photo courtesy: Joe Ramos
An engine rebuild or replacing is the only way to fix this. Right now my car is at Roseville Mazda, and has been there for 18 days (as of 2/20) awaiting repairs. My extended warranty company (Mazda Extended) is going to cover a new (remanufactured) engine and several related parts necessary for the job, yet they only authorized 12.7 hours of labor for this. According to them this is exactly what Mazda specifies, but it just doesn't seem like enough time to do the job right. The service guys handling my claim tried to get me to pay for 5 more hours of labor "to do the job right," but I told them that I should not have to pay extra for a job they should do correctly the first time, no matter how long it takes. Hopefully they will be able to finish it within the specified time with no problems.
Update:
I'm going to go over to the dealer on Friday (2/20) to see what the latest is, and check on if the parts have arrived yet.
They *FINALLY* received the engine and all necessary parts on Monday 3/2/98. Work should begin on Wednesday 3/4/98 and I've been told that I will have the car back by the end of the week. I'm not going to hold my breath since the car has now been there for over 1 month, and I've learned not to believe one thing the service advisors tell me. The actual technicians doing the work are great to talk to, it's just everyone else that seems clueless. It's sad, really. Mazda should do something about the lack of knowledge on the 3rd generation RX-7s. It should not take 5 weeks to fix a turbo problem or have an engine installed via extended warranty.
I stopped by the local dealer on Wednesday (2/18) to pick up a rental car and see what the latest was with my car. They service guy casually says "we're still waiting on the parts/engine, but he's got your engine out already," like it was no big task. Suprised, I went to talk with the technician and check things out. There on the shop floor was my engine, transmission, PPF, exhaust, and loads of other parts. I talked with the tech for awhile as the annoying service advisors tried to get me to buy more parts. He told me that he went about things differently than others sometimes do, first removing the transmission and then the engine with all accessories still attached. I guess normally they leave the transmission in, remove all accessories, and then take out the engine. He mentioned that doing it in this way actually seems to have saved him some time, and that the whole job only took about 4 hours. I was impressed, but he said that was pretty long, and with other less complex cars he can have the engine out within 45 minutes.