88IntegraLS

The fruits of tonight's two hours of labor:



After eight ports, the last three being the same exact port, porting is almost routine. Practice really increases the level of smoothness and reduces the chance of having the grinder scratch a plate unexpectedly.

To the guy before me: You are an apprentice yourself yet claiming that Racing beat put engines on a dyno just to make porting templates? Visit their site in their template page and report back. Judge Ito has built many, many rotaries and has done dyno testing, and many of his tips were used on my port setup . . and then there is Reted above . . he's got some serious experience himself and didn't seem to have any issues with my work.

Mazdaspeed7, thanks again for the tips you gave me and yes, we must compare graphs. But the real test will be on the course . . . too bad you and I are not in the same locale because I would love to be your rival at regional autocrosses . . two FC's in E mod battling it out; the loud black one and semi-loud yellow one.

mazdaspeed7

Joao, you DEFINATELY want some way to stage your ports. Your car will be a dog below 4-5K if not. Drivability of a stock motor is barely adequate with 6 ports wired open. Add some porting on top of that, and it wont be worth doing. And your car will idle at 1200-1400. Another tip. You wont make power with a stock intake manifold. If you want details/suggestions on the intake, send me a PM.

wozzoom

Please don't take this offlist... We're finally getting somewhere here! I'm curious as to what people have found pursuing custom NA intake manifolds.

mazdaspeed7

I have a reason to keep it offlist. How many pipe dream threads have you seen? An awesome roduct advertised, and then it never materializes. And theres also the claims that a mod makes x hp, but noone ever gets around to dynoing it. What good does that do everyone? The people who have the abilities to do their own manifold, as I am, dont need to come here to find out how to do it. Theres information on calculating runner lengths, as well as a spreadsheet someone made that does it automatically on the forum. You just have to look.

For a temporary solution to the my motor, Im going to use an FD upper manifold, with a custom adapter to mount it to a ported 6 port lower manifold.

88IntegraLS

I agree. It's pretty easy if you know the formula for runner length . . everything else is keeping the runners for each port separate. For example, you could do a primary port runner, hypothetically, 8" long tuned for low rpm, the secondary 6-7" long for midrange and the sixth port runner 3-4" for upper powerband.

Those numbers are make-believe, but they do represent how shorter runners work for higher rpm. I would love to make a custom intake manifold. That would be totally awesome. I would get dyno numbers for before and after, just for kicks.

So Adam, when do I get to see your dyno sheet for your latest motor? I should have mine (if I don't blow the engine right away) in a couple months. Gotta tune that S-afc . . NA's do poorly on rich mixtures.

mazdaspeed7

You will see a dyno as soon as my SP motor is put together, the FD manifold installed, and my new exhaust finished. Ill be using the stock ecu for my first dyno, then going with an EMS, probably megasquirt. Then dyno again.

I stacked half of the motor last night, and managed to lose one of the corner pieces for my atkins seals, so I have to wait until that gets here to finish stacking the motor. The piece will be here on wed or thursday, but I dont know how soon I will get the motor in my car. The buyer for my current motor is having a hard time getting the money together, and its lookign like he wont have it anytime soon, so why put miles on my new motor, just to have my current one sitting in the garage. I may wait anothe rmonth or two to drop in my SP engine. That will give me time to do everything else.

88IntegraLS

Speaking of stacks . . .




I got mine assembled today, oh yeah!

It was seriously tricky at times, but if I ever have to do it again, it will probably be much easier. The biggest problem was the teflon encapsulated combustion O rings kept wanting to pop out of the grooves, even though they were coated with hylomar (which is very sticky). I finally realized that I could stretch them by hand before putting them in, to make them stay put.

I used mostly used parts (only new stuff were apex seals/springs and O rings) but checked my clearances. My rotor bearings had .004 inches of clearance, main bearings .002 (limit is .004 for both), rotor stationary gear to side housings were right at the limit of .008, and my apex, side, and corner seal clearances were at the limit of tightness, being .002.

I can actually turn the thing over by hand without a wrench if I twist both shafts really hard, and there are the six swooshes of air rushing out the spark plug holes as would be expected. It was seriously trickier than my Acura's B16 twin cam boinger was to assemble, but it took only 2 hours after everything was cleaned and measured.

So anyways, I should have some idea of how the ports work in a week or two.

mazdaspeed7

Now Im going to have to go get pics of my block, which I finally finished tonight. The motor was assembled wed, just didnt do the tension bolts. I torqued those tonight. Thats my old color scheme. Im going all black this time. Pics tomorrow.

Kim

Good luck Jeff
I hope that you will get her running soon, im dying to know how it runs.

RETed

Really nice work!&nbsp But you should really get rid of that "Great Necks" type torque wrench and get a Snap-On one for these jobs.


-Ted

88IntegraLS

LOL!! The torque wrench made it into that shot?

Yeah I have had that thing for a long time, since the days of my crappier tools. Good tip; I just upgraded all of my ratchets and sockets with Craftsman this year but not that old relic.

When I torqued down the tension bolts, I did it in about 10 stages, starting with light hand pressure on a 3/8 ratchet and moving up to the same on the torque wrench. The tightening sequence gets almost memorized after you do it enough times.

