What surprises me is that the person who made this thread wanted to know what upgrades to give his vehicle so he could drive it the longest amount of time without having to spend a ton of money on mechanic fees, and its being suggested that he should be
What about the transmission? If you're dropping the clutch from a dig all the time, something's bound to break, which is going against what everything this post was originally posted for... Also, I can see how redlining a few times every time you drive can be good for the rotary in cleaning out deposits, but redlining all the time through every gear? Can someone please explain to me how that will make your car last longer?!

 

PSH! Only the most badass standard set for 2-stroke oils! Well... maybe

People using rotary engines for aviation have been doing it for years and they tear down and rebuild their engines on a schedule.

 

haha im laughing,

Redlinig your car is good for the engine ? yes/no?
I didnt mean doing grand prix starts and powersliding every corner, i can see how it could have come across,

funny

 

Surely no one exists on the planet that never redlines the car every time they drive it, thats why i bought mine, and i love.... and i do mean love to clean out those carbon deposits at any opportunity, lmao

What is detonation then exactly, i thought it was igniting the mix too early so it trys to send it the other way, im kinda new

 

Got 80k on my reman, 148k on chassis and turbos. Daily driven, boosting every time I drive it. It's all about taking care of it. Changed oil/filter every 2k with ONLY Mazda filters and Valvoline 20w-50.

But I could be the exception.

 

Wrong, sorry.

 

Well in that case,I will be looking forward to your thread saying "Oh no,I think I just popped my motor!"

 

Put in a good water injection kit !!!!

 

I don't.
Read.

 

I'm curious about which model you're "Importing", and why nobody has replied to that yet.
Have you looked into this yet? If not, start searching for MANY topics about it. It's not easy.

 

St Lucia is not in the US.

Dave

 

Oh...My bad. I did'nt look at his location.

 

All the things you and others specified are good and ESSENTIAL except:
I've never heard of getting a vented hood, but it makes sense given the high underhood temperatures (much is from the pre-cat though).
The engine should be redlined from time to time to keep it clean.
Oil is oft debated. But bad quality synthetics are definately a no-no. Good synthetics should be listed in the FAQ.

The following site has a good project car. Besides many performance upgrades, they also get heavily into reliability upgrades. Every one I've ever seen in fact. They say you can can some major power gains (without losing reliability), with just some bolt-ons. Something to consider.
http://www.sportcompactcarweb.com/projectcars/
Besides things you and others mentioned (these are all ESSENTIAL):
Replace all vacuum lines with silicone ones.
Retune the ECU to run a bit rich. ECU must be retuned again after every power upgrade, like removing the pre-cat.
Turbo timer.

Other:
On the subject of driving hard, the rotary takes high rpms pretty well. Poor FD reliability stems mainly from the components I and others are telling you to replace.

On the subject of FD horror stories, they're all true. It's usually NOT the owner's fault, you MUST replace the things people are telling you to replace or you will have a very unreliable car. Find a rotary specialist; other mechanics scratch their heads with FDs. Do all that and the FD should be reliable. Us FC drivers don't have to deal with bad FD components. Those of us who don't buy lemons have cars that never give us any real trouble.

Regular maintenace is a must on any car. Good quality oil (at least API SX, where X is highest letter available) and good quality gasoline (Chevron, Texaco, 76 or Shell, plus some minor brands I won't list) are helpful to keep the engine clean.

 

A propperly prepared, tuned and maintained rotary is an extremely reliable and long lived powerplant. Even greater than the average reciprocating piston engine. Mazda won (outright) the 24 hrs of Le Mans with a rotary - perhaps the most grueling engine endurance race on the planet. Mazda is the only Japanese manufacturer to do so. The vaunted (and well deserved) quality of Toyota's powertrains has never done it. Mazda did it because of the inherent reliabilty of the rotary design and a factory team of engineers who knew what they were doing.

There is alot of misinformation on this board spread by members who cannot hold a candle to those Mazda engineers. But there are also members who have written alot of big checks over the years learning through individual trial and error what works and what doesn't. You're task is to try and separate the wheat from the chaff.

My advise: don't believe the "rotaries are unreliable" crap. But accept as an immutable law of nature that you cannot shortcut or shortchange propper preparation, tuning and maintenance of a rotary. If you're a shadetree mechanic and want to mod a rotary start your efforts with a very big checking account.

 

I have this same argument on mustang site...to them rotaries are cursed POS. Any engine could end up as POS if they got beat the heck out of it. Rotaries got a bad rap from the begining this was because they were mistreated. No one know jack about them...not to mention the complex sequential turbo system...at the time mechanics were scratching their heads...

 

If the Mustang GT folks tried to get 196 hp/liter out of their engines (which would be the same specific power output as a stock FD), how long would their engines last?

 

To address your original question of maximizing longevity:
1) Start with a well-built motor. Mazda remans are good, but sometimes have an out-of-spec component in the mix. Aftermarket rebuilders range from crap to excellent, but are not cheap. If you want the engine to last longest, you ideally want all brand new housings for the best possible tolerances, surface finishes, and hardness. Use the best quality o-rings and seals and replace as many as possible.

2) Improve cooling system to keep engine temperatures as even as possible. Run it around 200-220F. I'm not convinced cooler is better, but 200f-220f is a whole lot better than the original stock system did. So installing a bigger radiator and changing the thermoswitch will help avoid the high temp events much better. Change the coolant every year to help keep deposits from junking up in the cooling passages.

