Water in exhaust!!
 

Well, tonight my RX8 started running like crap at idle. It is difficult to start, but once started, the power seems fine at higher RPMs....above 1500 RPM. There is water coming out of the exhaust. What sucks worse is that I had my turbo installed for about a month now, and that all seems fine. Could this be water seals allowing water into the combustion chamber? Anyone experienced this problem? Looks like I'm headed for a rebuild. I plan to check the compression. I don't think this is an apex seal problem. :banghead:

The catalytic convertor produces water from your emissions.

Byproduct of combustion. After the combustion you wind up with oxygen (depending on the mix), CO2, CO, maybe some NOx, and water vapor. Perfectly normal.

Oops. I knew I got a chemical formula wrong in there.

haha chemistry!

Yeah...I know that some moisture is normal. This amount is not normal. Steam coming from exhaust with a large amount of water developing in the exhaust. I have never had water like this to come out of the exhaust except on an old 12A I used to have, it was a fog machine.

The car runs like total crap at low RPM. Once at higher RPMs, it clears up, for the most part.

Not cat related
 

No cat converter...straight pipe!

what u mean by runs like crap.

and if u have a straight pipe, those might not be water, it could be unburnt fuel, which is also normal.

You haven't convinced me either...

Midway through this video you'll see water out of my exhaust:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...59193673&hl=en

See if that's similar to what you're seeing.

At any rate, I had some serious issues with low rpm too, it ended up being the leading coils - they were fried. Buy a new set, they cost about $26 each. You should buy all 4.

Well, it is actually more than that. You can see water up through the exhaust (borla), and the car is smoking. I couldn't see the smoke last night but I could see it this morning. My exhaust has always been dry and no smoking. You can also hear a noise that sounds like shi-shi-shi-shi from the engine. I checked all vacuum lines and found no problems.

When I say the car is running rough, I mean rough. It sounds aweful. Once you get to higher RPM's though the car seems to run pretty good, but still stumbles. Boost pressure builds fine. I had driven my car for a long time without the oil injection recall flash. My ex-wife eventually called and told me that she had a recall notice for my car - several months after the notice came. I wonder if my engine was already sub-optimal. Once they did the flash, it cleared up in a couple of weeks. It was running like crap at that time, especially when hot outside.

I've owned many RX-7's and I've had this to happen on one of them before. Smoke and water, and had to replace the engine. I'm going to run a compression test on it to see what that looks like for giggles. I'll also see if there is water on the plugs.

I bought an engine last night from a wrecked car with 22k miles for $2700. Seemed pretty cheap compared to a brand new engine or even other engines with higher miles. Most were selling for $3400+. My current engine has 71k on it.

I swear, it seems that if I didn't have bad luck...I'd have none at all!!!

This may sound like a dumb question but is your coolant level dropping noticeably?

coolant level
 

Nah, I think that is a reasonable question. Once the problem manifested itself I haven't driven the car. I imagine that if I continue to drive it, it will start dropping, I'm not sure how fast. I believe the seals will continue to worsen if I drive it and reach the "fog" stage I saw on one of my 12A engines many years ago.

I did some research on the RX7 websites and other rotary sites, and blown water seals is a match for what I am seeing. The whole interior of the exhaust was lined with drops of water, and I did check it out, it was not fuel. The water went back as far as I could see in my pipes. This came on quite suddenly, the smoking and water. I'm not surprised I'm having an engine failure given how long I drove it needing the reflash to correct the OMP problem. It was really running bad when it got hot outside, and that was before the recall came out. Then I didn't even know about the recall for a long time. I don't know if that is even related, but I'm betting it didn't help any.

Hopefully the new engine will be good and strong. It should be with only 22k on it. It was salvaged from a wrecked RX8. They guarantee the engine for a year.

I don't know what I'll do with the existing engine. If it is only the water seals, then it probably won't be too big a deal to have it fixed, other than taking the whole &*&%@# engine out. Given that I now have the turbo and also had the OMP problem for so long, I'd rather start with the low miles used engine.

If you decide to sell your old core then let me know, I'd like to start collecting some cores to do rebuilds from for you guys.