brian@sdcsvax.UUCP (Brian Kantor) (01/11/86)
I recall that there was some interest in this group about the new '86 Mazda RX-7, and now that I've had mine for about 3000 miles, I'll tell you some of my personal observations about it. Configuration: 1986 Mazda RX-7. R13-B two-rotor 80 cu. in. rotary fuel-injected engine. Electronic ignition, computer controlled. "Sport package" - tuned suspension, 15" wheels, 4 wheel ventilated disk power-assist brakes, aerodynamic package. Stock sound system with tapedeck. Air conditioning. 5-speed. Options I didn't want: sunroof, security system (installed my own alarm), rear window wiper/washer, rear seat. Things I wish I'd bought: rear window louvers (on order now for 3 weeks), rear window wiper/washer, cruise control. What I added: alarm system, radar detector, my ham radio. Performance: this car handles much better than my '76 280Z did. The steering is very tight, so much so that I was continually oversteering for the first week or so that I had it. A very good feeling of control. Cornering is really tight. One of the most noticeable things in the RX-7 now is the cornering. The literature makes a great point of the steerable rear wheels; comparing the 85 and 86 models in a test drive, this new addition seems well worth it. The characteristic is that the car seems to take corners flatter - there is little or no tendency for the rear end to swing out, and body lean is much less. In all, the car just feels as though the corner was less radical - that I have much more control. In some tests I made in the stadium parking lot a while back, I got the impression that I was much more likely to have good control of the car in an emergency than any other car I've driven before. Steering response was completely predictable. I also compared the regular model with the sport model, and the sport model (larger wheels, tuned suspension) has definitely superior handling. The four-wheel disk brakes work very well. The car stops very smoothly and quickly, and I've not had any locking problems nor skids. Even in wet weather, they seemed to work well. An advantage is that you can see the rotor and pads through the spokes in the wheels, so it is easy to check for brake wear - you can even run your fingers over the rotor surface to feel for irregularities without having to jack the car up and pull off the wheel. Power: the car has a lot of pickup. It is nimble, and responds well to acceleration. Things I've noticed (this is the first time I've owned a rotary engine) are the flat power curve and lack of protest noises from the engine. I'm used to shifting by feel and sound - when the vibration and noise from the engine reached a certain point, and power seemed to be dropping off, I'd upshift. Now with the RX-7, I find that I occasionally forget to upshift, and look down at the tach to see that I'm cranking at 5000 rpm, when I can really go up two gears and crank at 2500 or less. This is especially true when I'm climbing a mild hill on the way home; for a couple of blocks I'm in 2nd when I could easily be in 3rd. There is a "shift up" light on the tach that lights above 2600 rpm if the engine is loafing. The manual says its advisory, and often I disagree with it, but its helpful. There is also a warning buzzer that sounds as you near redline on the tach; the only time I've popped that is in an emergency the other day when I had to shoot out of the way of a motorcyclist who lost it coming around a curve - straight at me. On that occasion, I floored the accelerator in 2nd, and wrapped the tach into the pin, and the RX-7 jumped ahead like a scared rabbit - and we didn't collide. (I drive sporty cars because I want them to perform well - nimbly - and not because they're fast. I rarely exceed the speed limit by more than 5 or 10 mph. When the other people on the road lose it, you're better off if you can get out of their way in a quick controlled way.) [The motorcyclist is ok - when his bike hit the low stone wall, he was thrown into a big bush and only got scraped up. His bike wasn't quite as lucky. Any landing you walk away from....] The gear change lever is short, and has a short throw. It is really easy to operate, and has an interlock to prevent you from accidently shifting into reverse. Downshifting is easy, although the manual suggests you use your brakes rather than engine braking when coming to a stop (I agree; brakes are cheaper to repair than clutches). Interior: with the windows up, its really quiet - probably the most quiet sports car I've ever ridden in. Ventilation is poor though, with the air drawn in by the fan being quite warm from its passage over the engine compartment. I prefer to drive with the window down anyway, so I can hear other cars nearby. When the windows are down, wind noise is considerable at freeway speeds, but its not blowing on you - it enters the car behind the seats, stirring up loose papers in the rear compartment but not blowing your glasses off. Controls are laid out quite well, with two exceptions: I'd prefer the parking brake lever to be on the other side of the center console, and there is a thumb lever on the