Sorry to hear about yet another FD scammer. As said many times vet and re-vet anyone or any shop before you schedule work. The good ones will give you a quote and stick-to-it.

 

I deleted the posts because AM is the scum of the earth. Right up there with Elite.

 

I always feel so bad for those fd's sitting outside (or inside) of that shop. That's 20 or so fd's you don't want to buy, unless you want to spend a lot of money to redo and save them.

 

So a few questions here:

1) Is this a brand new motor mazda is cranking out now, not a reman?
2) These are ready to drop in and go without rebuilding or othewise messing with? I'm assuming the $1000 in gaskets and such is for all the accessories on the outside of the engine (exhaust manifold, LIM gaskets, etc.) rather than the inside. Is that right?

 

1. Yes...new Mazda built keg
2. Yes ...drop in after installing your peripherals. The $1K is for new gaskets , seals , nuts & bolts for the peripherals.

 

Gotta chime in and ask, is there still an issue with Mazda testing these with plain water and thus causing the coolant passages to corrode while still in-box waiting for purchase?

I bring this up because I replaced my old blow'd up motor with a brand new-in-box keg and I was quite suprised to see how rusty the coolant passages looked (from the outside looking in from where the water pump would sit, I did not open the engine). I was told to thoroughly flush the engine so that's what I did. Ran fine. Fast forward to today (about a year and a half after install) and I'm beginning to have to top up the coolant from time to time, which I didn't need to before. Coolant is also beginning to yellow, even though I just changed it again no more than three months ago. I'm beginning to suspect a coolant seal failure around the exhaust portion of the combustion chamber which might be pushing exhaust gasses into the system.

A failure occurring this quickly after install is pretty poor but of course this is all just speculation talk, because I have not opened it up to investigate (waiting till winter). I'm contemplating my options of which buying another new keg is one, but that's why I'm asking, is rust in the coolant passages of engines which have sat after factory testing still an issue?

 

This by the way, is what I'm referring to...



Again, not trying to scare anyone off or anything like that, but I would love to hear that those who recently purchased new engines did not see the same thing.

 

i have built 7 new Mazda engines during the last year and have found without exception a fair amount of rust deposit within the coolant passages. i of course cleaned it out and don't have an opinion as to whether it would cause an issue. i would think it would be smart of Mazda to add something along w the coolant to avoid this.

for instance:

 

Would be good to hear from other crate motor buyers.
The one we bought from Ray Crowe in January had a small amount of water in it but it was not rusty.

 

I bought a new engine and immediately tore it down.
Wanted a spare engine to store away and it had some rust also.
The rust cleaned up fine and didn’t do any harm.

 

Wonder why Mazda does not drain out all water before pack & ship ?

 

Probably due to the corporate bean counters. It's easy thing to do, but it's an extra step that costs a little time & labor. Just doing a gravity drain will always leave a little bit of coolant trapped in the keg, unless they add a step to completely blow it out dry with a pressurized gas (dry compressed air, nitrogen, etc.), then cap all the open ports to keep moisture out during shipping.

How much water is typically found in these kegs when delivered anyway? Small tiny puddle, or quarts worth?

 

While it sucks that there's some sludge in all Mazda tested engines, just to assuage some fears: I run all the engines I build on my engine dyno and get the exact same amount of deposits even though I replace the water from the 250 gallon tank I use as the water break/engine feed. Its nothing to worry about and is just the nature of the beast, so do a reflush on install with pure distilled and call it good. These engines go on to get the crap beat out of them for 45+ minutes at a time doing sprints.

 

These were mine from Mazda. Opened for port port and swap apex seals

 

Those ports look shitty and jagged, I'd smooth them out with a flapper wheel ASAP.

 

I am a man of my word.... i promised I would not show the secrets.

 

The secrets are meaningless. There is no secret sauce on these anymore. The rew is almost 30 years old. You could easily find old ported plates from each major engine builder. Anyone wanting to copy something is pretty late to the game at this point.

 

Agreed 100%, but if I give my word I stick to it!!! Regardless how meaningless.

 

its not possible! even if you drain all the water with the drain plug, there still is a bunch in the engine (and plenty of oil too)

 

Both of the FD short blocks I’ve received had water in them. One had about half a gallon or so. The other had a lot less. My favorite is when the guys at the warehouse tip the boxes over and break the ear off the rear iron, then just send it anyways.



~ GW

 

"My favorite is when the guys at the warehouse tip the boxes over and break the ear off the rear iron, then just send it anyways."



half of the new motors i have received look like they have been upside down at some point. the oil soaked box in the picture arrived last Monday. the motor was lying on it's side in the container. fortunately it was not injured.

 

Do they come with a new oil pan as well?
Hard to see from existing sales images...

 

Beautiful job! Also the thread you posted about AM is gutting to read, really feel bad for the folks burned like that. Have a project I'm going to be sending to someone who I think is really, really good at what he does and seems like a nice enough guy, but this got me really second guessing and wanting to make sure I get a solid quote, time frame and pay after the work is done since I'm buying almost all the parts anyways except the Haltec 1500.

After this car, I'm going to invest the time to just start working on my own cars. Really appreciative of this forum.