A few of you know, I had to rebuild my engine over the weekend. I got it installed last night, and it runs and everything, but i"m unsure of what the break in procedure is, since I didin't replace ANY hard seals. I even made it a point to make sure EVERY hard seal went exaclty where it was before.

How should I break this in? I was thinking take it easy for a couple hundred miles (maybe 3 or 4?) and then I should be good, right?

And, for those playing along at home, I haven't had a chance to run it for more than 20 minutes, so I don't know if my overheating problem went away yet..

Thanks!

 

Well, at least it sounds like the rebuild went smoothly. Did you ever find a "smoking gun" on the housings?

I wouldn't think you'd need much of a "break-in" period...

 

um.. nothing really conclusive.. that "dented" part of the seal, that I couldn't get a good pic of.. i sanded/emery clothed down the contact surface area of the rotor housings this time to make sure that it was clean this time I'm hoping this rebuild lasts longer than 6500 miles..

to make you feel better, though, all of the rest of the seals looked great. I know you're using RA seals, too, so I figured you'd like to know The apex and side seals were top notch, and even the combustion and waterjackets were fine, except for that small area. I also remember that I stretched one of the combustion seals, when I was experimenting with ways to get it to seat, that may have been the one that failed... I don't know.

I must say though, there was definately more "scoring" of the slabs and more wear of the rotor housing that I was expecting there to be, and it's causing me to think that my engine is/was more gone that I believed it to be.. If I can get 40,000 out of it, i'll be happy..

Either way, I gotta go figure out why it won't idle on its own, and why I can't adjust the idle at all..

 

If there was no apex seal replacement then I would imagine there is no real break in period necessary. Assuming that those are already broken in, it should already be making good compression.

 

you did streetport it when you had it all apart, right?

 

With no bearing or hard seal replacement, there's no break-in as far as I know.

 

Vac leaks would be a good guess at this point

Thanks for the info on the RA seals, as we get more mileage on our RA kit rebuilds, we need to keep tabs on any early perceived failures...

BTW, did you use new rotor housings?

 

To All: I just got back from it's (latest) maiden voyage. I took a little spin on the 30 mile run that has always overheated my car, and my temperature is perfect. FINALLY.. although i'm going to be a little hesitant on believing it's fixed for the next 6000 miles..

My compression came back VERY quickly.. ran a bit rough for the first few miles, but it smoothed out quickly, and was pretty much back to old specs (as best I can tell, I didn't take it above 4,000).

nonameo - It's already streetported, I was going to port it a bit more, but my seals came in a week before i was expecting them*, and I like having a car

Ddub & 2ndGen.rocket - Thanks for confirming my ideas, guys

Wayne - I think it was compression.. I was able to stabilize it much better after I got it back, and reset the timing and played with the idle adjustment, it's still idling a little low, but I guess i"ll give it more than 30 miles before I panic about that.. About the housings: No, i wish I would have had money to get them.. as it is, I've got a bill for college (for this semester), for about 1800, that's due last week... I haven't figured out how i'm paying for that completely, yet... I figure i'll run this engine till it loses compression, and build up a turbo or supercharged one on the side. It should easily last till next summer, after I graduate and get a real job, I should be able to afford things like car repair

A note about Rotary Aviation - These guys are awesome I ordered a soft seal kit from them on sunday of last week. On monday, I got this message: I left the order go, figureing that I could easily find something to do with the extra time (suspension swap, more porting, etc, etc,), but sad that I'd miss the autocross this weekend, as well as the ability to drive out to visit my girlfriend.

On friday (three days ago), i got my seals in the mail! A bit later that day, I got an email from Laura (from RA), telling me that since I was in a hurry, and they were still without power at the shop and such that she had her vendor drop ship them to me to get me them, and she had the vendor promise to get them to me by saturday. I thought that was awesome of her! Their shop was going through/went through a hurricane, and she was still on top of customer service. That was a VERY awesome surprise.

 

Cooool, nice job man...Got a completely new cooling system to boot, lol...

I guess I won't start sending death threats to RA just yet, lol...That's some impressive customer service, the only other vendor that's impressed me like that has been Mazdatrix...

 

Wow. I was impressed with RA when I dealt with them too... Haven't had any problems with MazdaTrix either, but I haven't dealt with them more than "Select parts off website, order, wait for them to arrive a few days later."

-=Russ=-

 

Wayne - Yeah, hold off on the death threats a bit longer Like I said above, I do remember at one point stretching one combustion o-ring, and it would probably have been that one, as it was on the mid plate, bottom (when assembling it), side... So i'm chalking it up to my bad.. . but I did get a new cooling system way too look on the bright side And yes, RA will be getting all of my engine building buisness, especially since that. I mean, Our house flooded the week before, and I know what a mess that was (we're just getting everything cleaned now!), so I can imagine it's a mess there.

Russ - Yeah, that's about the extent of my mazdatrix experiences, too, always positive though