Hello all getting back into Rotary's after taking a decade or so off. Picked up a Canadian GX with a street port, weber DCOE and RB header and exhaust. Runs smooth and pretty clean. looking it over I found the beehive removed and no fmoc. The 2 ports I assume to be the oil line ports on the lower left side of the engine are looped with a piece of stainless braided line with AN fittings. Is this a common practice? doesn't seem right to me

 

 

 

Rotaries dump half their waste heat into the oil. The only real cooling the rotating assembly gets is via oil.

FBs were able to use the small beehive instead of the large FMOC found on SAs because the beehive facilitated transfer of oil heat into the coolant system (which also provided faster warm-up for smog purposes), and even then they still used air-cooling fins to make up the difference.

Without an oil cooler of some kind, you're likely to lose oil viscosity and see rapid bearing/seal wear, probably even before the overheat condition registers in water temps because without the beehive there's not much transfer of oil heat to the water jacket.

Highly recommend an oil temp gauge, as well as an oil cooler.

 

The ONLY way the car would survive without an oil cooler would be as a dedicated ice racer where air temps are below freezing...

Don't drive it until you get that placed,

 

Ok recommendations on where to find a front mount and lines? Are they available new ? Or used only? What years will work for it?

 

Start with Mazdatrix and Racing Beat for Lines. Ebay always has FMOC of chinese-origin for sale. Can't speak to their quality.

Stu Aull
80GS
AZ

 

If you can't find a used SA/FB front mount oil cooler, it wouldn't be too difficult to fabricate brackets & AN lines to use an FC oil cooler to use on an SA/FB. There are plenty of good used FC oil coolers available for sale.

 

I haven't found an aftermarket oil cooler yet that has an internal t-stat. Please keep this in mind. The oil cooler need to have an internal or external t-stat so that the oil can get up to temp. If only driving in the summer it's probably not a big deal. In the winter it is.

You can make your own oil lines with steel or nylon braided hose and -10an fittings. Do not use old oil lines. They start to degrade internally and you can't tell.

 

Well I think I figured out the route im thinking, since my 2 engine ports already have the fittings for AN lines i should be able to get an FC cooler and 2 fittings from racing beat to go from metric to AN and make a couple lines.

Now to find a FC cooler that doesn't look like it was beaten with a hammer

 

I have a spare FC oil cooler that I can let go of, it's not perfect (some bent fins) but it doesn't leak. If interested, shoot me a PM.