I bought an '88 NA that was using water as a base for my hillclimb/caged fun car for $200...pulled the engine apart and this is what I found. I have never been inside a rotary before so I'm not sure what's good and what is junk. The front iron had a blown coolant bridge...but everything else (minus rotors) looks ok. Car had 78k on the clock. I will be building a TII setup for it so these mean nothing to me...

I can't feel any grooves with my nail, these pictures are with very minimal cleanup.

Front





Rear

 

As long as you can't catch your fingernail in those scratches then those housings are fine as long as the water pump it came from didn't overheat and warp them. Check thickness at the spark plug holes to make sure they haven't shrunk or the chrome hasn't lifted.

You may feel some slight roughness at the scratch areas but that is fine. Not ideal, but fine.

Eccentric is fine. Clean it up, good to go. Keep it lubricated so it doesn't rust.

As for the iron, the o-ring support near the right edge in the middle is looking a little thin and ragged. Better pictures would be necessary to judge however that appears to be acceptable. Though sort of on the ragged edge of acceptable. Clean the area up and get some better pictures. It's a low stress area so you could reinforce the rear with strong epoxy.

 

Thanks for the input. I'll clean everything up and see if I can get some better pictures.

 

Everything looks good although I'd try and get rid of the rust in the coolant passages.

As far as the housings, if you can't catch the edge with your finger you should be good.

 

What about in pic#3, to the right and upward of the exhaust port? That looks like bad flaking there. How far from the edge is the chrome flaked?

 

I see what you are saying but I have seen flaking WAAAY worse than that. Even if it is slightly flaked a bit there I wouldn't worry about it.

 

I didn't notice that flaking first time I looked at the pictures.

It's still within Mazda's spec of 1/4".

If I was building an engine to last 200K I wouldn't use that housing. But for a race car, sure.

 

What about using it for a weekend type vehicle?

I've got my Harley which I ride most of the year (when not raining or freezing) and my camry with 405k miles on it that I use for the cold and raining days. Im building my Rx7 for cruising/weekend type driving.

 

If you want the whole lot I will cut you a hell of a deal. I bought the car expecting everything to be toast, so anything I sell is just a bonus. Shoot me your e-mail and I can send you a TON of pictures.

 

At the moment I'm gathering information. I've torn down my engine. The only thing that looks unusable is 1 housing, but I havent cleaned everything in the parts cleaner yet and really inspected things. I havent posted pics here yet to get everyone's thoughts though either. I'm mainly trying to find out what people say is usable and for what.

BUT, I'm looking to snag a s5 up the road that was diagnosed with a blown apex seal years and years ago and it's just been sitting for about 12 years. Tryin to get it for $200, but I have to go through the whole rigamorole of getting it titled so the guy can sell it to me.

 

The rest of the housing looks fine so if you're talking about a stock engine or mildly modded, then that scratch won't be of much consequence. The thing you have to ask yourself is "how long before it gets worse?". Because it won't get any better and will continue to flake. So if budget is important and the car only does a few thousand miles a year, use the housing. However a used replacement housing without that flaking can be $100 or less (or more) and won't already start out worn.

If that flaking housing is used, I'd flip the apex seal around so that the corner piece isn't riding on that section of the housing.