heh, yea she paid for the "race port" motor, this was a used rotor, housing, iron engine with a full race port which wasn't much bigger than my moderate street port and the bill was $3600... i about **** myself when i saw the reciept and thought to myself "damn, i need to start charging about $2000 more for my rebuilds."

 

Wow, I payed only slightly more than that installed for mine, and it had ported intake and exhaust, plus excellent condition housings. And a fucked up front cover o-ring, but still.

 

yep, all said and done she had close to $5k into her car for a simple rebuild with used housings and engine R+R. she got taken to the cleaners and it wasn't by me.

 

In CA I would suggest Dave at speed machine. www.speedmachine.com.

Man I work in the philosophy you get what you pay for. You guys make me feel bad there are so many builders screwing people so bad. At least do the work you claim you do.

If you are going to do anything in life why not give it 100%.

 

I am running a rebuild from Atkins rotary in Seattle, WA. I had mine street ported, also the sleeves in the exhaust ports were cut out. I think I paid about $1800 not including shipping 3.5 years ago. After 36K miles, still running strong. www.atkinsrotary.com

 

thanks karack for your honest help may be i will be able to use your services in the future. But i do need to follow the most cost effective and practical way of going about a problem like this. the car is my daily driver and i ned to get rolling quick. i am smashing into RX-7 withdrawl. merry christmas every one.

 

Are you running atkins apex seals in it then too ? I have mine done by rotaryresurrection.com and it has atkins apex seals, Ive heard RA and Mazda are better apex seals , especially on anything with turbo.

 

Thats very debatable. Atkins makes good seals, but some say they are too soft. On the other hand, many people say the RA seals are too hard. One plus on the atkins seals is that if you pop a seal, its less likely to damage the housings. I personally saw a motor where he had overboosted and popped a seal, and there was no internal damage at all. He just got a gasket kit and 3 new seals and put the motor back together with no problems.

 

Good question. I'm not sure, it's non-turbo, since they did the rebuild I'll assume they are atkins seals.

 

I bought a street ported N/A rebuild from Atkins as well... Loved it. Put 45k of harder than average miles and it never skipped a beat. The guys over there are great.. does anybody have any horror stories about them? I've never heard one.

 

there is more than a few horror stories about them too, unforunately. their seals are fine, i also had a detonation issue in my engine and chipped a seal, no damage to the rotor or housing whatsoever.

 

Just about any of the major shops will have screwups. About the only ones I can think of I haven't heard something like that about is Rotary Resurrection and Karak's shop, but both of them are pretty much one-man shops. Come to think of it, I haven't really heard anything bad about Banzai racing, either.

 

Atkins seals are just fine.

There's no such thing as a bulletproof motor, hence there's no need for a super-mega-ninja apex seal, either. Use the right fuel, engineering, and tuning for the application and it will all work and come together.

B

 

Wait..... There are NINJA apex seals?! Where do I get those and why didn't anybody tell me!?

 

they're called ceramic and they cost about $1400 a set.

 

I feel a little dicked now. I had a local rx-7 guy in NY here do my car (builds and tunes them) and my bill came out to $5600...considering I had to get a new core because I screwed the old one up bad (blew 5 out of the 6 seals to pieces, and they scratched the housings up), then had a mild port done to it, all the egr crap removed, and a koyo radiator installed, and labor for pulling it in and out. Shoulda just had someone on here ship me a motor and done it myself..but I didnt know any better....

Not to mention he never said anything about my turbo being no good (its coming off the car anyways, so why wouldnt he mention something about it to me I have no idea), so now I got a large paperweight sitting in my driveway. And I still have about $2200 in fuel, tuning and gauges to go. >_<

 

Ooft.. That sucks mang.... Seems a bit overpriced for all of that though. You can get a full rebuild for under 3k... with lots of new parts.

 

If its all new, then its gonna cost you. Rotor housings are over 500 each, and side housings and rotors are expensive as well, so there's at about 3k right there. Figure another grand+ for rebuild kit and the cost of labor, and its really not that horribly expensive.

 

Oh.. I didn't see the part where the WHOLE core was new... My bad. Yeah, that'll cost ya. But yeah, buying an engine, even a blown one from somebody would have been cheaper.

 

WOW, this is alot of good info, i was thinking about calling banzai racing because i live in mid michigan and can't find anyone to rebuild my '87 > '87.5 TII. and i also want to make it alittle stronger but still drivible like with exhaust porting. has anyone thought of making apex and side seals out of titanium? i dont know how that would work but it wouldnt wear like at all would it?

and has anyone heard of this place (hurley-engineering.ltd.uk)? i think last time i was on there site they said they had "long life" apex seals and "dual" side seals as well as making light weight rotors. does any one know if there any good and if there a good compaine to deal with?

 

Banzai is a good guy and builder, and it's nice to have local support in the event of an issue.

Side and corner seals really dont wear much at all so there's no reason to try and make them last longer (at greater expense). Apex seals wear a lot. I dont know about titanium, but they are made with various other materials including ceramics. Usually with high power/modded turbo rotaries the wear is not what gets you, but the forcible breaks due to pinging eposides which you usually cannot even be aware of. All the seals have proven to be breakable.

Hurley seals are regarded by most all north american tuners and builders as far too soft for boost, and absolute junk for making power. Most people recommend and use oem, atkins, ceramics, and a few still like the rotary aviation (myself not included).

 

turblown is doing mine. http://87rx7.blogspot.com/ its more of a straight engine build rather than a rebuild.
i've never heard any horror stories about Elliot, just dumb rumors. I'd say you can expect to pay at least 3G in new engine parts alone. but there is a lot more to consider besides engine parts. its a very expensive process. anyone with an rx as a DD should buy another car if they need an engine re-build.

BTW, i've heard great stuff about karack and k. landeres

 

Hurley seals are pure crap, unless they have drastically changed their design and materials i would never even consider using their seals.

 

yeah I was thinking about that for a bit. But I didnt want to buy a blown motor from someone, and have them lie to me about that it wasnt hurt, and crack it open and find it all banged up. Then Im still out a motor, and more money. So I got a used 'tired' motor, and since the housings were still good, we worked from there.