Cheap RX7's: Bargain or financial suicide?
 

I've seen quite a few early FD3 RX7's going for around the £4k mark which on the face of it looks like a bargain for such an accomplished car. I know they allegedly need an engine rebuild every 60k miles and they drink like Oliver Reed and Geroge Best combined on a free night out in Dublin but what are they really like to run on a daily basis?

I don't live far from an RX7 specialist (WGT) so I can get servicing etc. done easily.

Someone talk me out of it before my bank manager (or more likely, wife) kills me...

This is exactly what we've done Mr Rev, and we too live near to WGT :D

Pip will do an engine health check for a sum of money which will at least give you some idea as to the motors likelyhood for failure, ours appears to have been done at some point and be halfway through its life on this rebuild - but considering you can get these cars cheaply now we're happy with that. We're on a ltd mileage policy anyway so it should still be a few years before we need it seeing too. Have a test drive in one and see what you reckon praps? Ours is a bit scrappy and hardly mint but drives very tightly, and is superb fun to hurl down the A49 ;)

Over £60k on my old one says financial suicide ;)

If you can resist modding and follow Pip's advice then you should be OK. I sold my second one (taken as part ex. for the money pit) for £4.5k and it was a nice example with 20+k miles left in the engine if the new owner doesn't mess with it.

The stock sequential turbo setup is a nightmare to diagnose problems on, and with miles of hoses, that are 10+ years old, problems with it are not exactly uncommon. As long as you don't mind popping along to WGT and handing over some cash then this wont be too much of an issue.

I'd only recommend one if you have access to another car for those days when a rebuild comes along.

Positives: great to drive, much quicker than something like a scoob with similar power, feels special on every journey, brilliantly balanced so simply don't use tyres.

If you go for it then sign up on fduk - the friendly 3rd gen RX-7 owners forum.

financial suicide at £4k for one IMO but bugger it, you only live once. I put it off long enough and took the plunge, it lasted 18 months before I needed the rebuild but mine cost me £8k to start with.... Good luck.

Thats longer than My Fiat Coupe Turbo and Rover BRM lasted put together so maybe the RX7 isnt as daft a proposition as it seems.

<Raises hand hesitantly>

How much is a rebuild on one of these things... Assuming rotor tips rather than anything more serious?

Gasket sets are a couple of hundred quid, so that has quite an effect on the cost of a rebuild. If you were to do it yourself, you could probably do it for £450 including most of the seals. Add the rotor housings (modified TurboII housings are the most cost effective), you could do new seals, rotor tips, housings and some new rubber hoses for the "rats nest" for under a grand, easily. Despite the myths surrounding them, they aren't any more difficult to work on than a conventional piston engine, and you don't need 5 billion "special tools" to dismantle and assemble them.

Budget on near £3500 to pay someone like Pip (WGT) to do a proper rebuild that 'll last. That would include decent housings too of course.

And we didn't even spend £4k on ours and its got roughly half its engine life to go still. Plus its running standard boost and gets oil changed regularly so its going to be about as reliable as it can be. The main problem is eager owners tuning them badly tbh, otherwise they are quite reliable. And for a few grand there aren't many cars out there that are as fun to drive imo.

Mate is trying to get me to buy his RX7, Its had a rebuild (pos 3years ago) BUT has only done 6k max since. also has a single turbo conversion which sounds awesome with external waste gate. :confused: such a lovely car..

Depends how lucky you are, as others have said 3-3.5k is normal if paying someone else to do it, but it depends on the damage. On one of mine I only had 2 parts of the engine that could be reused due to broken apex seals scraping and destroying everything in their path (including turbos). In parts alone that was a painful rebuild. Others were a lot less severe and cost a fraction to put back together.

After all the practice our current estimate is 1.5 hours to take an engine out :o with airtools and ramps we could probably do one in around an hour, and about the same to strip the engine so you could in theory drop an engine, rebuild it with new parts and have it back up and running in a day.

For an RX7, that's a great bargain, considering that there's so much you can do with this car.




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Bert
Subaru 2006 Outback Brochure

costing me about £1500 for my rebuild but a mate is doing it for free and its cost me in parts only but two new rotor housings at £450 each was the thing thats stung me.