3) Drive the engine gently for at least 5 minutes at the beginning of each drive, and drive it gently for the last couple at the end. Idling is IMHO just time to develop more heat soak when you shut it off. Turbo timers don't work - they just put the car through more heat-soaking idling.

4) Boost = higher temps. Higher temps = shorter engine life. Period. Choose the least amount of boost for your needs if engine life is a concern. Past experience shows that with proper maintenance, a stock ported motor will last 75-100k if it's well maintained and luck is on your side. Lower boost = longer life on average. The less time the engine spends driving under boost, the longer it will last. Boost slowly kills engines, and that's that.

5) I don't think you will find 'bad' synthetic oils. Use a quality oil, synthetic or mineral based, and change it frequently enough to avoid much fuel dilution. Many folks change at 2k. Make sure the oil injection system is working, and use premix if you're paranoid about it.

6) I don't think gasoline matters too much, except to always use sufficient octane. IMHO, it matters a whole lot more to make sure the injectors are clean and flowing to spec since dripping or sticking injectors run rich/lean and either one will substantially increase EGTs.

7) If you're using a tunable ECU, tune for reasonable EGTs, possibly have a low power and high power setting. With the low power setting you can have the tuner set it up for lower EGTs.

Dave

 

From what I gather four (very general) factors play a crucial role in engine longevity:

1.) proper cooling
2.) proper fuel management
3.) proper upkeep (replacing seals, vacuum lines, filters, oil, etc.)
4.) and proper driving habits

I'm glad someone mentioned the bit about turbo timers not being the ideal way to end a hard driving session. A few minutes of softer driving is always the best.

------------- FYI ----------------
The car is an efini rx-7 type R.

The specs: http://specs.amayama.com/specs-mazda...-august/14051/

 

Meh, close enough as a general list. I'd do all the specific things people mentioned though, as they're pretty standard (not just the hodge-podge they might seem to be). The link I gave will say why. And one more thing I forgot, which goes with #1: never ever ever allow the engine to overheat. When the temp gauge (aftermarket I hope) goes up: don't exit, find a nice place to park, etc. Just pull over.

The reason for the turbo timer is b/c, I presume, you don't boost at idle. I've seen a turbo in one of my lab classes and it glows orange hot (not just red hot), even at low throttle & low rpm. Now imagine leaving stagnant oil on the turbo bearing when you immediately shut your car off. Ouch. Doesn't the 1st turbo kick in at 1500rpm? How slow do you drive during cooldown? (35mph in 5th??) I dunno, but I've only heard of idling your car, not slow driving. The purpose is to cool the turbo so it won't fry the bearing and bearing oil when the oil stops moving.

 

This isn't the lab, and these are watercooled turbos. None of your observations have the slightest thing to do with an FD. Letting the car idle to "cool down" DOES NOT WORK.

 

You didn't read the rest of the thread at all? Or any of the countless other threads on this forum?

There has not been a single turbo failure on an FD attributed to coking.

You are applying 10+ year old knowledge (that only really applied to the older more primitive oil designs of that time) to a car with turbos that are not even oil cooled.

 

Heyy guys, I'm not siding with anyone when I ask this, but why is it that even though the stock turbos are water-cooled that so many twin turbo FD owners are still using turbo timers? Is it denial or lack of knowledge? I'm just curious because there are so many threads pointing out how useless the turbo timers are and people continue to use them.

 

??

If you see your FD turbos glowing orange when you park it, something is wrong. All it takes a couple minutes of not driving hard.

Don't you have a boost gauge? Anyone with a boost gauge can tell you that.

It seems to me that what you've heard is not based on any sound experience or understanding of fundamentals.

Slow driving works because there is incoming airflow to keep the coolant and oil cooler. If you had a boost gauge, you might already know that your right foot has complete control over whether the car is boosting or not.

Idling relies on the fans, which don't run constantly, to provide airflow. No airflow leads to higher temps.

The issue you allude to is called 'oil coking'. In your search you'll learn why the water cooled FD turbos *don't* coke oil. And dump that sport compact car - the article is written by someone who obviously has no experience with FDs and what he learned from his non-FD "tuner" friends. The fact that he recommends turbo timers and "Knock Alerts" is really quite funny if weren't for the fact there are probably FD owners out there bulding up their car in this image.

Dave

 

This is turning into a pretty good thread, lots of good information here.

Just for another data point, my current engine (which I ported and built) has over 10,000 hard miles of primarily 15 to 17 psi boost, primarily with my old BNR stage 3 setup and now with a healthy single. I barely drive the car, so when I do I am on it quite a bit. Compression checked out not to long ago to a nice even 105 psi across the board

One thing I've noticed since removing my a/c system---my coolant temps stay much more stable, and are much more likely to hang around 85 to 90 degrees. With my old SMIC installed, seldom did my fans come on when I was driving on the street, even boosting the car repeatedly on the highway. Without the condensor in the way of the rad, you're getting alot more airflow to it. Of course, now I have a blitz fmic installed, so we'll see what happens now

 

Must be. We have a lousy old turbocharged Pontiac engine in the lab. And it's 20 years old, btw. I guess that explains the discrepancy.

As for that sport compact car web article, it matches other sources I've read, and what's being said in this thread in fact. Except in regard to the turbo timer and ECU retuning. But ECU retuning should be necessary to keep the engine from running lean whenever you upgrade the exhaust/intake/etc., no?