The RX7 was meant to be used in an autox scenerio. Notice how the sequential setup is the choice when for autoxers. Single turbos are great for drag.

ptrhahn

iTrader: (9)

Well, not quite... i understant you thought but:

Mazda no-doubt had a team of MBA's and economists calculating their cost to produce based on the prices they could get from their suppliers relative to the profit they wanted to make at the pricepoint their marketing people told them they should sell the car at... and the resulting measures like the little plastic IC/rad are born.... a few bucks savings per car is X-amount of bucks over the life of the production run, and somebody got paid to save them those dollars.

It's easy to say gee, they could have slapped on the mazda comp radiator and IC, or ones like the many aftermarket solutions... but you're thinking about YOUR costs for these items. The stock rad/IC costs more than aftermarket systems because Mazda is cutting a tidy profit on reselling the parts... a much larger margin than Kevin Wyum ever got on his ASP large. ... their costs for those items are likely small... just like I got my 18" BBS wheels for less than i could have bought some new stock wheels from Mazda.

With respect to the fan trigger temps, they aren't the problem per-se. With everything functioning properly, on a stock street car, they are perfectly appropriate levels. The real issue with the car is that if something does go wrong, you've got no proper way of being notified... no proper temp guage. On-off idiot "normal range" temp guages are the norm for production cars... Manufacturers don't want owners being unduly worried about fluctuations... in the case of the rotary motor though, in the event of a failure, it can be disasterous... and that sucks, no question. There should at least have been an alarm that sounds with enough tiome to do something about it.

With respect to the turbos, you're thinking in terms of aftermarket single turbos... with hand-built mandrel-bent manifolds that would be impractical for production, and generally blow through a significantly less-retricted intake/exhaust tract. Try blowing your T-78 through a stock intake/IC, and out through a cast-iron log manifold, stock precat, main cat, and cat back. The response and power would be terrible.... and the many quick-spooling turbos of which you speak, like the RX6b and GT35/40, are terribley expensive units. ... on the order of 2-2.5k for just the turbo.... mazda will sell YOU the entire '99 twin setup for 2.5-3k or so, so you KNOW they're costs are way less than half of that....

In short, i think to make many of the mods you suggest, installed on a mass-produced, assembly line manufactured car, you're costs might escalate more quickly than you think... and it wouldn't be hard for your 35k retail car to cost 40k now... and many folks already think Mazda priced themselves out of the market at 35!

DamonB

I love how all the pundits come forward 10+ years later and explain how they would have fixed all this stuff and Mazda is/was stupid

Keep in mind a few very important things:

First, this is a 1993 model car which means it's design was finalized several years before that.

Second, Mazda had to build this car at a price that would actually allow them to sell a few.

Third, people have absolutely no idea what design compromises are required in order to mass produce and assemble anything, let alone a complex, high performance car.

fd3s_rx7

iTrader: (13)

WHY?? because it's built like that..

TechTrix

iTrader: (2)

cooling fans come on at a high temp..... they did this because a hotter engine ignites more of the fuel and you can run it leaner, so they could get the car to pass smog

Michael

MR_Rick

iTrader: (7)

At that time there was no "quick" spooling turbo like now. So the other option was a small turbo.

I think the biggest reason for the flaws was because they were on a hurry to release this car to the market and keep cost low.

Icemastr

iTrader: (2)

Because the car was engineered over 15 years ago before we had the tubo technology that we have nowadays that has decreased turbo lag time greatly. Your just nitpicking stuff that there is no point in changing.

Kento

You're forgetting that this car was actually designed in the 80s, not 2004...
And Mazda doesn't exactly have (or even had, back then) "much buying power"; they were rescued from financial ruin by Ford back in '92, and Ford has been holding tight purse strings on Mazda since then.

And there is your most telling quote. It's easy to sit and gripe about various problems you encounter when you don't have to deal with the various constraints and pressures that go into designing a sports car and bringing it to a market in the hopes that it will sell enough to come close to subsidizing its development costs.

There's a term called "resources" that dictates what and how much you can devote to various aspects of a car's design and manufacture. Again, you have no idea of the constraints that the designers and engineers endured to get a product to market. If they were a larger company, then they probably would have had the resources to complete the absolutely vast amount of R&D necessary to deal with every conceivable situation within the probable time constraints given to them (although being modified to produce 50% more power, etc., by customers would probably not be one of them)...which leads to...

