Hi,

I sold my scooby near 3 moths ago and bought a M3 Evo, and now am bored of that and have someone comming to buy it on Thursday!

I was thinking about getting an RX7, as i think they are cheap enough and the insurance is affordable.

Can someone please tell me what the rx7 is all about, what i should look out for...from what i have found and read on the car i feel i should really keep away from the car?

Any thoughts?

 

I'm fond of the rx, it's timeless styling is a big feature

Problems are with the wankel engine, usually require rebuilds and unfortunalty most cars will require at least one in their life time. For power hiking they don't offer the best bhp per pound, but sound absolutly

 

How much does a rebuild cost?

 

About £2500ish i think to be rebuilt - good time to uprate things though?!

 

Rebuilds start at £2000 if you can reuse parts but budget more on about £3000 for the average rebuild.

I love mine, its a real drivers car, few simple mods and Im running 325bhp. Few cars on the road can touch it, handles ten times better than the Impreza ever did IMO. drifting is easy if thats what you want to do, keeping it straight is easy too IMO... never once lost it.

As alloy said timeless styling, sleek and aerodynamic. sexy car IMO. Can buy a good rebuilt car for about £6-7k now.

Reliability wise, I bought mine in May 05 and the only problem I had is whilst the car was off the road for a month I left the hand brake on and the piston stuck so just faffed about with that and its fine again. never had a problem with owt else, oil need changing often but look on the bright side, £10 mineral oil from Halfords is what you need

Petrol is expensive though, you cant help but have a heavy right foot, get approx 13mpg in mine but dont do many miles about 12 miles each way too work... longer runs can see about 25 if your gentle on the pedal. 20 is more like it though.

 

Is there an rx7 bbs like scoobynet!? been on google but found sweet FA.

 

Hi there, I'm also looking at one of these, sounds like a great car, but could be a mine field to find a good one!
Try www.maxdarotaryclub.com some good buying advise on there & model guides plus loads of company's to put things right when it goes wrong.

Mark.

 

Cheers dude..

 

www.mazdarotaryclub.com

www.fduk.org

I dont think you'll have a problem finding a good one with the amount for sale. Some right bargains about.

 

Good read:

http://www.robrobinette.com/buyaused.htm

 

I was taught to turn it off and restart it straight away,a sign of the engine flooding if it struggles to start from hot and can indicate engine problems....

You will get an idea of the engine condition but this doesnt guarentee anything, people have seen good 7bar readings and 1 month later a £3000 rebuild is required...

Reading the article it does make it sound scary but it really isnt...

As I say the only thing Ive had to spend money on is 2 new tyres in almost a year... Theyre not that bad...No worse than many other performance cars IMO

p.s. IMO dont buy one with over 50k miles and no rebuild unless your getting it cheap and rebuilding it yourself

 

Is there a type of driving behaviour / mechanical ignorance that really kills them? (like nothing but short runs / wrong grade fuel / running out of 2-stroke oil etc)

I'm asking 'cos a guy I know had a Mazda approved used Turbo II in the mid-90s, which blew three engines in under a year in his ownership. After the third blow-up he came to an arrangement with the dealer for a cash settlement.

He was a mechanical f*ckwit though, so he was probably abusing it, I just don't know how.

 

they drink alot of oil, need topping up, every week, Id say half a litre at a time... which is alot of some idiot owns one. 4 month without a top up you could be getting dangerous levels which is not going to be good for any car really, although the oil top up is cheap because as I say its cheap mineral oil not fully synthetic.

 

Is it 2-stroke oil (like Castrol TT or Silkolene Super 2) or different?

I know that Norton rotary-engine bikes are reckoned to be best on Shell Rotella ... just curious

 

no, just normal mineral oil. £10 Castrol GTX from Halfords does the job

 

I've had the opposite experience to Dave and been through more than my fair share of engines in the last few years. Just seems to be down to luck whether an engine lasts or not as any number of minor mechanical problems can result in it going pop.

They are very cheap at the moment, so worth it as a second car, but wouldn't recommend one as an only car as they can be fickle.