I have a 86' RX7 my motor just crapped out. I live in northern CA. Where is the best place to go for an engine rebuild? HELP PLEASE

 

I think "karack" lives in N.CA. and might be able to help you.

 

Yeah PM Ben *Karack* of Rotary Evolution. He's a good builder from what I hear with fair prices.

 

Karack lives in TN, i live in CA

 

Nah he lives in Nor Cal. https://www.rx7club.com/members/rotaryevolution-39115/

 

If not you can try Ricks Rotary in pleasanton, but that place is a bit pricey tho.

 

go to karack
name is ben, he is at yuba city, right off of highway 20
great guy! no bullshit and knows his ****.

 

www.azrotaryrockets.com

thats who im going w/. jrat got his motor rebuilt there too. ask any of the AZ guys.

Glen is a badassed engine builder, he was taught by one of best engine builders in the country. paul yaw ( www.yawpower.com )

Paul Yaw has countless years of REAL race motor building, flowing, engine dynoing, and countless trial and error. He taught glen all of the rotary secrets that he learned from this.
Pauls customers are race teams who spend LOTS of money to have the fastest and best motor within their rules.

Check out yawpower website if you want to see some badass engineering.
Thing is Paul Yaw won't touch a street car. He wants full racecars where he builds the motor, builds the exhaust, engine dyno tunes the car (i believe theyre all MOTEC if not carbureted) and then sets up the chassis and suspension.
Paul wants nothing to do w/ street cars.
Glen is the current engine builder for paul. Paul taught him everything he knows.

Glen started his own business building street motors w/ pauls blessing.


Ask any of the AZ guys. Almost all of them know glen.

Or just look at J-Rats dyno of his ported motor. Glen built it.
Nothing but good stuff

-Ben Martin

 

I think hes wanting something local, so AZ is kinda out. That is one mean engine Glen built, though.

 

there is only a handful of shops in the area that work on rotaries and none that i know of that are cheaper, but it is still a 3 hour drive to my shop.

Rick's rotary is closer, so is rotorsport in sunnyvale and then there is PR motorsports in the bay but you may want to supply your own lube..

 

I've been told by a few east bay shops that they won't rebuild an engine, but they will order a re-manufactured one or will drop your own supplied engine in. A reman from the Mazda dealership runs $2621 and rebuilding an engine will normally cost over $1k easy, and that's not even including the labor from the shop.

You can also get a rebuilt engine from the Mazda Recycling yard up in Rancho Cordova (it's up by Sacramento) for $1400. I'm not sure if they need a core in return though. You can get more info on thier site....

http://www.mazdarecycling.com/

You also might get lucky and find a used engine on craigslist or this forums classifieds for pretty cheap. I saw one with 100k on the clock going for $100 not too long ago.

Hope it works out for you. My engines on the way out and i've been researching this for a while.

 

Send it to Karack....and have him use his magic "look ma, no hands" streetporting skillz on it...

 

thanks for your advice i have also being weighing out the possibility of buying a running FC and then swaping all my aftermarket parts to the other car. it just stinks cuz i have had this car for 6 years. i have sentimental value to my car.

 

wtf, how can you not find an engine builder in california?

Doesn't Mazdatrix and Racing Beat do it too?

 

southern cali is like a whole nother state away, it can take upwards of 12 hours to drive to southern california and cost more than shipping a complete engine across the country in fuel burned.

i'm not pushing for work though, i already have too much of it as it is.

 

Kay Rack smokes HUGE vials of crack....

 

just wait til i get a new turbo biatch!

 

Having seen what the insides of some reman motors is like, I would never run one without opening it up first. There have been some aweful rotor bearings, plus I heard of one that had a 9.7 front and 9.0 rear rotor (or was it the other way around).

 

for the average person who obviously doesn't have the desire to rebuild an engine themself this is kind of out of the question, all you can rely on is finding someone you trust or go to the dealer and pay a bit more for a mazda reman engine. every builder makes mistakes at times, even the builders at mazda.

 

I tore that reman apart myself. It was an FD reman with a little over 20k on it...almost all stock on stock boost, blown front apex seals. Guess where the 9.7 rotor was.

The owner was pissed when I told him he needed a replacement rotor and rotor housing. He was even more pissed when I told him mazda had put the wrong rotor in, and that is likely why it blew as soon as it got a little carbon buildup on it.

Here's some pics of the reman quality you can expect. Post 93 and 94. I dont agree with everything this builder says (by far), but I can confirm their findings with the remans and I agree that I probably would be more prone to tear one down and clean it up before use than just pop it in and run.

https://www.rx7club.com/forum/showth...1&page=3&pp=40

 

i think my most recent story is actually of an RX7 store engine, the oil pump gear lock nut was completely loose and the engine would have failed in about 100 miles if i didn't catch it. i felt sorry for charging the customer to fix their builders mistake..

 

how'd you find out about that? was it making noise or something, or did you have the front cover off for some other reason?

 

While we're at it, the guy who build my motor used the teflon spacer on an s4 front cover casting. Needless to say I had a oil pressure problem. I've still got the space in my garage somewhere. Half of it is nice and pinched....

 

don't ask me why but i grabbed the gear and rocked it just to be sure it was tight, low and behold it was loose as hell. i had to almost plead with them to allow me to remove the front cover to check it without voiding the warranty with them. the nut was already wearing into the lock collar. (they ship their engines without the oil pan installed to fit in the mazda reman crate)

 

Reminds me of the time a guy brought me his car and a $4200 pettit FD motor to install...he'd bought it before he found out about me (kentuckians, heh). Well, the motor had a crack in the front cover right where the oil fitting goes in, and I knew it would leak if installed. The owner was afraid for me to tear it apart since it'd void warranty, so I called pettit and talked to them. And they seriously tried to act like I didnt know how to do a front cover job.

I went ahead and did it anyway.

Speaking of which, anybody ever see the "streetporting" pettit does on their $4200 engines? I've seen 3 of them now, all with receipts that clearly said "streetport", and all 3 had the "chicken scratch" version streetport, where they basically scribble a grinder across each intake port for about 3 minutes to clean up the castings a little and call it a day. You could still see the dark gray stock casting in about 70% of the port area. The exhaust was more of the same, you could still feel the stock "dimples" in the lower corners of the exhaust ports, that is how little they took off. Now, I do not claim to be a porting god or anything, and my **** is not BDC mirror smooth when finished, but at least I change the shape of the port to actually make a difference.