(Disclaimer: This is only what Ive been told through the grapevine. Please feel free to fact check me. The purpose of this thread is to discern the truth for all of us.)

Well, it has been about two years since the cast mold for the front and center irons at Mazda’s Hiroshima manufacturing plant has allegedly died. Living here in Japan, I have some connections to a few reputable figures that state their sources have claimed theres no plan to remanufacture the molds. Yes it is essentially hearsay, but stands to reason as dealerships here state it is indefinitely discontinued.

It’s come at no surprise that all of the remaining assembled short blocks and irons have been bought out by scalpers like Trust Kikaku and others. Im certain soon that will be wiped out as well.

Has anyone heard anything that supports or contradicts this? Or anything other than this at all?

What do you plan to do when your side seal clearance becomes out of tolerance upon next rebuild or suffer a coolant jacket failure?

Interested to hear from you!

 

This is depressing.

 

Maybe we will have to all go Billet. Not cheap, but the aftermarket can fill the gap.

 

Someone will fill the gap. If there is that size market someone will start casting iron plates, one of the Australian GTR specialists has started casting their own iron RB blocks as its a more cost effective and street friendly option than full billet.

 

if true, not a surprise. i have no doubt that good old capitalism will provide our needs.

not the high (high) dollar race only stuff, rather cast iron dual purpose... the challenge will be the rotor housings.

ten years from now totally non Mazda 13BREWs probably will be commonplace.

 

I have no idea if this rumor is true or not, but even if we assume it's true that the casting molds are no longer usable, I would think Mazda would have retained all of the necessary intellectual property (IP) data needed to produce & reproduce those molds in the first place (i.e., drawings, blueprints, CAD files, etc.). Which means that if they had the motivation plus a profitable business case to do so, they could start reproducing them again.

 

If you know anything about castings, molds, and foundries, you'll understand how expensive just the tooling alone costs to replace. Casting manufacturing relies on volume to see ROI. This is why small batch casting never financially works out, typically you'll explore other avenues like billet machining. I would bet that since the rotary engine has been in legacy mode for quite some time, this is a small blip on the financial calendar of such a large company, and it doesn't align with their future revenue. It's sad, but it's business.

IF that rumor is true, we should be thankful that they've been supporting such a legacy product for so long. The same cannot be said about a lot of other platforms, and going forward with our new disposable ethos with car manufactured today, I think this will more and more become the regular.

 

^Oh I do understand the high costs of tooling... That's why my comment states "Which means that if they had the motivation plus a profitable business case to do so, they could start reproducing them again." Odds are that they will never have enough volume to see a ROI or any profit within a reasonable time frame - the worldwide market for 13B REW irons is just too small for that.

 

Mazda does a lot of small batch manufacturing. i checked, Mazda USA has enough irons to to like 30 cars, and they probably sell ~100 cars worth a year, maybe more now that the engine assemblies are really really expensive

the dealership ive been affiliated with has sold ~2-3 engines worth of parts a month (either engines, or parts to rebuild them) since the late 90's, which if you do the math is like ~1000 engines, and that is just to one dealership. if you do the math, we're also old, lol