Soo after I got my rebuilt done I kept having coolant issues. During WOT runs it would spit the coolant from the overflow, which was weird. No over heating, nor temperature fluctuations at WOT. It didn't smoke and it wasn't hard to start either.

There was pressure in the coolant system though... that was fishy... Basically as one would screw the coolant caps off you could hear a swoosh sound. My mechanic and I tried everything to figured it out without taking apart the engine. Finally after TONS of troubleshooting we bit the bullet and tore it apart at his house.

This is what we found:



son of a b... I saw when my engine was put together and that guy wasn't present.

so after we got replacement parts which included new apex and coolant seals (though the old ones didn't even have 1K on them) we put it together.








^my ride waiting patiently in the background for it's new heart...




^just some eye candy.

So far the car has 1k miles, no issues so everything seems good. This is with only mild boosting so I'm gonna put 1k more before I go for a retune and call it day. Keeping my fingers crossed

 

So this engine just recently died?

I'm a tad confused----was it (re)built with a failed iron? That section shouldn't break out like that unless the engine is pretty badly overheated.

 

Boy! That photo of the area around the seal is ugly. I cringe to think about it.

 

Rich,

we are confused as well... We used my usuable pieces for my rebuild and my engine has never over heated. Not on me and not with my builder so yeah we are at a loss.

 

Montego---Oh man I feel your pain. WTF went wrong. I hope that you get her back on the road safe and sound. F**k When are we going to see your ride for once???

Best of luck dude.

BTW who's rebuilding it now???

 

How often have you changed the coolant in the history of those irons?

 

My thoughts exactly - that looks like a corrosion-related seal-wall failure.

Dave

 

Nothing a little JB Weld can't fix.

Next time run Evans NPG+ and you won't have this kind of issue with dissimilar metals sandwiched together with an electrolytes between them.

 

I've had this car for now 11 years and 100K miles and I'm not sure exactly. I didn't do it regularly or religiously as an oil change (every 2k miles) I just went about it as in a it's been a while I'd better change my coolant.

The owners manual states ever 15K miles IIRC and I knew I changed it within those intervals.

Not sure if this makes a difference but on my way home from work one afternoon (this was after my last rebuild and I was already having the said coolant issue), that little plastic piece in the back of the block that connects to a coolant hose broke. Luckily I was at a stop light watching my PFC. I pulled over and shut the car off at 100 C , the temps climbed to 112C after shutdown. Certainly not overheating but that's the hottest I've ever seen my car get. After that incident nothing changed, so i'm inclined to think it didn't do anything to the irons.

got me Mike... It's on the road man, and it has 1K in it already and so far so good. Same RnR rotary, we rebuilt it in early sept with a lot of love, didn't quite make sevenstock...

I'll see you guys at the next SD meet.

Makes sense. I'm on it

 

Damn...so you had to rebuild a fresh rebuild?!? That completely sucks if that's the case.

 

I had the exact same failure on my original engine

 

Its too bad that this happened, however, I do like your bumble bee paint scheme!

 

the 15k interval is definitely not sufficient given that the majority of us don't daily drive our cars.

I'd recommend flushing your coolant annually, every two years at the absolute most. That's what killed this iron in my opinion.

There's no need to run Evans, it's certainly an option but not a necessity by any means.