Hey guys, well this is my sad story. Ive been putting it off for a month or so but its finally time.

In late 2008 i picked up a 1984 charcoal SE. I thought it was a sweet car. I paid 550 for it but the engine was blown. I figured it was a good deal because it came with a full sound system. My brother has a 1984 GSL and he helped me put a new engine in that i bought.

I got the new engine from RX7 Specialties in Calgary Canada. Some guy called Adam Hayman owns the place and made it, suppository he was pretty good. I paid 4000$ with shipping, injectors, flywheel and core charge. And i got a brand new 13B.

I was happy, i put a header on and picked up 2 parts cars along the way. I made sure i took REAL good care of the engine because i knew what could happen. I broke it in as he told me and my brother. Nothing over 4.5, he said you could accelerate hard though. He said to very the RPM's when driving so the seals could seat properly. He said 1500 KM change the oil and filter, And its good to go. I must have changed the oil and filter 12 times. Replaced the majority of the parts. All the important ones when i did the new engine swap. Any time it flooded i changed the oil and filter. I used to let it warm up a decent bit before carefully driving it up the hill when it was cold. I thought it was always a bit finicky, but i knew rotary's were like that. I still really liked it though.

Well it blew up. I knew it would happen eventually, i figured id get 300,000 KM. But no, a seal on the rear housing blew up at 47000 KM and now it only compresses in one of the rear rotor faces. 47000 KM... I was quite upset.

Why did it blow up? I wondered maybe it was built wrong? When it was shipped Adam had the 12A front cover on so my brother couldn't get this piece from the 13B to fit. So he had to ship the 13B cover and my brother had to swap it on. What a **** up that is, real professional. What other reasons could it be? Maybe water in the gas? Maybe a bad oil pump? Maybe a flaw in the casting? Maybe its just a piece of ****?

I didn't believe it was blown up when it happened. I new it sounded like it was misfiring hard. But it still would run on either rotor. The rear just didn't sound right. So i took it to progressive, a import shop that services lots of rotary engines. I took the car there right after install so they could properly adjust the Fuel injection ****. And tell us if anything was wrong. Well this time he compression tested it and sure enough. Blown seal. I told him i got it new. He asked where from? And i told him Rx7 Specialties. Guy named Adam Hayman or something. He said "Oh that's why" Told me hes seen this before from him.

Either way it doesn't matter now.

I really used to wonder why the rotary never made it. I know now why, its not because of gas mileage, not because of emissions, not because of cost, it's because they blow up. They self destruct one morning when you start your car and are trying to go to work. Like what happened to me, Then your left with a worthless bunch of metal.

Paying someone to rebuild a rotary is just a waste of time and money. The compression is in the housing. Putting new seals in just prolongs its life, doesn't fix compression. If you wanna do it, you need new housings, seals and rotors. And someone who hopefully knows what they are doing.

Don't get me wrong, i redlined it several times a day. But i took real good care of it. It never saw any porting or any boost. It was NA aside from the header and K&N air filter. Cool cars being powered by a rotary engine is sweet. But at the end of the day they just are not worth the hassle. I got the engine new so it wouldn't blow up. Figured if i took good care it would last. I had plans of getting a new body and swapping all the parts.

So now i drive a 1987 300zx. Its cool... I guess. However i am keeping the rx7 and planning a V8 for it. Yes i hated those people when i was a rotor head too. But having three cars worth of parts i am not about to scrap the 7. I have to many memories in it and enjoyed it a lot. And i can hardly justify the cost of another 13B...

So with that being said, anyone know the easiest V8 to install? I will be putting a carb on it but i figure id like a 302 cubic inch kinda size.

Thanks for reading,

Nathan

 

Sorry to hear about your luck...

I have a buddy with a 302 in one and know of 2 more with 350 chev's as well.
The 302 is lighter, but I like the chev myself.

Another option to consider which i would consider even more ideal, a ford 2.3L turbo engine. Great economy and great power potential.

 

That story is sad, and it kinda sucks. Sorry to hear it.

Good luck though, whatever way you decide.

 

Man im sorry to hear that. Thats a very sad story man dont go to pistions it takes the soul away from your rx. This is gonna cost a fortune but go get a brand new one from mazda that sould last you forever.... hopefully

 

Did you ever hear any detonation when you were on it? Did you set the timing by ear or light? Since I've never used a timing light except for cars being sent to smog it probably doesn't matter but rotary detonation doesn't sound like a boinger pinging and I've never heard it as the cause of apex seal failure on a NA engine.

1) Did you get new housings? For that price it sounds like you did.

2) What type of Apex seals did you get?

3) Did you get hardened stationary gears?

4) Since you didn't get any porting done, I assume you didn't get anything done that would increase the life of the motor so $4k sounds expensive.

Since it was an SE, what of the following parts did you get since it sounds like you used all their parts and then sent your core.
1) What kind of eccentric shaft did you use, SE, one with a thermal pellet or an RX-8 one.

