About how long should it take to tear a long block down and transfer it all over to another shortblock?

 

Depends on your level of experience, what (if any) mods you are doing, whether you're doing a hose job at the same time, etc. To do a meticulous job figuring 3-4 hours per day, figure on about a week for the average guy. If I had shortblocks sitting around ready to swap stuff over onto, I could probably do it in the better part of an 8 hour day (again, being fairly meticulous).

 

**** I can handle that. Probably won't get but an hour a day at best, so it might take me a few weeks, but beats the hell out of a 3k charge just for labor.

With the change over, are most of the parts basically straight swap, meaning I don't neccessarily need any rotary specific tools, and all I am really doing is making sure everything goes to the same place it was on the old block, or is there alot of "technical" steps above just moving the pieces from one puzzle to the next? I mean, I know it's probably all "technical" but, well, I guess I could say plug and play but I know it's not that easy. Hope you know what I'm getting at because I don't

 

Also, and I am assuming the answer to my question is "yes dumbass" but would having the shop manual help for part identification, or is it that detailed? I read through your (rotaryressurection) writeup about a million times the last day, and I'm familiar with most of what you are talking about, but some parts I am unsure of which ones are which to be honest (I know, ****** newbs ).

Also, is there a gasket kit I will need for the motor swap?

I think the only mods that will be done is I will have the wastegate ported at the shop that I have already talked to (and have them tune it as well) and replace the fuel pump with the denso pump.

 

Other than the flywheel, which requires that big *** socket and a strong impact.



the vacuum hose/rack connections are a bit challenging for most people, but other than that there is nothing overly special about it. You will need a blown up version of the hose diagram, especially if you plan to do a hose job.

Once you have it in front of you, and compare it to the pictures and descriptions that I wrote, it should become fairly obvious, even if you dont know ALL the terminology. If by some chance you got a little ways into it and still don't have any idea what you are doing, it's probably best to stop...some of the hardest jobs I am given involve an overzealous owner who was led astray by friends or the forum telling them "rotary engines are easy to work on", them tearing it apart, realizing they didnt know WTF they were doing, and calling me to bail them out. Often I charge them as much, or more than, what I would have charged had they simply brought it to me first...because now not only do I have to do the work, I have to sort through their screwups and lost/broken parts.


IF the engine is original and staying stock twin sequential with emissions, yes you'll need a full gasket set for the engine. I normally get mine from atkins, and the kit includes coolant seals and some other small orings for the internals, front cover gasket etc. and accessories gaskets such as turbos, downpipe, ACV, etc. IF you don't want the coolant seals, but do want the gaskets, then I'm not sure where to tell you to buy the kit from as I havent dealt with any others. The new intake manifold gaskets are metal (and reuseable), while the originals were paper (not reuseable). Water pump etc. gaskets are still paper.

If your engine has already been gone through once, then it likely has the reuseable metal intake gaskets. Turbo gaskets are also metal and are usually reuseable. This means you could save a lot of money by just replacing the few remaining paper gaskets...water pump etc. and simply order them one by one from mazda, malloy, atkins, etc. This is often how I do it, assuming the engine has been gone through at least once (as most have).

 

lol.. the day i made this post i went out in the garage and pulled it rather quickly.. ihor's writeup helped me a lot. thanks a lot.. heres some glory pics.

 

It won't take you that long, but it won't be a simple pull something off from engine 1 and then put it on engine 2. You'll be starting from the outside and going in on the first engine to remove things. You'll be going from the inside out on engine 2; so you'll have to basically wait until you have engine 1 completely bare to the short block.

I would also take this time to recondition parts like the fuel system (fuel lines, injector o-rings, grommets, etc), new coolant lines, test/replace sensors, omp lines, etc.. Your time will end up being taken by waiting for replacement parts more than anything.