My88Se

iTrader: (10)

Nice 88, very nice. I can't wait to see some dyno numbers of that thing. Sometime i will get mine dynoed, but that will have to wait a while. Lets keep the intake talk going. That is one thing i don't know much about. Need more input. And yea, that tension bolt sequence is burned into my brain now.

88IntegraLS

Thanks guys. I forgot to mention the exhaust port work that I did. I didn't take any pictures because I am in a rush to get this finished (acura's electrical system bit the dust and I am riding my bike everywhere now).

I basically swapped out the NA diffuser sleeves for TII versions, match ported the sleeves to the port openings, and rounded down the opening side of the ports about 2mm to blend the transition from the housing to the port. I also smoothed and rounded off the sharp sides of the beveled stock port openings on the sides and top of the port. I didn't widen the sides or go up at all . . basically it was a very mild port job on the exhausts.

88IntegraLS

Eight hours of assembly work later, the semi-long block hangs from the hoist, ready for the hop to the engine bay.





It even has some compression. Hopefully it won't flood too much when I start it up for the first time.

Black13B

iTrader: (1)

88IntegraLS, what are your plans for internal lubrication? I swore you mentioned premix, but am I mistaken when I see a MOP attached rather than a blockoff plate?

Psychoblue23

omg. . HURRY UP AND PUT THAT THING IN THERE! You can break it in by driving down to SS6! So we can all see your car!!!

88IntegraLS

Good eye Black13B. I knew a sharp forum member would see it without its lines and wonder what it is doing there, especially with bolts threaded in my oil injector ports.

That is the remains of a metering oil pump which is just a lazy block off plate. I took it apart and removed the center shaft but kept the recessed piston, which will hold the drive gear back so it won't destroy the mop / cas drive gear on the eshaft.

I could have taken the mop drive gear out but I was really lazy (actually just really rushed). So it is an ugly block off plate, just like my egr valve which has a piece of thin metal as a diaphragm between it and the center housing.

Stupid question: Where and when is ss6?

88IntegraLS

I spent Monday after work dropping in the engine, Tuesday night putting on the exhaust and lower manifold, and all day today slamming the rest of it. It is getting VERY close . . .




All that is left is to fix some coolant hoses that were too rotten to use, flush / install the radiator and oil cooler, and do a long session of looking everything over before starting it up.

My88Se

iTrader: (10)

OHhhhhhh the wait. Must get it started.

Psychoblue23

Its This Sat I belive in Los Angeles, and I am new to the rotary scene but its liek the Numero Uno of RX7 meets, mazda guest speakers blah blah here this will do it justice, I wont. www.sevenstock.org

Black13B

iTrader: (1)

So.. Where is my post?!

I saw it posted, now it's gone..

88IntegraLS

Well I got the rebuild running! After a lengthy unflooding session, it barked to life. Actually, it started the first try when I was testing my starter wiring but I shut it off because the garage door was not open yet. Arrgh. I have learned that you have to squirt the ATF in each time you take the plugs out to blow out all the fuel in order to get enough temporary compression to start the engine.

Once running it smoked like a pig, as would be expected. It revved pretty well when I gently opened the throttle a few times. It was missing a lot at first but got smoother as it warmed up. All in all, the ports don't seem to affect the idling or engine response.

I also got a feel for how loud the engine will be. I have my stock manifold, gutted precats, stock cat and cat back and judging by how much meaner it sounds compared to when I ran that stock exhaust before, the TII sleeves and exhaust porting are there to be heard. I couldn't get my header to fit to the stock main cat without some kind of 5" extender pipe.

Now the bad news: I must have pinched a coolant O ring during assembly because the smoke never went away, it just went from gray to white and felt very wet. Bubbles came out of the radiator opening and after it warmed up, they came out of the overflow tank which quickly filled to the brim. So I will be removing it again and ordering a few more O rings. I should have it driving in a week max.

Is this discouraging? **** yes it is, but I have come waaaaay too far to give up. Success is all about intelligent persistence, and my avatar text doesn't say what it does to be catchy (which I am sure it isn't).

I was worried this whole time if one of the O rings came out of a groove because when I put the center iron on the rear rotor housing, It was a wrestling match and the parts got jostled around quite a bit. The rear half was assembled before I discovered how to stretch the O rings to make them not keep popping out of the grooves.

So, all in all, I am pretty happy to have got the keg running, and it sounded great. I'll keep this thread updated with the tear-down and reassembly / reinstallation process in my usual documentary style.

n4ji

iTrader: (1)

I've been keeping up with this thread ever since you started it. Awesome work!!! I hope you get things fixed again and it runs smooth as piston engine! Or better yet... smoother.

Kim

Awww man that sucks, I hope you get it running soon

88IntegraLS

All taken in stride. I just got the engine removed and disassembled (total motivation) and one of the O rings that I stretched too much had gotten pinched in a few places. Its teflon outer coating was ruptured in 5+ places due to it not being a tad too large for the groove circumference after I stretched it. Strange. I expected to find one of the tighter fitting ones to have gotten pinched on the inside edge because these were the ones that kept popping out of the grooves, but no, the one I stretched was it.

None of them looked good coming out of the engine and the three which had not ruptured were still slightly pinched on their inner edges. I don't think I will be using this type of O ring again. None of them fit correctly when installed.

Anyone know the source for the normal rubber inner O rings? Someone a while back found a wholesaler to buy them from for cheap. I think there is even a way to just buy the ring material and fab up the rings yourself.