I bought a fd that needed a motor, the previous owner told me that the engine was recently rebuilt by Check Point Engineering in Sacramento. But for some reason, the engine only lasted a few thousand miles. Well today i tore down that motor and i was disgusted at what i found.
1. Instead of lapping the side housings, of just leaving them alone, the shop either used a small angle die grinder with a sanding disc or a orbital sander. It left little small circles on the surface. At least they were consistant, they sanded all four surfaces of the side housings.
2. They did not use the little rubber insert on all the corner seal. The last time i bought a new corner seal it came with the rubber insert.
3. Some of the apex seals were in a lot better condition than the others and the apex seal springs were full of carbon. The previous owner paid for a full rebuild. This leads me to believe that they did not change all the parts that they charged the customer with.
4. Although the rear rotor housing had 90ish psi of compression, the rear rotor housing were shot, the chrome was flaking in a few places. I dont know how long it would have lasted if one of the apex seals in the front did not break.
5. They bypassed the ast by running the hose on the thermostat housing back to the bottom of the radiator. The car did not have any pressure release for the coolant.
The only thing good about the rebuild was that the oil pan did not leak, but then again the engine only had a few thousand miles on it before it broke. I cant believe that they could consider this a full rebuild. Take this any way that you would like. I just tell you guys what i found when i opend up the engine.

 

How much did you get the FD for? Thats all that matters, the engine is fixable.

 

That particular engine is not fixable, since the only thing thats reuseable are the rotors, e shaft and the stationary gears. I ended up buying a good used engine. I already knew the engine needed to be replace when i bought it so i bought at a fairly decent price.

 

On closer inspection, i found out that the rotor housings were basically "honed out". There are scratches all over the rotor housing. I guess the rebuilder decided to resurface all the sideplates and rotor housings by hand.