2) What type of rotors did you request? Stock SE ones, '86-'89?? NA ones or the lighter and higher compression '90 NA type?

3) Did you get the three window bearings?

4) What did you have done to the irons, just lapping or did you get cermet coatings? I don't know if they can nitride coat lapped housings but it probably doesn't matter if it was an Apex seal but does matter if it was a side seal.

It sounds like you had to change the front cover, as you probably know, that can cause a lot of problems if you don't have the eccentric shaft all the way forward. Also, when you took off the cover, was the engine pointing up so the weight was on the flywheel? That ensures that the torson bearing doesn't slip off its pathetically little ledge. I assume the reason you know it was a 12A cover was because the OMP used an o ring on a 13b and a gasket on a 12a. Did you just swap the cover or did you disassemble the front stack? When you tightened the pulley bolt, how was the engine situated, front up or sideways like in the car?
Even if you destroyed the torson bearing, I don't see how it could take out the apex seal.

5) Did you use the stock SE intake and air cleaner?

Every rotary engine I've had to replace was always due to water in the combustion chamber, I've never (knock on wood) had an apex seal failure. It sucks. Let us know what you find if you take it apart, if you send it to REC, they'll tell you the truth, they aren't a fly by night outfit.

Best case is you only destroyed the rotor and housing. Worst case, rear and intermediate iron, rotor, housing.

Once you yank the engine, rotate it and look through the exhaust port (take a pic if possible) to see how the seal is damaged and look through all 6 intake ports as well, after all, it could be a corner seal that died; you might see it embedded in the face of the rotor through the side ports. I forgot where I saw it but someone's engine died because one of the rotating shafts that opens ports 5&6 lost its cross piece that the shaft engages to.

Don't feel bad, I was changing the plugs on my daily driver '84 12a. Some absolute moron must have not used anti-seize compound as well as used a breaker bar to put in the plugs. I finally got the front leading plug out with a looooong breaker bar, when I was loosening the trailing one, I noticed the water coming out the leading hole.

Why did you change the oil when it flooded? It's not like a boinger where the gas goes past the rings into the sump. You would have to have some serious flooding and two bad oil control rings for it to matter.

Do you have the build sheet you could post?

Adam always answers his email, what has he said and how far is he willing to go to make it right?

 

There are several engines out there that have lasted well over 100-200K miles. You can't really blame the design and call them all crap. If your's was rebuilt, I'd assume it may have more to do with the parts used, the assembly tolerances or a combination of the two. Building any engine takes a certin amount of precision and attention to detail, and any engine can be built to be either bullitproof or a hand gernade. It's always a trade off between performance and reliability.

Still, your story sucks but it does not mean you can't fix your current motor, making it reliable. Like a left handed person, a rotary is just a different way to accomplish the same thing a piston engine does.

 

Well that sucks but its not sad, it blew up and u gave up. That's the reason the cars have such a bad rep. Now ur one of those ppl who you hated and ur out a good bit of money.


Paying someone to rebuild a rotary is just a waste of time and money. The compression is in the housing. Putting new seals in just prolongs its life, doesn't fix compression. If you wanna do it, you need new housings, seals and rotors. And someone who hopefully knows what they are doing.


This is not true at all, the seals are what contain the compression, as long as the rotors and housings are usable the seals don't just prolong death.
Evey engine blows up, don't say rotary didn't make it because they blow up. After the break in I've beat the living **** out of my 13bt and its out lasted two 5.0s that where treated the same. It just broke 60k miles and it still kicks like the day it was installed. Sorry to say but **** happens, don't blame rotarys cuz urs blew up and you went piston instead of rotary.

 

why not buy a used known good engine for a few hundred bucks and install it and get your 7 back on the road in a few hours? cheapest way to go and you will probably get many years of service from a used SE engine that was maintained. there a re a few guys with SE's that have gone over 300k miles without a rebuild!

 

Take what progressive says with a grain of salt as well. If you end up needing actual compression numbers let me know.

 

Just because it died on you is no reason to desecrate the corpse.

Just sayin'.

 

that's why you learn about them and rebuild them yourself

 

sadist part is the fact that your putting a piston engine in the rx7.

 

Hey so here is the update but first to answer questions.

I never heard any detonation, new housings were used, the apex seals were supposed stock 3mm. No hardened stationary gears. It was $3000, but shipping, core charge and injectors made it $4000. I never sent the core cause my brother wanted the oil pan and some other part. Stock rotors. Dunno about window bearings. no idea about what was done to the irons...

Adam told us just to leave the engine in the car to change the front plate. He said nothing bad would happen........... Stock SE air intake but used a new K&N filter.

So now a story about Mazda. My brother has some rotor friends and one of them got a new engine from Mazda for his second gen. After 10,000 Kilometers he noticed it was smoking. He took it to them and they said it was normal and wouldn't fix it. So my brother had to go there with this guys dad who was pretending to be a lawyer and they said again oh nonono the smoking is normal. My brother asked if they wanted to come out and see if his 84 with 160,000 Kilometers smoked. they said that it wouldn't be necessary and built the guy a new engine. That is why we went with one of these private shops.

