Does it really take 10 - 12 hours just to pull the engine, and another 10 - 12 to reinstall it?? ($800, at an hourly labor rate of $65 - $80). I thought it was in the vicinity of 4 - 5 hours...

 

Depends on your skills. With help from my cousin, we pulled and installed an engine in one day, started about 7:30 am and was hoisting the engine out by 11. Took off the tranny, valve covers, oil pan and accessories and installed them on the new engine and was ready to drop it back in by 3 (ate lunch also). Finished up, cranked it and had it running in time to watch Cops.

 

Ok so in short, shops RAPE YOU on labor for pulling and reinstalling the engine huh?

 

I am at 52k on my original engine...I hope it makes it one more year, pull it and replace it next winter with a built motor. I don't trust many people to work on my car....I would do all the removal and reinstallation myself...and replace everything needed and know it was done and done right. My biggest complaint with getting the rebuilds is the time it takes...I may just buy a core, have it built, so I can pull my motor and replace it all in one day instead of being down for over a month.

I just hope my current motor will hold 400+whp for another year.

 

It depends on what all you do. If you just rebuild the block and not change anything else, you could probabily stay between 3-4K if your used parts are in good order.

BUT:

If your rotors are worn
Your housings are tired
Your motor mounts are shot
You clutch is slipping
You get it ported
You upgrade the intercooler
You do a 3" exhaust
You get a new ECU
You get a new radiator
You get everything polished
You pay Mazsport to instal it all ( I removed it all)

You are looking right at 15K.

Dont ask me how I know.

 

I don't think so. I mean, Rick for example, charges $100/hour and he is really **** about his work (perfectionist). And shops charge by man hours, in the example above, you would have been billed for TWO mechanics working those hours....

The cost for all of the work I listed and parts will be over $10k in my example, but Rick has to charge more an hour working here in the Bay Area than many of the other top shops in the country.

Oh, and to answer some earlier questions, I am replacing the turbos with either the 99s or the BNR Stage 3s, still debating.

 

jesus....... that's alot of money.

I cringe if I have to spend over 1k on a rebuild.

New rotor housings would be nice but I get blown motors for almost nothing and piece them together.

I'm sure you'll be happy but you do learn alot pulling/installing the motor.

 

Dont feel bad my engine was built for over 10k too. But its bulletproof.
Just reading the work order makes me smile.

 

Ahh..man hours. Good point. Thanks for the clarification.

 

To me, there's no sense in rebuilding the motor half-***....(no offense meant). Rick won't even rebuild a motor with used rotor housings, and in my case, mine won't likely be reusable even if he did.

I didn't buy this car because I like working on it, I bought it because I like driving it. I'm not a mechanic and don't pretend to be. My biggest job I've ever done on the car was installing an aftermarket dual oil cooler kit and that was a big enough PITA for me.

And yes, it's a lot of fricking money. I would much rather not have to spend that kind of money but that would mean not enjoying one of the great joys of my life, so, you got to pay to play....

 

Hell yes, that's a lot of money. I go to Rick's too, but just for oil changes, coolant flushes, plug swaps, the cheap, easy stuff. I baby my car and it just turned 29K and I hope I don't have to see Rick for a new engine for a long, long time. I'd cry if I knew I was going to be looking at a $10K bill. That's enough loot for a couple beaters or a nice down payment on a new car. I agree about not doing the job half-assed, however, when it's time to pay, when it rains, it pours!

 

That's why you do it in stages and you start before you actually need a rebuild. The first mods I did to my 7 were boost gauge, silicone hoses and DP after only having my car 4 months. I have since installed PFC, turbo timer, Pettit AST, full exhaust, intake, pulleys and upgraded brakes and purchased 99 spec twins and fuel pump to be installed with my new engine. I still have many items to buy before I'll be ready to install a new engine, but I have stretched the cost over a period of years rather than dropping it all at once.

 

Hi,
I have been thinking about rebuilds for a while now as my car is showing 145000km now but has had a rebuild already before I got it. Dont know how many km since that rebuild though so it is a bit of a worry.

I have been looking at getting a series 8 complete engine with very low km and throwing that in. In Australia a good rebuild is about $4k just for the engine whilst I can get an s8 (99 spec) complete engine with less than 20000 km on it with as new turbos for about $4.5k.