edge of the wiper/washer control that I keep hitting when I take my hand off the wheel to tweak the radio volume. These are really minor. There are no control stalks, by the way; all the controls are mounted to the cowl that surrounds the instrument cluster. They can easily be reached without taking your hand far from the wheel - and the turn signal lever (which doubles as the dimmer switch) is operated by your finger tips without having to loosen your grip on the wheel. The cruise control lever is similarly placed and equally convenient. There are both warning lights and gauges. The only digital readout in the car is the clock. The tach is large and in the center of the instrument cluster, with the speedometer to the right, and oil pressure, water temperature, voltmeter, and fuel meter. The gauges are orange letters on a black background, and easy to read both day and night. The instrument night illumination can be turned way down, which I like, as that way I don't ruin my night vision. The clock dims when you turn on the headlights, and its far enough out of the line of vision that it is not distracting at night. (However, during the day, the red plastic of the clock sometimes reflects sun glare into the eyes; a quick flash of ruby that is sometimes a bit startling. This could have been cured by placing the plastic at a different angle so that the reflection was downward instead of up towards the driver's eyes.) The other controls are easy to reach, and make sense. There are five selector buttons for the ventilation system; these choose mixtures of air on the face, feet, and windscreen. Another button selects whether air is recirculated or drawn from outside, and one more switches the air conditioning compressor on and off. I rather wish these buttons had different shapes or textures so that I could instantly tell when I'm pushing the right one instead of counting them from right to left - I want them to be operable without taking my eyes from the road. There is a thermostat which controls both heating and cooling, and a continuously-variable fan speed slider. It is possible to blow hot air on the windshield and run the air conditioner at the same time to dehumidify the air inside the car and defog the windscreen, without freezing yourself. The rear window defogger is heat foils on the rear glass; it is activated by a button on the console and has a timer that shuts it off after a while (about 15 minutes, I think). It works quite well. I wish I'd bought the rear window wiper/washer, but it wasn't available. Maybe I'll add it later, although it will require either drilling a hole in the glass or replacing the whole rear hatch. The rear window louvers would help keep the car cool and prevent sun bleaching of the carpet in the rear. The sound system is reasonably good; I don't think the optional 100 watt amplifier is needed because the stock 40 watt amp is loud enough. There are four speakers; two per channel. They are two four-inch speakers with whizzer cones in the dashboard, and two six-inch woofers in the tops of the rear shock-absorber towers. I'm thinking of changing the speakers to better ones (these look cheap, but sound ok) if I can get some nice ones that will fit for cheap. The tape deck works well, and the controls are easy enough to operate without taking your eyes off the road. The AM/FM radio works ok on AM, which I hardly ever use, and is extremely sensitive on FM. It picks up stations in Los Angeles (about 150 miles away) in most places around town, except for one major defect: it is helpless in the face of strong nearby signals from local transmitters. I've experimented with lowering the antenna (which is difficult, since its an automatic power antenna - I had to pull the fuse) and reducing the signal strength solves some of the problem, but not enough. I believe the problem is that the AFC circuit has too wide a range and pulls the tuner onto the next station too easily. Sometime soon I'm going to pull the radio, put it on the bench, and see if I can't fix the problem - probably by putting limit diodes on the AFC line or something. I may need to change the IF filter too. There is a more advanced receiver available; it has two antennas (the normal one on the rear cowl, and another in the windscreen) and can supposedly do diversity switching to pick the better antenna for reception. I haven't tried it. Body: the body is solid, and seems well constructed. An errant shopping cart nicked the paint the other day, and I saw quite a thick coat of primer or something underneath the color coat. The touchup paint filled the dings nicely and is not very noticable. Most of where people are going to hit the car is semi-rigid plastic. It can be unbolted and replaced easily, so perhaps collision repairs will be a bit cheaper. There is a wide moulding strip on the side of car that is pretty much useless in stopping dings from other people's doors, but might help some. The rear bumper has about 5 inches of travel before you crunch the body. The front cowl has about a foot of crush space before you hit any structural members (a big thick pipe) and the radiators (water and oil cooler) are behind that at an angle (good for NOT reflecting radar signals), so maybe they'll not get quite so crunched. Behind the radiators there is another foot or so before the engine gets hit, so in a front-end crash there is a good chance you'll survive without the engine jumping into your lap. The firewall is also angled so that the engine is encouraged to slide below the passenger compartment in a crash (and the angle also deflects radar down towards the road, instead of back towards the copper). There are no rattles. That is expected in a new car. But most stuff seems to be bolted with a bunch of bolts, or welded. I don't expect things to come loose. The metal is thin, but adequate; it was easy to drill the 3/4" hole to install my ham radio antenna. I expect that dents will be easy to suck out, but wrinkles might be hard to get rid off. There is no sign that body putty was used in manufacturing; since most of the interior carpeting is held in place by Velcro fasteners and easy to pull loose, I had a good chance to look around. Misc: The electrical system is nice. It has a large alternator (70 amp!) which should run just about any accessory you are likely to add, and it also ensures quick charging of the battery. I'd have put a larger battery in the car, but since there is room for one, I'll do it when the current one goes bad in a couple of years. There is adequate power for my 100-watt transmitter now, and the car starts easily. Oil changes are a bitch. You need to have ramps or a lift to get underneath the car. You either have to have a special funnel or remove the skid plate under the engine, or you'll get oil all over everywhere as it drains out. The skid plate comes off with a couple of bolts, but its not something you'd expect to do. Also, when you remove the oil filter, it will invariably drip oil down the side of the engine, so plan on cleaning it off afterwards (the engine runs quite hot, and it will smell AWFUL if you don't clean the spilled oil of it). I'm probably going to pay to have it done in future. I plan on putting a new filter and fresh Castrol 20w-50 into it every 3000 miles (twice as often as the manufacturer recommends). You can't use the synthetic oils, since a very small amount of oil is metered into the rotor tips to lubricate them and it has to be a petroleum product to avoid contaminating the combustion chamber as it burns. I followed this plan with my Z and after 120,000 miles and ten years, it still used less than a quart of oil between changes. Oil and filters are cheap compared to engine work. The headliner, carpets, and seats are a furry (plush?) sort of synthetic cloth. The seem to be easy to clean. Velcro sticks to them really well, so if you want to keep your toolkit or box of cassette tapes from sliding around during turns, just put some of that Velcro hook stickon tape on them (you can find it at big hardware stores). They'll stay right where you put them. I have fastened stuff to the headliner with Velcro and I can hardly rip it loose when I needed to (guess I used too large a piece). In all, I'm real happy with the car. $16,000 out the door including tax and license. I recommend it. Sure, there are things I'd have done differently, but in all, I think its at least as good a car as my Z was, and I hope I can get 10 years and 120,000 miles out of it as I did with the Z. Gad I'm longwinded! Brian Kantor UC San Diego decvax\ brian@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu ihnp4 >--- sdcsvax --- brian ucbvax/ Kantor@Nosc "There is more harmony in films than in life." - Francois Truffaut
cal@pyramid.UUCP (Craig Levin) (01/19/86)
Great report! I have long been an RX-7 driver and fan. We still have my first '79 GS with 109K miles and an '85 GSL-SE with 17K. Somewhere along the line I also had an '82 GSL, which I traded for the larger engine. We plan to trade the '79 on a turbo once enough get here that the local dealers won't be marking up the prices. > ... Also, when you remove the oil > filter, it will invariably drip oil down the side of the engine, so > plan on cleaning it off afterwards (the engine runs quite hot, and it > will smell AWFUL if you don't clean the spilled oil of it). I'm > probably going to pay to have it done in future. I plan on putting a > new filter and fresh Castrol 20w-50 into it every 3000 miles (twice as > often as the manufacturer recommends). In an obscure place in the early maintenance manuals they told you how to solve this problem. You need to punch a hole in the top of the oil filter can before removing it. Be sure that you puncture both the outer skin and the inner filter surface. I use a 1/2" chisel point, making sure that it enters at least 1" into the filter. You should also use 10w-40 oil instead. The 20w is too heavy for temperatures under 70 degrees. This only effects the first 5 minutes of operation, but it has gotten my '79 this far. The only major mechanical repairs were the standard water pump at 33K (on both '79 & '82) and a transmission pilot bearing at 51K. For Porsche 944 and RX-7 enthusiasts, this month's Road & Track is required reading.