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Thread: I believe I have engine trouble
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kick
Hauling
Posts: 149
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posted January 18, 2004 07:23 PM |
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I believe I have engine trouble
I am starting to think I might have done something to those cool lint seals. I have been smoking a little bit ever after that big snow storm the first of this year in Oregon. Today it smoked the most. It’s been smoking so bad you couldn’t really see anyone behind you. I looked in my radiator; cool lint is down to where you can’t see it, just below the first row. Last time I looked, witch was the first of this year my oil and cool lint was ok.
I don’t know what to think right now other then I believe my engine is shot, and best not to take it anywhere.
I just want to hear some input on this.
Thank you everyone,
Jeff
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1972 Rx2 - no enigne or trans
1974 Repu - runs and drives
1976 Rx4 - no engine or trans (klaus42 old 4)
1977 Repu - Parts
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Klaus43
Rotorhead
Posts: 1259
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posted January 19, 2004 10:20 AM |
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Low coolant
may or may not have anything to do with your troubles. Did you have enough of a concentration of antifreeze in it, or is it possible you've got a new leak since that major cold spell we had, perhaps due to the freeze?
Is your radiator cap in very good shape?
Are there 'tiny bubbles' coming to the top of the radiator when filled and all warmed up and running???
What color is the smoke? (Oil or coolant...)
One of the things I'm getting at is, is the coolant being low a symptom, or the cause? How low/hot did you run it, and for how long? How functional are your temp. guage and oil light?
Keepin' my fingers crossed for ya...
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Jeff20B
Moderator
Posts: 661
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posted January 19, 2004 12:40 PM |
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It could be an old oil O ring that's decided to let go a little. It may clear up after a few minutes, but it will always come back with a vengance at inconvenient times.
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'74 REPU
'76 Cosmo
'77 MG Midget 13B
'81 RX-7
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kick
Hauling
Posts: 149
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posted January 19, 2004 04:10 PM |
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It's fine when it is warmed up.
But when you drive it, all it dose is blow white smoke out, and it smells like syrup at times. Also dosen't have as much get up and go as it use to have.
I still think it might be my coolant seals. I should pull my plugs out and see what comes out when turning it over..
This might get my butt kicked here, my temp guage never worked. I'm thinking I might have over heated it sometime when I took my buddy for a nice run. But I never saw any steem. Just after that its been doing this. I looked at coolant and oil between the 4-7 of this month, thats when I put gas back in her too. I was good on coolant, and oil. I have never had any prob with those two.
Note: white in color of smoke, and smells something like syrup at times.
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1972 Rx2 - no enigne or trans
1974 Repu - runs and drives
1976 Rx4 - no engine or trans (klaus42 old 4)
1977 Repu - Parts
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Klaus43
Rotorhead
Posts: 1259
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posted January 19, 2004 04:16 PM |
Edited By: klaus42 on 19 Jan 2004 16:17
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Yep, that's coolant... :(
...and I don't need to tell ya that without a working temp. guage, well...
Pull those plugs, and the one(s) that look steam-cleaned will be from the side that's got the coolant in it...
Save what's salvageable as a core--and remember that if it's been opened, no one wants it for the core charge.
What're the odds that your thermostat failed?
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kick
Hauling
Posts: 149
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posted January 19, 2004 04:44 PM |
Edited By: kick on 19 Jan 2004 16:47
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thermostat failed?
Could that make something like this happen?
I was thinking about rebuilding it, or is the engine to far gone to be used for anything?
I think I would need to get it apart asap though if I wanted to do that. Just so what water/coolant dosent start rusting things.
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1972 Rx2 - no enigne or trans
1974 Repu - runs and drives
1976 Rx4 - no engine or trans (klaus42 old 4)
1977 Repu - Parts
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admin
Administrator
Posts: 446
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posted January 19, 2004 04:46 PM |
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Fixing a Mazda Rotary with Damaged O-rings
A buddy and I tried this once a few years ago on his FC... Worked for about 4 months, the started burning coolant again. YMMV. Start Saving!
From: http://www.scuderiaciriani.com/rx7/cooling.html#
Fixing a Mazda Rotary with Damaged O-rings
By Tom Jelly, procedure designed by Paul Yaw
One seemingly fatal malady that will occasionally strike even a well cared for wankel is a leaking o-ring condition, where a small leak occurs in the o-rings that seal the flat side housings to the rotor housings. The characteristics of such a leak are continuous ejection of coolant from the radiator cap overflow tube, and white smoke while running or heavy white smoke during startup (usually accompanied by bogging during the first few seconds of runtime until the coolant is out of the combustion chamber) Usually the car will run well otherwise, but consume coolant.
Until now the only way to repair such a condition was disassembly and a rebuild - very costly, and a real bummer on a low mileage or recent rebuild.
My original engine has over 90k miles on it, and I had been planning on a rebuild, even to the point of buying a core engine to rebuild so I would have one to go in when the time came - I figured mine would eventually just puke an apex seal or something because of the high mileage. At the beginning of the '01 driver school season I was on my way to Gingerman and stopped at a gas station in MI for a final fill up before getting to the track. The car blew tons of white smoke and bogged at startup- I had developed a classic o-ring leak. Not wanting to believe it, I just kept the engine full of coolant at the track, and noticed another telltale sign of the condition- a thermostat housing mounted coolant temp gauge will read very erratically between 140 and 180 deg when you KNOW the car should be at a solid 180-205F. This is because of the airspace in the thermostat housing resulting from the ejected coolant.
BE CAREFUL HERE, REMEMBER THAT WITH A LESS THAN FULL SYSTEM WITH AIRPOCKETS YOU WILL GET LOCALIZED BOILING THAT MAY LEAD TO MORE SEVERE ENGINE DAMAGE.
