Alright, I'm looking into getting a running 13B with about 60,000 miles on it from a local guy, for the low-low price of $50 ($75 and I'll get the trans too). I'm not asking if I should or shouldn't buy it, but rather what should I do when I buy it? I'm thinking a teardown, and streetport it. I am also curious if I could simply swap the rotors and apex seals from my current engine (less than 5,000 miles on a reman), instead of buying new seals.

 

first step- give me the engine

if step one dont work, tear it down and port it and assemble it up again

 

Give it a quick compression test. It'll be worth the $25 investment in a gauge considering the amount of work it will take to swap the engine in.

With NA engines, typically if they have low compression you will be looking at a trashed rear housing that isnt re-usable in a rebuild.

Put simply, good compression... likely to have good usable parts you can use or resell..

bad compression... good chance of at least one un-usable rotor and rotor housing, possibly more unusable parts.

All used engines have a risk of internal corrosion after sitting for periods of time. Less time sitting = better.

 

I'm pretty much looking at this engine to be my pet project. The engine is from a 86 GXL, the guy said it hadn't blown yet, but it had too many miles on it, and didn't want it to blow while he couldn't do anything about it. I'm not planning on just dropping it in, but instead to do a streetport, exhaust porting, too, I think. I'm going to take it all apart, clean it up, and port everything I can, but not give up any low end torque, either.

Racing beat makes templates, right?

 

Dont want to give up low end torque? Don't port Yes, Racing Beat makes templates but only sells them thru their catalog (I think). Soo thats catalog + templates + shipping for both. Mazdatrix sells them directly from website.

 

I don't want to give up too much torque, my bad.