Your right! Although I haven't had to myself. A lot of people have rebuilt their rotary engine, without ever having rebuilt an engine before. They sell rebuild videos that show you just how to do it. If you took on the task yourself you could probably rebuild an engine for under 1500 bucks.

The setup isn't complex in its natural form as far as its operation. But the way it was built from the factory left it open to a lot of weaknesses. One if the apex seal breaks off you can destroy the whole motor and shoot a chunk of metal out the turbos, causing most of the parts to be garbage. 2 you can destroy the whole motor by overheating and warping the housings, again causing most of the motors to be garbage. Mazda did a good job at building a superb sports at a low cost. But what that means to us is they installed some basic parts on it to get it by so we can get it cheap. So it leaves the owner a lot of responsibility to fix those mistakes. The car can be a money pit for some who really dump a lot of cash into it in performance modifications. But if you do the reliable mods and take care of the car right it will take care of the wallet, and the panties that will come by owning it, lol

 

an r33? do they have those in sweden? umm.. even for a guy that cant spell the word "puzzled", wouldnt buying an R33 skyline be a hell of a lot more expensive than an rx7 and maintaining it?

 

Lone Rider, if you drive it stock with reliablity mods. You would not be in high risk of breaking the car.

 

Sorry for spelling mistakes, but hey try to write a post in Swedish and see how it feels

Sweden is not a place where you see a lot of Skylines but it's fairly cheap to import one. a R33 & RX-7 FD is very equal in price tags. Sweden is going through a phase now and imports are starting to apear all over the country.

 

Sorry for a stupid question but what do you mean by reliablity mods?

 

Reliability mods are the mods that make the car more reliable These include: AST (This is prone to cracking and spilling coolant everywhere), Radiator (the stock on sucks), DP (the factory is very restrictive and overheats), and Water/Boost gauges.

If you're planning on sticking to these mods alone you should be fine. It is pretty expensive to own but any sports car is . . . .

 

Modifications that are done in attempt to make the vehicle more reliable. Although these mods can help, they won't change it from a money pit into a Toyota Corolla.

 

Some people hate sushi and some people love it to death. If you ask a room full of people what they think about sushi, about half of them will love it and half of them will hate it. Will you take their opinion and not try it out for yourself?

Everyone has a different definition of what a money pit/unreliable car is. I also asked around before getting my first RX-7 and more people said it sucked but the few that liked it, said they loved it to death. I went ahead and bought one and I'm glad I did.

The majority of the people here have 1993 models. You're fortunate enough to have the option of buying an almost brand new RX-7 where alot of little things were fixed. I've had my '94 for just about a year now and it's treated me very well. Just keep up with regular maintenance and you should be fine. Everyone says RX-7s are crap but I've had my share and I've never had an engine blow on me whether it was turbocharged or naturally aspirated. I've had way more fun times in these cars than bad times.

 

rx7s rock

 

isnt this the same thing you posted in the 93-94 year differences?? !! :P

 

Expensive? In a word - yes.

 

I just realized something, Sweden has snow, correct? Buy an Impreza WRX or a Lancer EVO, you'll be able enjoy them year-round.

-s-

 

Everyone who has had a bad experience with an fd usually tried modifiing it improperly or bought one from someone who has. Getting a stock fd and doing the reliability mods willl yield great returns. Buying a stock fd an spending a ton of money to mod it up properly will cost a ton of money , but will yield fun/performance respectively.
Dont get an fd if you dont love it, period. Cause someone else will. Its such a beautiful and exotic car you'll either love it forever or not. Do us here in the Fd community a favor, love or leave it alone.

 

if you can afford the 1-3k per year this car requires in maintinance alone, go ahead and get one

 

I just read this buyers guide on the Mazda RX-7 FD.

It points out that if I going to buy a FD I might just have to set my mind on rebuiliding the engine when I buy the car. I am a 100% car enthusiast and do all the things that is recommended for that car. Thats is proably why I haven't left this topic yet

But I read in that article that you have to keep the gas tank 1/4 full or else the engines goes bye-bye.
How is the engine affected on how much gas there is in the tank? Is this a factory error?

 

If I'm not mistaken, the idea there is ... at 1/4 tank, the pump is close to not being fully submerged. So if you were midcorner, the pump would suck air, causing less gas at that point, causing a misfire in the engine. Which will in turn blow out an apex seal, or corner seal, etc. I've run it under 1/4 tank, I am just VERY careful to not actually 'DRIVE' the car when its low.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong

 

How did you make that determination? I know people who have blown engines at stock boost levels, including one with a Roger Mandeville-tuned Motec. There have been dozens of people with bone stock cars that have lost engines. There have been dozens of people with "properly modified" cars that have lost engines. You can't just attribute every blown engine to "improper maintenance" or "improper modifications", although both do happen.

 

Trying sushi or not trying sushi doesn't include a large financial risk. Your analogy sucks wasabi.

 

I get the the problem, but this must be factory error.
Is there a reliability mod for this issue?

 

The '99+ gas tanks have a revised baffle system around the pump. A few people like Jeff Hoskinson have noted this when they installed them. Another option is to put fuel cell foam around the pump in a stock tank to help trap fuel in the baffle area, but I don't know how effective this is.

 

Ok i'm new here but already I learned that rotary engines are highly sensetive so a stock rotary engine can fail even when properly maintained.
It's just one of those things that happen.

 

Why not just use fuel cell foam along the bottom half of the stock tank? That way you won't lose too much capacity, and still eliminate the fuel sloshing. Well, now that I think about it, you'd have to figure out a way to keep the foam in place; still, an idea.

Sorry, gettin' a little off topic, I guess.

 

"is an RX7 expensive to have"


that made me laugh.

 

Yep but that was before I read about the RX-7, it's one of the expensive ethusiast sports car to own thanks to the ultra sensetive rotary engine.

You would think Mazda would have learn how to build a sturdy Wankel engine after they built the 787B. It lasted 24H in a row without breaking down, but I guess the engine designers that built 787B didn't help to design RX-7 FD engines.
If they did the FD would be just as reliable as it's piston counter parts like Skyline & Supra.

So now I know this car is above avarage when it comes to maintanance, from what i think a Ferrari owner has fewer things to worry about than a RX-7 owner

People that buy RX-7 should attend a maintanance course first

 

The 787B was a non-turbo engine. You'll find that 1st and 2nd gen RX-7s that are non-turbo generally have very long lifespans.