Yea, my new rebuild runs really good. We had it idling at 1500 within a few minutes of start up and there is hardly any smoke at idle. We never did figure out what happened to the engine the last we did it. Must have been the oil control rings. Whatever, it runs great now.

 

Congrats

 

If the clutch wasn't making so much noise I'd love to try it out.

 

Nice, good for you man.

 

Ya,post up with the results of what you Find Ashley.
I'm kind of curious as to what it is.

 

having a rebuilt engine run well is one of the joys of being a rotard

 

i´m happy for ya!

 

About damn time Ash

It's the turbo! No! Wait... it's the engine! NO wait, it's the turbo... rinse repeat.

You're pretty damn persistent though. I'm glad it all worked out for you. Fix that clunking noise and you'll have a nice running car!

 

Ha, ha, I didn't think anybody remember. It's funny now. I think we took the turbo off the engine 4- 5 times, tried running the engine without the turbo and we even bought another turbo and put it on.
We just started looking in the wrong place for the problem.

ash

As far as the clunking sound, last Wed I pulled inspection cover on the tranny but didn't find anything. I haven't been able to play with it since then. I'll probably have to drop the tranny and take a look.

 

I definitely will let everybody know. I might be able to drop the tranny Tuesday.

ash

 

is the noise a light rattle under heavy load? if so yeah clutch. so can you describe the noise to me?

 

It goes clunk a clunk a clunk a clunk. Clunking matches rpm and the clunking almost entirely goes away when the clutch pedal is depressed.
In fact, the clunking starts to go away after the pedal is depressed just a couple of inches.

 

have you had any flooding on the fresh rebuild

 

Always good to have everything Go as planned

 

Did you rebuild the engine yourself?

 

It has the RTek 1.7 chip so a little bit of flooding is not a problem but most every time it fires right up.

 

Well, things went as planned this time but this was the third time that the engine had been torn down and rebuilt.

 

I'm going to be rebuilding a turbo s4 engine, what were the problem(s) you ran into requiring you to do it over again?

I'm keeping my ports all stock when I do mine.

 

I did a lot of the work myself. I rebuilt the rotors myself and I put the engine back together myself. I have help taking the engine out of the car and usually somebody puts it back in for me but I put it back in this time.

 

I finally got around to getting my transmission pulled. The clunk-a-clunk problem sure was not hard to find.
The flywheel was loose. So loose that I could wobble it by hand. I didn't actually put the nut on or torque it down but the guy that did is a licensed mechanic and he used a torque wrench, impact gun and red loctite. It looks like maybe the nut went on a little crooked and the threads on the nut were damaged. Had heck of a time getting it back off using an impact gun. I cleaned up the threads on the eccentric shaft and threaded on a different nut. Everything seems OK.
Now all I need is to find a clutch pilot tool.

ashley

thanks guys

 

We are now thinking that the flywheel key might have been dislodged and was only partially engaged with the flywheel. The key has a crimp mark on it like what you could expect if the key did not completely seat in the flywheel.
I think on past builds we just tapped the key into the eccentric shaft key-way and that was enough to keep it from pushing back but we can't get it to stay in place now. Every time the flywheel is installed the key moves back. I think I'll run to the store and get some glue. I have to go anyways because I can't find the pilot tool.
Any better ideas??????????

 

Have you rebuilt a rotary before? If not grab a rebuild video.

When you start putting things together, go slow, check everything.


The first time we took it apart was because of a bad port job by the previous owner, the second time was because of a cracked iron. The third time was because we had re-used the viton oil rings from the second rebuild and the engine smoked really bad.

 

When I rebuilt my engine, I used red loctite to hold the woodruff key in place. Super glue will work fine too. The key doesn't actually hold the flywheel in place though. The taper between the shaft and flywheel is really what holds it together. All the key is for is to keep it in balance.

I have a torque multiplier that I use to torque things over the range of my 0-250 ft-lb torque wrench. I know most people won't be able to acquire one, and I definitely wished I had one when I rebuilt mine. I ended up using loctite, a 2 foot breaker bar, and a 300 pound guy hanging on the end. That's about 600 lb-ft, right?

 

A torque multiplier would be nice but............. In past builds I always torqued to 150 ft lbs and then torqued another 60 degrees with an impact gun. Works pretty good, I saw the method in a rebuild video.
I don't know what happened with the flywheel nut but it was definitely loose and I know it was torqued down.

 

..Crap..I was right about the flywheel.(other thread).
I'm glad you found it before it did any damage.Good Stuff on that!