I'm rebuilding my engine because of a blown coolant seals and they were definitely blown, now, to make a long story short, this looks bad - is it? Or is this some enigmatic design feature?

 

No that is completely wasted

 

Ouch, that looks just like my motor when I was getting ready to rebuild it several months back. I was cleaning up the gasket area when I noticed a nice chunk of thin wall casting missing too. Check ebay or locally for a used housing.

 

I'll keep my fingers crossed, I've got another engine with lower miles but a blown apex seal that may yield a pair of workable housings. Ahh, what fun. I'll check tomorrow - that way if I can't salvage the other housings I can stop my Mazda order first thing Monday morning.

 

Isn't that the iron? I thought housings were exactly that: they housed the rotor.

 

That is either a side or intermediate housing, also know as the iron.

 

Well, I'm actually planning on buying a wrecked rx-7 for 300 that has a low milage engine that should yeild good housings (I'm just interested in the rotating assembly) but I don't have the money for it yet. I'll try to remember you once I get it, though.

 

That'd be cool - I should know in an hour or so if the housings on the other engine are bad as well. And actually, one picture is the intermediate housing and one is the rear housing (from the flywheel side). I haven't even looked at the front housing yet. This quick and simple coolant seal replacement hasn't been as much fun as I thought it would be. It was easier than I thought it would be though.

 

Technically, it's still a housing because how housed would that rotor be if you didn't put those other 3 housings on there? Besides, I just know what Mazda calls it in the service manual, not whatever hip slang you crazy kids have made up for it. It was confusing enough having the coolant shoot out and everyone says "Oh, that's a bad coolant seal" only Mazda doesn't list any coolant seals for our engines.

Also, no worries, the front, intermediate, and rear housings are all in one piece from the other engine. All the damage from the broken apex seal was confined to the second rotor housing, so I'm back in business.

 

that's why i always hammer on people because coolant seals rarely fail on their own, it is VERY rare that just a coolant seal fails.

the general term for an internal coolant leak is a "coolant seal", loosely interpreted you need a complete core motor on hand because it's likely you have a cracked iron as well or corroded rotor housing.

 

yeah, I had my hopes up, though, because the car still ran perfectly, no smoke out of the exhaust or anything which was a little weird - but it would only run for about 5 minutes before it blew all the water out of the overflow can.