SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

Finished clearancing at about 6 this morning, threw the seals in my super duper seal sorter, then whisked them off to have new bearings installed.


Now, what should I do about this? See that divot in the outer sealing area? I'm sure there's something I can use to seal it, block it off, but I don't know what would work well. I have some assorted glues, JB Weld, body filler and fiberglass; would any of those work well for this?


Wobbly triangles, courtesy of Felix Wankel (sort of...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRkXfy7gonk

Now I'm going back out to assemble my engine lift. Hopefully I'll get a call from Car Ex soon marking the successful installation of my rotor and stat gear bearings.

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

Yar, CarX couldn't change my bearings. I'll try to get pics soon to ask if I really need to change them.

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

I looked at them again, and they really weren't in bad shape. Except CarX SCREWED ONE OF THE BEARINGS UP AND DIDN'T TELL ME!! I am furious. It would have been one thing if they had told me it happened, but now I have no choice but to replace all of them and they gave me my parts box back without a word about their condition. I'm calling them today to request they help pay to have the bearings replaced. I would have been able to reuse these without any problems and I was going to do just that until I discovered this.

This is the one, you can't tell well because it's blurry, but it's very obvious on both sides that whatever disc they used slipped.

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

Let me rephrase that: I'm calling them tomorrow. They are closed today.

scrip7

iTrader: (6)

Your coolant nipple repair looks good. I have done the same repair before with good results. The porting looks pretty good for a first time job. Looks like you have done your homework for the most part. If you went past the original port opening towards the middle of the housing with your die grinder (the oil seal wear line) AT ALL, you will likely have a smoky engine. I always do a small amount of smoothing at a slight angle in that area and avoid any material removal past the wear line, and I use tapered sanding rolls on the die grinder instead of carbide bits in that area, so you can control the cutting easier. I use the ones from Eastwood Company. Makes porting and final contour work a breeze. Here's the link:
http://www.eastwoodco.com/jump.jsp?i...mType=CATEGORY

As for the rotor housing pitting, I recommend using the sharp point of a scribe to scratch the pitted area a little bit first. This helps to remove any tiny chunks that were about to flake off. Follow that with a shot of brake cleaner, then dry with shop air. I recommend JB weld only in my opinion. Let it cure for 24 hrs and then file it flush with the housing surface.The pitted area is on the cool side of the housing, so the repair should work just fine.

Sucks about the bearing job. I hope they help you with the costs, since they fucked it up in the first place. Best of luck.

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

Thank you for the compliments.

I didn't really touch that edge. And actually some guys can remove ~.5mm from the edge and see no smoking, but I don't see any reason to bother doing that, especially since I don't even think the rotor sweeps low enough so the port would ever be all the way open.

I was planning on roughing up the pit in the housing and filling it with something. These housings are way too nice to let that little thing stop me and I'm working on borrowed time (I'm out of a job and would have liked to have this up and running last week).

alexdimen

iTrader: (13)

WTF is carx? Take it to the local machine shop along with new bearings.

Oh, and what did you apex seals spec out like? They could have been severly worn and cocking in the rotor groove, causing the assembly to seize.

alexdimen

iTrader: (13)

JB weld

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

Car Ex (sp?), a repair shop. The Arnold machinist referred me to them. After failing to accomplish anything, they referred me back to him, and I told them he said try them. I'll look up some places within 20 miles of here and see if any of them will have time. I may go ahead and order (and hopefully I can express ship) the bearing tools so that it will go smoothly. I'm tempted to request that CarX foot the bill for all this no matter what it costs even if I have to buy another set of rotors, as I could have built the motor today if it weren't for them. Tempted. I plan on just requesting they pay to have a machinist replace my bearings, and who knows how long that will take as busy as machinists may be right now, plus I now know the bearings were in excellent shape.

The motor I'm rebuilding was a core pulled running from another '87 TII. Nothing had seized in it. The motor that locked on me, I don't know yet. I may know tomorrow as I'm very close to having the motor pulled. All I need to do is move some more wires, unbolt the tranny and motor mounts, pull it out then remove what's still attached (turbo etc). I do know it had somewhat low compression, but the compression reading was (now, immeasurably) lower than the true compression due to a slow turnover speed. For my new motor I spec'd the OEM apex seals to about .0024" shorter than the housings are wide (.06mm shorter). The side seals I spec'd about .003" from the corners.

