I bought this car for 900 dollars off craigslist, knowing that it was modified, but had blown an apex seal on the rear rotor. The guy told me that it had just been rebuilt, but was made to race, and blew its seal. I had just had my old (crappy) car impounded, so i got it and decided i would buy seals and rebuild my motor.

here is the car when i bought it:




here is the engine, along with my own air intake:


headers, custom downpipe, with straight through exhaust, no cats


dodge ram diesel truck turbo



now, this isn't such a bad deal, actually quite a good one for 900 smackers.. but it ran like crap, and the engine needed to be rebuilt.

I ordered a set of RA classic seals, along with a gasket kit from Atkins rotary

so i began the engine removal.. now, at this point, i was under the impression that this was a regular turbo 13b motor, i would soon learn different...


i began removing all of the hoses, harness, and top manifold:



then i removed the bottom manifold, and the turbo assembly:



pulled the engine:




thats when i discovered something quite interesting...
it turns out that this was in fact a 6 port motor, that had simply had the manifold and matching ports matched up, with the actuators removed. this was interesting to me, so i kept going.


unfortunatly, i didn't take any pictures during the actual taking apart of the engine, it happened in about an hour, and i didn't think about it:



sure enough, the apex seal had shattered... but that wasn't it
it turned out that it had both scrapped my rear rotor, and rotor housing




it was clear that i needed to do just a little bit more than replace the seals now..


so i found these very nice turboII rotors for 100$


now, this is where i let off, i have not progressed any further on this rebuild.

my plans for the very near future:
i plan on getting a new rotor housing, of course, and once i get it, doing a FULL bridgeport on the motor, with a nice exhaust porting to go with.

upgrading to custom built, full equal length headers, along with a 4" downpipe.
thinking of going with a Turbonetics (62-1) T4 W/Ceramic Ball Bearing turbo, or something along those lines

fed into a appropriately sized interooler, along with an aluminum radiator.
a stage 4 clutch with lightwieght and balanced flywheel.

and it will all be controlled by a standalone computer, possibly haltech

can you say SLEEPER?

>>Of course, there will be more to come for the rest of this rebuild, so keep your eyes out.

wow...thats an interesting port job on the irons....

I'm not too familiar with N/A's but aren't there supposed to be 6 ports? not 6 made into 4.

this engine is a 6 port
i just didn't know that when i bought it

Wow. Putting the air filter behind the Radiator/fan was retarded.. All that would do would be supplying hot air into the engine....

I would move that and remove the hood scoop.. Other then that great find.

well, it would be more retarded to take of the MAS, or have no air filter, there was no room in the engine bay
any other un-thought-through questions?
one of the reasons for deciding to get standalone E/M

I just bought a complete OEM rotor kit for $550. It includes the corner seals w/ newer springs, apex seals w/ springs, oil control rings w/springs and o'rings, side seals w/ springs. Water seals inner and outer and pilot bearing w/seal, frony and rear oil seals and tension bolt seals. I think at Racing Beat its like $1200. This guy sells his kits on ebay now and then. Got an email addy if your interested.

No man, this is what im talking about........

This is how ports on a 6 port should look...

(thank you aaroncake)

Now take a look at yours.

Seriously if the elbow was turned the other direction it would be out of the way.. But whatever, go ahead rebuild your engine and then blow it up over high intake temps with the turbo... Geez..

"un-thought through questions" huh.. Try 14 years of rotary experience, 21 rx-7's, and three 6 port turbo conversions... I was just trying to help Noob.

oh yes, thats what i was reffering to when i said that the manifold and intake were port matched

sorry

dude, i'm not trying to get in an argument, when it goes back together, it will be different, with the air filter off to the side

but the way it is now, if you could see the car in person, you would see that there is no additional space in the bay in back of the light

Say what you will, there is no excuse for it being where it is.. But good luck with your project, try not to bite the hand that feeds you, there is enough info on here to either get you you where you need to be, or get you in trouble...

Well Merry Christmas.

yeh man, sorry bout that

merry christmas to you too

Something is just a little odd here with the front side housing and the rear side housing. Take a picture of the intake manifold. The mating side of the intake manifold, and post it, please.

it looks odd because the it was ported for smooth flow, the intake sides look the same as the ports

i'm not the person who did it, but the previous owners did so they could match the side housings to the intake

they did connected the main port with the extra port so now its a huge 4 port motor,i bet that there its no power(torque) until you hit boost,i dont know if anybody agree with me but i will not use those irons.

I would scrap those irons and get some regular 4 port ones.

i think plenty of people agree with you joey... Was the previous owner using any ems or is that how he blew the motor

thats how he blew the motor


but the car cost 900 bucks, and the suspension alone cost that much

let alone stuff like the headers, turbo, wheels, bucket seats, and other goodies

Stock injectors + larger turbo = boom. The higher compression and stock ecu were just overkill. Radiant intake heat with the smic was retarded. What the hell was that guy thinking.

That's th first time I've seen the block being matched to the intake. All the conversions I've seen were the other way around.

Good luck. I hope everything works out for you

What an odd setup.

Personally I would keep the high compression rotors and the 6 port irons. The large port area will mean a little lag down low with a large turbo (not if it's bridgeported though) but you will have more port area for the midrange and top end then any 4 port irons could dream of.

That turbo is strange as well. Very small hotside, large compressor. eBay special maybe?

I agree with others though. That turbo, high compression, stock IC and stock ECU mean it was inevitable that the engine would pop.

it was actually already fitted with turboII rotors, so i guess this engine had been torn apart before, for the transformation

since you are quite knowledgeable, i should ask you; what is the advantage of having the 6 port irons the way they are, or bridgeported? i know that bridgeporting moves the power up the RPM range, so i get less power down low, but with a nice t-62 turbo to boot, do you think it will be good enough for nice street launches?

for $900 that's a great find. you pretty much got it made. a couple of things:

1)the tII rotors, are you for sure they'll match the counterweight/flywheel and be balanced?

2) i looked at the ports in the plates and i was wondering why the previous owner made the lim ports as one hole yet left the internal part stock?





wouldnt the air flow better when you have just one hole?

on a different note i bought a cosmo lim gasket to compare the port sizes and i must say they're huge.

the lim is already ported to fit the 6p 13b.

i thought about porting to almost that size but it's too much work for what i can handle now.

sorry for the hijack

That is quite odd. I guess the previous owner had to rebuild the engine and didn't want to do any porting work, hence the NA irons. With TII rotors I bet that thing is an absolute dog to drive around town.

Far more port area then any ported 4 port engine save for bridge, J-bridge, semi-PP or side fed PP. Basically the largest port you can get in the "street" port range.

However because of the large port area, bottom end lacks a bit when using a big turbo.

Faster spool, more power, the ability to run larger hotsides.

Of course you have a rough idle, the car will get 8-10 MPG in the city if you are lucky, and the tuning is much more difficult.

I think a 62-1 will be too large to avoid lag with the ports as is. A bridgeport will fix this if you have a decent T4 hotside (bigger then 1.0).