hello all. i recently was given a 86 rx7 base for some trade work i did and have decided to restore it and ad some mods too. now i'm not new to mechanics at all i own my own shop out here in tenn but as we all know the rx7 is a car all it's own lol. so a little back history on the car: it was a one owner by a doctor since 86 (the door tag says 10/85) and was stored inside its whole life and driven daily till his death in 99. after that the car still was kept inside just never started or ran. the present: after getting it i threw a battery in it and checked all the fluids and it fired right up but smoked BAD. after running for about 30min it stopped smoking and i took it for a little drive and it ran GREAT!! so i decided to drive it for the weekend and see how it went. well every time it sat for a long period of time (over night) it would smoke alot the next time i started it so i figured the oil seals where getting old and needed to be looked at after 146,XXX miles so a rebuild was in order. after getting the motor out and tearing it down i noticed some what looks to be rust on the irons. i'm gussing this is from where the motor sat in one spot and never got turned over for a long amount of time. well enough of the talking, here are a butt load of pics of the engine and some of the car to look at. let me know what you think and if these parts are going to be able to be reused.

 

i know the bearings are bad. if the irons and housings are reuseable i'm getting a atkins master kit plus some extras for a full kit. i've done the poormans test and couldn't find and grooves that my fingernail cought on but you can feel the lines just not horribly. sorry for the huge pics

 

anyone?

 

Looks good to me...
Any surface rust, I'd knock it down with some fine grit (> 400) sandpaper and liberal use of engine oil.
Good luck with the rebuild!


-Ted

 

looks good. A good core for a nice rebuild specially if you ran the car at least for a couple of days. I would change all the seals including apex seals of course. Bearings might be all good still, engine seems like it was babied.

Make sure you replace all of the oil seals and align the oil control ring springs correctly. Just clean everything good, and like RETed said just get rid of surface rust but seems like the irons are ok. Check for corrosion at the water seals for broken pieces of the iron plates. Sitting for a long time with water in the engine is not good specially for 13b. 12as seem to be a bit more forgiving due to the fact that the seal is at the housing not the irons...

 

i think all i'm going to keep are the irons and the housings, pick up some S5 rotors and a rx8 shaft and then the atkins master kit with some extra goodies to do the rebuild with. thinking about using some pineapple racing templates for the intake and exhaust while i got it apart too. anyone have any thoughts on thier stuff? they seem like the only one that really make them right?

 

To use S5 rotors you need an S5 flywheel and an S5 front counterweight fyi. I am selling an RX8 E-shaft but I don't have access to it till Oct if you are interested.

 

yeah i got ya, only i'll be using a S5 front weight and a S5 rear auto weight with a 9 pound prolight

 

Make sure there's no pitting on the riding surface of the irons though. That's something I couldn't discern from the pics real well. The housings look pretty good, but I wonder despite the evenness of the wear the whole chrome surface in the housings may be worn quite a bit just because of the fairly high miles. Just something to consider. It all depends on your purposes for the car/motor and how long you want/expect it to last for those purposes.

 

irons look nice, that discoloration comes off with a little sanding.

rotor housings even look decent. they are good enough to start checking for flatness etc

 

i've ran my fingers over the color spots many times and started the sanding this morning and haven't found and pits yet (knock on wood). checked with a flat edge too and we're all good there. i do have one more question about the housings. is there something i should do to them before installing new apex seals on them? or are they pretty much ready to go after a cleaning?