Had a customer bring in his newly purchased car a few weeks ago for some work. Car was an all stock 94 mbm base, with like 90k miles on the original motor. Did a bunch of stuff, including hose jop, turbo swap, oil pan replacement, new coolant hoses, shifter bushings, fuel filter, shocks, springs, etc. After racking up a decent bill, the car was running great. Cutomer came to pick it up, and was very excited. He had never driven the car before with it boosting corectly. He heads home, which is about a 2.5 hour drive. About an hour and a half later, he calls us and says that the car is loosing coolant like mad, and overheated. We hitched up the trailer, and went to pick up the car. On the drive there, I was going over everything in my head. I did most of the work on the car, and knew I had checked everything out. The car was thouroughly ran, and didn't leak a drop before he picked it up. I then remembered that when I flushed his radiator, the stuff that came out was orange/brown and nasty. I thought it was the GM Dexacool, which isn't supposed to be used in out cars. I started thinking again, and came to the conclusion that it must have been blockweld or some other kind of radiator stop-leak ****. When we got to the car we cranked it with the coolant cap off, and water imediately shot up two feet in the air. I came to the conclusion that this was a major coolant seal failure. The funny thing is, the car ran great before. There was no white smoke at startup, and no coolant loss. When we flushed the radiator, the blockweld **** came out. His now working turbos put additional stress on the bandaided coolant seal, and it let go catastrophically. The morol of the story is to be carefull when purchasing an rx-7, and always check the coolant quality. I bet what happened was the previous owner knew the coolant seals were gone, and patched them up with the block weld to sell the car.

 

yah 90k on a factory motor means the seals are either about to go or already did, who knows what really happened but your scenario is totally possible



mike

 

MY ENGINE WAS THE SAME THING. i wish i knew this. i woulda got my car even cheaper!