Ive pulled apart my bros 12a with a blown apex seal last year and saw what happened to the housing and rotor. I know what it looks like and saw the carnage on the housing and the gouges on the rotor. So rebuilding something that is damaged like that is senseless.

The problem with them is you never know when a blow up is around the next turn...

So on to the tear down. I pulled it apart last Thursday, took me a few hours. I was definitely surprised with what i found.

I noticed all six Apex seals were intact. At this point i thought the guy at progressive didn't use the proper gauge. Which is true, because he told me it was a piston compression tester that he modified to make work. Why not just get the proper gauge? Anyway i pulled everything and cleaned it and noticed some damage in the housing by the exhaust port. Other than that the rest of the housing and the other housing look good. I noticed some damage in the rotor right at the edge where the seal goes. The pictures show it all.

So im thinking it could have been a corner seal? I dont think it was a side seal. I didn't pay much attention to the other seals as i was sure it was apex related, well thats what progressive told me with his tester. What about the little piece of apex seal that goes beside the big apex seal? Dunno what its called but its a little triangle looking piece. The picture shows it too. Anyways, i dunno if the housing can be reused. The major damage is shown and can be felt with the finger. Is is on the exhaust stroke area so i dunno how much that counts for. The rest looks pretty good though.

What would have caused this to happen? Ive read online side seal/corner seal failure is usually bad build. So did Mr. Adam Heyman from his chop rx7specialties shop do a bad job? Its hard to think he knows what hes doing if he told us to change the front plate when the engine was in the car.... Shouldn't an engine builder know that kinda stuff? wtf

Im still shocked, usually its the Apex seal that blows up... and with it your engine.

Thanks,

Nathan

 

Well, which of the "other" seals is actually damaged? Apex seals are important to compression, but they're all important, and they are all pretty easy to inspect visually if they're so badly failed that they can cause that amount of damage to a rotor and housing.

Apex seal, Apex side piece (the 'triangle'), corners, sides, and all their springs, all have to be right to get decent compression. So do the housings and end plates.

Looks clear that your engine swallowed something, and that something gouged your rotor and housing, but the pictures are so blurry and out of focus that it's impossible to tell what it might have been.

So, what's missing or damaged from inside the engine?



Oh, and as far as making this out to be a design flaw in the rotary, that's a stretch. I've had piston engines fail on me for no reason other than an undetected flaw in a component's material. You think losing a rotor seal creates carnage? Try breaking a timing chain on a boinger sometime. Say goodbye to most of a motor, in that case.

All machines can fail, even when well-maintained and properly built. A breakdown isn't always somebody's fault.

 

^ yep

 

^I've seen that damage, all engines fail for various reasons and I've seen more ways that piston engines pop for no other reason than a slack in the timing set/belt or a loose wrist pin or bad rod and OHC CAN drop valves into the cylinders, push rods snap, ect. I'm sorry to hear about your luck but I will say my stock motor lasted 156k miles before it let go. Don't give up on rotaries yet give it another go.

 

Sorry to hear about your loss, but the problem isn't in the design, its in whoever built your motor. Obviously he is doing something wrong if the guy at Progressive told you he has seen this before from him.

 

Sorry to hear about this man. Ive met adam in person and his shop is just down the road from my house. I have never got him to build me an engine but ill tell you he has millions of $$ in rotary parts; shelves to the ceiling of just rotors then another set of racks of with casings. Ive heard he builds racing motors for people. I even got to see a custom one he was building with 4 rotors ready to be shipped. well thats my input Im thinking of going with a 302 if my apex go too. Just not worth the fuss with the wankel. Ill try it till it goes thats that.

 

my gsl-se has 205,000 miles on it.
while i keep in the back of my mind it can possibly go at any day now. you get what you pay for, usually..

it will cost alot more to do a proper v8 conversion than just to get another running rotary parts car.

 

Why use 3mm apex seals? Removing the main hub without wedging the flywheel forward will most likely cause the torrington bearings to fall, and be pinched during reassembly.

 

GSL-SE 13b's come with 3mm apex seals...

to the OP,
who knows if the guy used a bad housing for the rebuild also, in the rotary world i have seen a lot of things, and people that will build engines for the track with iffy housings. i think that you should inspect all the items, replace the ones that might need to and enjoy the rotary.
trust me i have build a lot of piston engines and i just love how easy it is to build a 1st gen 12a/13b, 6 bolts holding the tranny and the easy front motor mount. i just got done doing a 420A FWD crap and i was hating it. there are stores that also sell rebuild dvd's that will help you.

 

why not go with an Atkins rebuild? I swapped a blown motor for their lowest priced rebuild, and it is still working fine after +8 years.

Put in new clutch hydralics, new radiator, and new hoses while I had the engine out