Black97VR4

The twins were a good idea back then. Every major turbocharged vehicle at that time had twin turbos, all those people can't be wrong. Things have came a long way since then and made single turbos a more viable option. With the turbo system, I honestly beleive they did the BEST they could do and didn't let money become a concern, this was the FIRST car EVER to have a sequential twin turbo setup, that had to have cost a huge amount to develop. By today's standards it may seem shitty but back then it was top of line.

Another thing about complaints on the car, I can see another reason other than cost being the reason for so much plastic in the engine bay: weight. Mazda wanted to make this car very light. If the plastic components they made were lighter than the metal ones and got the job done on the stock car then why not use them,? Remember Mazda never planned on people taking these cars and wanting to up the boost. The factory intercooler works fine on stock boost levels. And most tuners have told me that the factory radiator is fine for any turbo setup you want to run if its in good shape. The only reason to swap it out is for the metal endtanks.

Face it, this car was high tech. High tech seq. twins, high tech Torsen LSD, unqiue engine that allowed the car to be very light and compact, an overall package that competed with and beat the NSX costing twice as much. This car out accelerated the 300ZX, 3000GT VR4, and C4 Corvette which all had a 50hp advantage over it and it only cost 35-40k. Not bad if you ask me. There could've been improvements, sure, but for the time period and the money, they did a damn good job.

zmarko

Exactly.

SlingShotRX7

Don't get me wrong.. I love my car and love the FD.

I was just thinking.. If Mazda just did a lil tweaking here and there
the Rotaries wouldn't have so much Issues. and the reputations it have.

IT kinda bothers me, when ever anyone speaks of RX7's or Rotaries.
First thing tha comes out their mouths that. the " MOTOR " is the weakest link
and only thing that holds the motor together is a 2mm apex seal.

Granted the TURBO technologies has vastly grown since 93, BUT.
TURBOS and ROTARIES has been around for quite some time.

You would of think that LESSONS learned on the TURBOII would
be enough to at the very least beef up the cooling system, or at the
very least put SILICONE HOSES for the rats nest..

Kento

Don't. Reread some of the posts people have made on this thread, and then think...

scotty305

iTrader: (2)

I'm sick of people saying that there's something wrong with 3rd Gens. A bone stock 93-95 RX-7 will be very reliable and trouble-free, assuming you maintain it properly. The things you speak of as being 'problems' are usually encountered by people who are trying to get more power for cheap. Mazda didn't pull any punches: they ran the turbos at and above their peak efficiency because bigger more powerful turbos wouldn't spool as quickly. They cut nearly every ounce of unneccessary weight off the car. As a result, you can't just turn up the boost and make more power than they designed the rest of the supporting systems to handle.

Nearly everyone who has had overheating problems or blown apex seals has usually been because they tried to treat their car like a Supra or a Mustang: just throwing parts at it to make more power, without paying attention to the ECU, fuel, & timing systems. A lot of people have cooling problems because they're adding heat to the system while still using 10 year old hoses. Let's not even talk about driveline hop or drag racing, the car simply wasn't intended for it.

If they had 'overengineered' the RX-7 in the same manner that Supras, Mustangs and Corvettes were, the car would have either cost a lot more, weighed considerably more, or both. If you wanted a dyno queen or drag monster, you should've bought something else. I bought my RX-7 because it's a well-put-together package of handling, looks, and power, most suited for a racetrack with plenty of corners. Think "Miata on steroids", not "lightweight Mustang."

They learned plenty from the Turbo II: the FD is lighter, more powerful, much better looking, has wider tires, better suspension, aerodynamically superior... should I go on?

All the rat's nest problems were solved in '96, cooling issues resolved in '99. If the US market was neck-deep in Explorers, Suburbans, and stupid emissions laws, we would have gotten those updates also. Has anyone else realized that our US-spec cars were pretty equal to the JDM versions at that time? I'm so glad that Mazda didn't neuter our car for the average American driver.

-s-

radkins

Remember, they were chasing down lots of other problems when they were released.

7-sins

Well said! After the RX-7 and up until recently mazda didn't even have a sports car on their U.S. line. They were concerned about what most consumers would purchase, economy sedans/people movers. If we had an updated version of the RX-7 a lot of these problems would be worked out.

Black Magic

iTrader: (2)

Or why they didnt play it smart like toyota and put an inline 6 TT???
There the wieght issue, might not be 50/50. After all the rotary problems(the list is endless) i sure could have settled with 52/50 weight dist. It would be a **** ton faster than a supra as well, considering the rx7 weighs over 600lbs less.

Oh well, thats why im doing what i am to my car. Eliminating the shittyness from it...