After the run home I left the car in the garage for a week pondering what to do. I have been planning a rebuild for a while, but it was the beginning of the season and I really wanted to postpone the inevitable to the winter if possible so I started looking around for answers. I found out that Paul Yaw had done a procedure that had fixed a few of these problems over the years and one of them was still working fine after 2 years! I decided to give it a try.
You will need 3 bottles of CRC Block Weld available at Pep Boys. This stuff has copper powder of different sizes in a clear silicate fluid, and the bottle says you cannot over treat with the stuff. I looked after treatment and it really looks like the copper stays in suspension even after treatment, and the silicate stuff seems to get into areas of leakage where capillary action is the means of leakage-there was evidence of the stuff where I had installed a coolant flush kit in the lower heater hose coming off of the water pump. It was ONLY where the hose overlapped the nipple. This indicates to me that there really is no way the stuff could clog your radiator.
You will also need a gallon of purple power degreaser, again available at Pep boys.
Preparation:
1. Turn the heat control on and fan to 2, car cold and off.
2. Drain the radiator from the radiator drain plug under the car. Use a really big Phillips screwdriver, because a regular #2 Phillips will strip the plug, and you will be doing a lot of turning of that plug for this procedure!
3. Fill the cooling system with plain water and drain again. I temporarily installed a prestone cooling system flush kit in the heater hose WITHOUT cutting the factory hose by using a 2” length of heater hose on the water pump nipple to the prestone tee, and the factory hose side to the other end of the tee. You may be able to get away without installing the flush tee, but you have to get all traces of antifreeze out of the system for the CRC to work.
4. Run the car with the garden hose on, flushing the system for at least 2 mins, then drain it again. Now pour 1/3 of the purple power degreaser into the system, and fill the balance with water, and run the car up to temp. let cool.
5. If your leakage is bad, you may have to remove the lower sparkplugs and turn over the engine after it cools to get the water out to be able to start the car, I only had a minor leak so this was not required.
6. Drain.
7. Repeat 3 times, with a cold flush in between each degrease cycle, then do a clean rinse. Make sure the heater is on the whole time, and make sure the rinse runs clear with no bubbles from the degreaser- you have to get all the degreaser out of the system!.
8. You should do at least one hot runup after degreasing with plain water to help remove the degreaser before using the blockweld.
9. Pour in 2 bottles of Block weld and top off with water. Drive conservatively 30 mins.
LEAVE OVERNIGHT.
This will allow residual cooling system pressure to force blockweld toward the combustion chamber thru the leak point, keeping positive pressure on the leak until the stuff has a chance to work and cool.
10. Following day, drive the car for another 30 mins and leave for long enough to cool COMPLETELY. You should have no white smoke on startup at this point. If you do, the fix didn’t work and you should add another bottle of blockweld and drive for 30 mins and let cool overnight. If there is no white smoke or coolant ejection, the treatment worked!
11. Drain off a bit of coolant and add antifreeze, or drain the whole system, add the desired amount of antifreeze, and add the drained water/blockweld mixture back to top off the system.
We have not yet determined if it makes a difference if you leave the block weld in the system; I plan on leaving it in there till the end of the season and then running distilled water and 25% prestone.
(This comment was added later after Tom had some time with the fix in place): I would suggest draining and flushing out the blockweld mix if you left it in and the car was fixed - my waterpump seal just went ( the car has over 90k on the original, so that might not be what caused it) as a precaution. No big deal, the pump was an EASY replacement and cost $100 from pepboys. I'm still happy w/the fix, BTW.
12. Do not follow the directions on the Blockweld bottle- it didn’t work for Paul that way. It may be easier to run thru this with a ¼” OD clear polyurethane hose in place of the coolant overflow hose. This will make it easy to see when the radiator cap pressure relief opens, also, running this hose out of the car nose will prevent you from sucking antifreeze from your overflow tank back into the system and contaminating your degreasing procedure. Use a 2” piece of ¼”ID rubber hose to attach the poly hose to the water pump overflow cap. I did this on a car with no AST, BTW.
This procedure will probably be scoffed at by some on the list as a band aid hack job, but the fact that it solved the problem speaks for itself. At least 3 others did it while I was doing it, all successfully to my knowledge. My radiator remains unclogged. Car runs great, temps same as before. I figured I would give it a shot because I’d be rebuilding anyway, but now I may run the thing as long as possible just to see how it holds up.
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Klaus43
Rotorhead
Posts: 1259
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posted January 19, 2004 05:23 PM |
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Unless, of course, it's fatally overheated...
When a rotary gets overheated, the thermal expansion effectively crushes the aluminum rotorhousings beyond usable limits, between the side steels... not even speaking of warpage...
Question being, did you overheat, and if so, how badly (?)... or did your seals 'merely' give way?
Could always try the above, I suppose... but you might wanna confirm there's no 'other' causes... like overheating due to a stuck thermostat...
Start by getting a working temp guage in place!
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Jeff20B
Moderator
Posts: 661
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posted January 20, 2004 02:19 AM |
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That's an interesting write-up, but block sealer is like 7-Up; "Never had it. Never will." I'd rather fix it right the first time. I've torn down an engine that overheated due to that stuff blocking the coolant passages. Granted it's not the same stuff as mentioned above, but it's still better to rebuild.
____________
'74 REPU
'76 Cosmo
'77 MG Midget 13B
'81 RX-7
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admin
Administrator
Posts: 446
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posted January 20, 2004 09:37 AM |
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Oh, of course a rebuild is better! It isn't supposed to be a perminant solution, but a bandaid. Buy you some time until you can do a rebuild right, or save enough money for a full build from somewhere like Mazdatrix, KD, Pineapple, etc...
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