FD3S is less than 5 seconds and reliable according to Canadian Driver

[jdmvip]

A lot of people claim these cars are unreliable but Canadian Driver said there are little known problems with these cars.

Could it be that these cars are just so fun to drive you hear about owners who abuse their cars and then complain rotary is not reliable? I guess it's hard to say because Mazda as a whole and a brand is not known to be the pinnacle of Japanese reliable.

[RyanGTS-T]

Depends on how you take care of it. Cant expect to beat on somthing and expect it to last long. I've herd about guys who have to fix something everytime they drive their RX7 and others that have never had a problem with them. Look up how a rotary works on google and watch the little video's and diagrams. They are pretty neat.

[jdmvip]

That's a good idea actually. I've never researched much into them at all.

[WRXTC]

I had a 1984 RX-7 GSL-SE 13b Rotary for about a year and when I sold it, it had over 200,000kms. And was never taken apart! And I used it for the ocational autocross event!

[jdmvip]

There's nothing wrong with that.

[filthy-rich]

From my own experience - the first of the second gen TII's (Series IV) had a problem with leaky injectors and thin (i think) apex seals. They kind of gave the rotary a bad name. The Series V (later second gen) solved a lot of these problems.

The FD went to TT, so that might have helped reliability.

[jdmvip]

That doesn't sound like that big of a deal b@dass but I guess injector leaking could cause fuel starvation and a dead engine right?

[filthy-rich]

It causes flooding and makes it very hard to start when hot.

[jdmvip]

I see, it's not just a small leak you were talking about

[Braden]

Going to bump this, from what I read, a rotary engine reflects its owner.

Also from what I read is a FD when kept mostly stock and not beat on on a track will last upwards of 100,000 miles, which is 160k kms or so. This is actually a decent life, considering for a car that would not be driven daily by 90% of its owners would be over 5 years to put on this kind of mileage. But once you start modding them above exhaust and minor things like that is when they like to die. From what I read it would be smart to rebuild at about 80,000 miles, cost varies, but it should be under $1000 minus labour.

Here is some info I got from a rotary owner.

"A blown engine can mean one or more of several things. I'll list them in order of likely hood to occur and tell you why it could happen, and how to prevent it. Obviously you're not concerned with the how to prevent part yet but they are good questions to ask a seller on how they maintained it.
Here goes:

BLOWN WATER SEALS/JACKETS
Caused from either overheating or corrosion. Mostly over heating. Currently, this is probably my biggest fear. I have a new coolant leak every week and I'm currently in the process of redoing the whole system. Overheating can occur from just an old cracked line, which is why you should replace. Leaks coolant, level gets low, and before you know, the temp gauge increases, coolant buzzer goes off, and you've fried the seal. It can have many side effects, primarily burning coolant, lots of white smoke, leaks etc..

Corrosion though.. easily preventable by flushing the cooling system annually. Make sure the owner did this. Simply ask for proof of maintenance.

BLOWN APEX SEALS
This seems to be a common issue yet I have never been scared of it happening. Two main ways to happen. First is carbon build up. THis just happens over time. Some people steam clean the engine, (more on that later) but keeping up with oil changes should be the best hold off. Second is detonation. If youre not familiar with the term, it's basically premature combustion due to pressure as opposed to a spark. Deadly for seals. could break one and have the shard flying around the rotor housing breaking other ones. To prevent, don't crank the boost without proper fuel mods. Monitor AFRs. Compression test makes this failure evident, as well as the fact that it will run like crap.

WARPED ROTOR HOUSINGS
Under extreme heat, the housings will warp. If this happens, coolant jackets have already failed and are likely the cause of it. If coolant jackets fail, it's best to do the fix before you severly damage the housings and actually have to replace them. Way more $$

OIL CONTROL RING FAILURE
Not a very big concern to me at least. Looking how things are set up, other things should go wrong before this. To prevent.. no clue. Regular oil changes?

OTHER PROBLEMS
obviously other things can go wrong internally but with the relatively short lifespan of a FI rotary, you will have rebuilt before this happens anyways."