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

Update on CarX, they said they'd cover the cost to have Arnold press the bearing. I decided to just replace the one anyway, I don't see any advantage to replacing them all since they were all in really good shape (as I learned yesterday during some researching, 1/4" wear at the seam and nowhere else is excellent condition). The machinist at Arnold MS said they ought to be done by this afternoon.

I also got the motor pulled late last night. This is one of those few days where I strongly feel I've fulfilled my duties and exhibited my prowess as a man, haha. Some friends came to help a little for an hour or so yesterday afternoon. Among multiple cars, one drives an FB (traded his old NA FC for it) and the other drives a fully loaded G35. Both pretty cool guys. I'm the stud in the green.

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

You may not see it in these, but I used a car ramp with planks on it to hold the transmission up. That allowed me to have the car jacked up while doing all this, which is really useful for the trans bolts you have to take out. Especially that one right next to the EGR valve. ALL of them went peacefully except for that one.

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

I tried this color on the turbine housing and alt pulley, somewhat as an experiment. I will say that this paint isn't terribly durable, but we'll see how it holds up under driving conditions.


I went to Magic Muffler to have my wastegate washer welded on so I could port it more. They only charged me $5 and it took about 15 minutes in total. Sweet. It gave me more time to perfect my port job.


Figured I'd get rid of that pesky pipe in my exhaust manifold.


Mock up to get stuff fitting right as I go along. I drastically shortened the vac line to the wastegate (compared with the ~3' that was being used before).

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

Is this flywheel ok to use? It came off a different '87 TII and the marks around the edge are from my grubby hands, and it's only surface rust. I can't currently get the flywheel nut off the old motor so it's actually quite fortunate I had this (I just hope it's good to use), as has been the case with a lot of things in this build.


I have a bunch of parts cleaning left to do, then I will start building. Anyone know a fast/easy way to get rid of old, hardened paper gaskets? Wire wheel maybe?

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

So I apparently missed this in my initial inspection. This stat gear bearing has some copper showing and a few little grooves in the worn spot where it looks like a piece of sand had some fun. The picture shows the spot, it's not worn across the whole bearing nor more than a quarter of the way around, which makes me think it's only worn because some crap got in there and was eventually removed. I need to know what kind of bearing life I might expect from this if I reuse it. From reading some of Scathcart's comments in an archived rebuild thread I think he would reuse it (I will PM him), but others would not. The FSM is vague about how much wear Mazda deems acceptable. I'm ready to build this bitch, I would like to reuse this bearing if I should be able to get 40k+ miles out of it. By that time I will probably have had enough time to work on another rebuild geared toward more power and an upgraded turbo.

evileagle

iTrader: (1)

Resurface that flywheel. Your clutch disc will thank you.

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

The flywheel is at Arnold MS right now, possibly even done already.

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

Just finished a 12 hour shift on my motor, the shortblock is completely assembled, everything is clean. Sorry, no pics of the process, I would have taken the time to do a more detailed account if my car wasn't broken while I rebuild.

I need to install my clutch slave and master cylinders, then some peripheral parts on the block, map the new OMP lines, and call for help because it's nice to have some extra hands when doing the heavy lifting/maneuvering.

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

I replaced the bearing, and it only took the machinist about 5 minutes and cost me ~$15. $50 for the flywheel though, but it looks so sexy. If a flywheel can look sexy. I think it can. Anyway scathcart said I could reuse it, but I didn't want to risk it... there were some gouges in it from particles, not just even wear.

Currently I'm rebuilding the OMP system, I had to break to come in and get lengths.
http://rotorwiki.com/index.php/Custo...njection_Lines
I also really need some food... With the wife moved out right now and my car broken, I hate the thought of taking the bus to go grocery shopping, it could take me like 3 hours if not more. I hate using the bus, it takes forever.

Moving on, after the OMP is done I'll bolt up the turbo, brackets, and the rest of the stuff that needs to come off the old block. Like the little sensor next to the oil pressure sensor, what does it do? It looks like a thermocouple.

My endplay turned out surprisingly nice, I thought I was going to have way too much and then I'd be screwed, because all four spacers (a few spares and a new one) I have happen to be the same size :o10:

Oh yeah, I also had two outer oil control rings break during block assembly. One was broken before it got out of the package, and one broke during pressing. Is that common? Makes me question the quality of the Atkins oil seals, if nothing else. Should they get stronger with some use? I reused old ones, as they were mostly in good condition and just needed cleaning and new o-rings.

