Found this the other day as I was preparing the engine/transmission for removal to do maintenance:



Found this thread where somebody had almost exactly the same thing happen.

This engine is stock but has about 80 racing hours on it (Chump/WRL), so it seems like this was to be expected - I just wish I had known that this was a possibility so I could have prevented it.

It seems clear that bolt was ejected from the engine, came in contact with the flywheel, was bent upwards, and in the process of being bent upwards sheared off a portion of the rear housing and flywheel.

These are are the possible scenarios as I see them:

(1) The bolt snapped in half in the engine and the top portion was forcefully ejected.

• In this scenario a full rebuild is likely needed, as the threads in the housing would be damaged and a full disassembly required to remove all portions of the bolt.

(2) The bolt backed itself out.

• Chance of extracting the entire bolt, threads may not be damaged. The issue then becomes how to repair the damage to the housing.
  • Find the piece of the housing that shattered off (possibly in the transmission bell housing) and weld it back on. This would be tricky and may not be possible.
  • Replace the rear housing. I have never torn into a rotary engine before. Can one simply replace the rear housing without necessitating a rebuild or disturbing the internals?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Doesn't matter if the T-bolt sheared or backed out - you're looking at a tear down & rebuild either way. That rear housing is clearly trashed, and will need a new or reusable used one. You'll need to do a full tear down to assess damage done elsewhere that you can't see now, and to figure out why this happened in the first place. I'm guessing the rest of the T-bolts will be very loose too.

 

 

Woah man! Nasty.