What do you guys think the best way to go is??

Surely the s8 engines have a lot of little fixes that Mazda have made to rectify weaknesses over the years. But, is there any wierd problems throwing the engine in. It should pretty much just bolt in if I use the s8 engine management etc, shouldn't it?

Thanks,

Gordon

 

As an update, my car finally got into the shop today. Rick has been extremely busy, so I've had to wait 3 weeks to get the car in.

As listed in the introductory post, I will be getting new rotor housings, 3mm seals, and a smoggable streetport. Everything will be done RIGHT, no short cuts. At this point, I am going with the BNR Stage 3s unless I can't come up with a good core set (sequential requires better shape core than non-sequential), in which case I will be going with brand new 99-spec turbos.

Other mods are as listed in first post. I also have the custom Stoptech front brake kit on order.

Estimate 5-6 weeks for completion. With luck, I'll be hitting the Cali road courses and auto-x in June.

 

You'll be the first I've heard of running them sequentially.

 

Hey rynberg, what time did you drop your car off? I was there about 4:00 Saturday picking mine up.

 

Not until 5pm... It will be there for the next 5-6 weeks though, so plenty of chances to see it....

 

Well, sorry for the lack of pics, but the motor is apart and I took a good look at it this morning.

Overall, the motor is in good shape, which makes me feel a bit better. Rotors, e-shaft, and side housings are all OK. There are strips of chrome removed from the rotor housings along the edge, and the coolant seals were deteriorating. So looks like I escaped with just new rotor housings, every else can be just cleaned up/lapped.

Clutch disk was still in good condition, so I guess my slipping was due to inadequate clamping force by the stock pressure plate.

Wiring harness is in pretty good shape too. Only a few engine sensors/connectors need to be replaced. Vacuum hoses actually didn't seem that bad, but I didn't look at those too well. Motor mounts are in good condition.

On to the turbos: they are completely toasted. The secondary turbine housing has several bad cracks, the bridge piece is cracked completely in two. Both compressor wheels were shooting oil too. If I end up with the BNRs, they won't be built using MY core!

Oh, and the original FPD was not looking too good either.

All in all, slightly better than I expected.

 

I've seen them go 140,000 plus.

 

Good deal!

I'm going to be using solid motor mounts this time around. Don't ask me why, I just figured why not. Actually, a local friend was trying to sell his parts for a LS1 conversion. While I don't care much for the conversion, I was doing what I could to help out so I bought his solid mounts and a few other things.

My wiring harness was in ok shape. The shielding was just falling off so I'll be rewrapping it with some teflon tape before it goes back in.

Sounds like everything on your end is going just fine! Good luck and I look forward to more updates.

 

Ok, I was able to take some pictures today of the torn down motor and turbos. As a reminder, both engine and turbos have 85k miles.

I humbly apologize for the crappiness of some of the pics, I didn't have a steady hand tonight and my camera is not set up for close-up shots right now (and NO, Max Cooper did NOT take these photos ).

The first four pictures of my turbos -- the manifold's in pretty bad shape for sequential operation. Notice the bridge-piece split all the way through and the two large cracks right to the gasket.






Rotors




Rotor Housings, third pic shows (blurrily) the flaked chrome

 

Front, Intermediate, and Rear Side Housings





Eccentric Shaft

 

My original 120,000 mile turbos looked just like that when I took them off. Exact same cracks and every bit as bad: "bridge" cracked all the way through, many large cracks around the door and large cracks around the manifold opening itself. When I replace those with a low mileage used set of twins they spooled up noticeably quicker even though the shaft play on my old turbos was quite good.

 

Rynberg, am I correct in saying the rotor housings don't look bad at all...and can def. be reused? Or is there something there I'm not seeing?

 

Even without the fact that the chrome is all flaked off along the edges, I wouldn't trust them. Those housings are 10 years old with 85k on them, no way would I reuse them. I suppose some might, but that's not the way to build a reliable good engine that will see a lot of high-rpm and WOT action for extended periods. I'm trying to build a motor that will last several years through dozens of track events, not rebuild a motor as cheap as I can.

Besides, unless there are extremely special circumstances, Rick won't rebuild a motor with used rotor housings.