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

HOLY CRAP. What a long freakin' weekend. And I still have laundry to finish. New job starts at 6:30am tomorrow morning. SO:

Rebuild motor. Check.
Install rebuilt motor. Check.
Start rebuilt motor. Check.
Inspect for any poor symptoms. Uh oh, no oil pressure.
Do a little research, CRAP, missed installation of one little o-ring that Mazda put there to baffle do it yourselfers like me :P Spent the next 3+ hours tearing it down and prying the front cover off, then repairing as best I could the torn oil pan and front cover gaskets. An inch of the oil pan gasket tore out from underneath the front iron, so I loosened a bolt, pried on the pan (hard) and slipped the piece back in, using hylomar for the o-ring and front cover gasket frag. Voila. But I would just recommend installing that little o-ring before installing the motor. Just a suggestion

Reinstall, reassemble, and she's running again. But, she's running very loud, and very poorly, and at 3am and the property managers threatened to tow/call police. I found this out this afternoon, anyway, back to right after I got it running with oil pressure:
It runs like crap. Almost zero throttle response, I have to bounce the gas to get it above 1500RPM which it does VERY grudgingly, I get to McDonald's 'cause I'm starving and I notice my boost gauge has zeroed out. Hrm, probably a problem with the line. I peer inside my hoodless engine bay to find A) a melted nylon vac line and B) a BRIGHT ORANGE TURBOCHARGER, YAY! I'm not big on orange, but apparently she was.So, despite setting my timing on the marks, it was uber retarded. Uberetarded. Something like that. So uberetarded that I must have been burning almost all the mixture in the frickin' turbo, which explains a lot, including the apparent boost on very light acceleration (as noted by the BOV as well as the boost gauge when the line wasn't destroyed).

I do some more research and find that perhaps the pulley plus the hub I used equals timing marks that are incorrect. Wonderful, now I think I'll have to pull the front hub AGAIN to install the original hub so my timing marks will be right, but for now I was able with the help of a friend to get it running MUCH cooler, much closer to correct timing, and my turbo will only show a dull glow in the dark. We took it to the in-laws' tonight and it did great. Phew, at least now I'm confident I can get to work in 7 hours.

I apologize again for not having pics, I would have had to recruit help just for photography if I wanted a shot at getting this done this weekend, I have worked SO HARD on this. I look forward to the rest of break-in, as it seems to run quite well even at just ~40 miles, and starting it isn't much of a hassle, at least compared to the old motor.

MaczPayne

iTrader: (5)

What happened to your heatshields for the turbo?

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

I have the mani shield installed as well as the one that goes between the turbo and UIM, I just didn't install the upper shield initially (I will by the time it's broken in) because I wanted access to a couple things down there like the actuators, which aren't attached yet for the purpose of break-in.

SpeedOfLife

iTrader: (16)

So I've been getting anxious. I have a little over 500 miles on the rebuild and I realized that I'd probably get a little better mileage with the wastegate hooked up (until this weekend the arm had been detached so it was always freely open to prevent boosting, which was still incredibly easy to do. a good thing, just not at the moment). But, so I'm not just wasting that exhaust energy, I decided to hook up the wastegate (in stock form). Two tanks ago I got ~15mpg. Last tank? 19mpg. Now, I had a larger percentage of those miles on the last tank on the highway, but I was a little harder on it, too.

Admittedly, I have boosted to 5psi a number of brief times and taken it up to 5k RPM, but I'm trying to keep it under 2psi. It's kind of hard when stupid chicks in their heavy, automatic Grand Prix's are trying to race you around a gentle bend, but instead they're losing and almost sliding into you in the process... Honestly I don't know how she pulled it off, she must have been retarded. I wasn't pushing it at all, medium throttle @~4kRPM and only a few pounds of boost and I'm holding strong and she's falling behind on my flank, her tires squealing like stuck pigs.

In related news, Saturday my oil pressure dropped (again. if you'll remember, I had 0 oil pressure upon the first startup. no front cover o-ring). Well, I managed to screw up the fix and it blew out, so I spent ~4 hours today fixing that and a couple really minor things, then testing it out. YAY! I have good oil pressure. I didn't use the Teflon ring because I thought the 'later casting' in the Mazdatrix FAQ referred to an S5 casting as opposed to the S4 casting and not the 13B casting as opposed to the 12A casting (the latter being reality. damn. oops). So I put that in... I should remount the AC again before I go to bed; it's such a pain, but I don't want it rattling around too much.