Mazda Reman comes with shot coolant seal (O-ring)?
 

I have about 1000miles on my mazda reman. It smokes about 5-10min just like my previous motor with shot O-ring at start. (not as much) I stuck a smog tester into the coolant and it detected about 30HC. I'm not quite sure if thats alot or not. It also shoots back the coolant out after long/hard drive and coolant buzzer.

Could it be possible to have a messed up mazda reman with shot O-ring??

thanks...

by the way, mazda dealer (which i bought the motor from) told me they will charge $180 to check if the motor is ok or not.


anyone gotta mazda reman with shot coolant seal here?

tell them to kiss your ass it is there falt that they sold you a bad engine. i would file a complaint and try to get another new one or my money back.

jesus. im glad my original hasent gave out yet.. i keep seeing posts of low mileage mazda remans failing left and right.

Anyhow. slight/light smoke at startup is normal for first 5 mins or so, but after engine is warmed up it shouldnt smoke at all. if its pushing coolant out is possible the system was overfilled and excess air is causing coolant to be pushed out. BUT if its done that ever since you have gotten the vehical back, i personaly would take it back. If the engine is indeed bad im sure they will not be charging you 180 bucks.... The engine should be under warrenty.

P.S who installed the engine? If mazda did then they DEFINETLY shouldnt be giving you any shit.

I've seen remans crap out (Not detonation) around 100 miles. Mazda has always replaced the motor for free.

So it is possible to get a defective motor with bad coolant seal. I'll dump my $180 and check the motor with the dealer...

$180 for a compression check?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHA

You'd better be positive that gets refunded when the motor is found defective.

Dave

Buying a Reman motor is a total "crap-shoot" Some guys get good solid motors and some get a piece of shit. Apprently, the vendor that remanufactures/assembles these motors has quality control issues.

I hope you can get the dealership to accept full responsibilty for your situation. The problem is that they are going to just put another, possibly shitty reman motor, in your car.

Find a rotary specialist that will do the complete rebuild and R & R for your next motor. MAke sure itsomeone who will stand behind their work.

get the coolant sys pressure tested. how much have you been adding?

Well the parts manager has the motor instock and he has told me if anything goes worng come pick up another one. So as for replacing, its no problem. I'm just sick and tired of having my car in the shop again.

Yesterday, it shoot out some coolant. I didn't fill the radiator up and check the level of the coolant in the tank after leaving it for over night. In the tank, I have exactly at "full". I'm going to drive and see if the "low coolant" light would come on or not. It could be that the coolant was over filled or there was air mixed in the coolant sys.

How much do i add? The coolant is usualy sitting about 2inches below from the top. When it spit out the coolant (the first time) I had to add aprox 2 cans of soda cans of coolant. The 2nd time it spit out the coolant, I did not have to add, because it was still sitting 2inches below the top of the neck, and the tank was indicating at "F".

Make sure your coolant lines are run correctly. I know this sounds stupid, but one of my friends did it when he got his new engine in. He couldnt figure out why it kept dumpting coolant and overheating. Turned out he ran the lines to the AST incorrectly.

Thanks for the inputs! Its been a week since I've quit adding coolant. During the week my motor did not shoot any coolant out.
This mornig at the start, coolant light went on. I ignored it and drove to my work and the light went off in few min of drive. At a parking lot I let the car idle for about 10min and it shoot out some coolant. I'm going to see how much coolant would I have to add tomorrow morning.

*If it needs more than 1 soda can worth of coolant to fill up the radiator, should I diagnose that my o-ring is shot?

thanks

soda can, nice unit of measurement, lol

lol, yea..."soda can".

Anyways, mazda is willing to replace the motor. Only thing is the installation pain, which I'd like to avoid...

dont drive it

they come with a 1 yr warranty with the motor

did u get it from a dealership???

let me know maybe i can help (i work @ a dealership here in socal)

GL

mike

I got it from the dealership. Installation was done in other shop. The mazda parts manager told me that its no problem to exchange the motor, and he has another one comming in 2 weeks. He is pretty nice guy.

I just wanted to "make sure" if something was worng with the motor or not so I wouldn't have to go through the installation again.

Thanks for letting me know Mike!

A friend bought a Mazda Re-man and wanted me to help him take it apart and port it. His original engine had detonated and he did not want to buy a new rotor housing, rotor, and seals etc. which would have cost more.

When we took the re-man apart, we discovered that it had been sitting up for a long time with straight water in it. Because of this there was much electrolysis, but worse, both rotor housings were in very bad condition and were not useable by anyone's standards. Both rotor housings rear edges were the rear corner seal rides had wore down to the copper underlayer. And it was evident that they polished it down to be smooth hoping it would last a while.

We took pictures and had another witness of use taking it apart. Mazda said we defaulted the warranty because we took it apart, even though it was trash.
He finally got money and new parts to fix it, but it took a lawyer and a year of suing Mazda.

As I always said, you get what you pay for when you go the cheap route. I originally had tried to persuade him from buying the re-man.

one week of dirving without refilling the coolant.
Here is what I've experienced. (by the way, bubble test came neg, plugs were dry when I checked.

After the car is cooled down, I opened the radiator cap and there was this "psHHHH" sound comming out of my radiator. (but it was acutally sucking the air in, because my radiator hose was all flat before I opened the cap. What does that mean?

-5th day the low coolant light was comming on once in awhile and after the car is warmed up, it goes away.

-From inside the car, I could sometime hear the sound of coolant getting sucked in from the passanger side dash.

-I check the res. tank in the morning after the car was cooled down and it was at "F"

-continues to puff out white smoke first 10min of warming up.

-7days later I opened the radiator cap and filled it up to see how much coolant I have lost. It turned out that almost 1/2 Liter worth of coolant was able to fill in.

Now, can I conclude that my mazda reman has shot o-ring?

Did you use new coolant hoses when the motor went in? If your car is low on coolant and the overflow tank is bad it could be a bad o-ring or it could be a bad connection to the overflow tank.

When the engine warms up coolant expands and is pushed into the overflow tank, when it cools the opposite is supposed to happen.

Is the smoke from coolant or oil? If it is oil I'd check the condition of the turbos. If the symptom is exactly the same as the previous engine (10 min smoking) I'd wonder if the problem is the turbos not the engine. Do you run a cat? When cats warm up they burn the smoke from oil.

"After the car is cooled down, I opened the radiator cap and there was this "psHHHH" sound comming out of my radiator. (but it was acutally sucking the air in, because my radiator hose was all flat before I opened the cap. What does that mean?"


Umm.. that means your cap on the AST is clogged and not letting coolant come back into the engine upon cooldown. If it is holding vacuum like this in the system, your O-rings may be fine. If a cap wasn't letting coolant back into the engine on cooldwn, there will be a vacuum in the coolant system, and the coolant level will be low when you open the filler cap (what you are calling the radiator cap). Get a new cap, place it on the AST (make sure the cap has the pressure spring and is reated for 13 lbs, or 0.9 bar), siphon out the coolant level in the overflow tank until the dipstick reads 1/2, and try it for a while.

The buzzer goes off when coolant is low. The coolant expands, covers the buzzer's sensor, and the buzzer stops going off (goes off off?). The overflow spits up due to heat soak. If you have a full overflow AND full engine (full at the filler cap and no air bubbles trapped) WHEN the engine is cold, some will come out the overflow tank while you are driving, but you don't see this. Further, when you shut the car off, heat soak will drive the coolant temps up further, and they wont be cooled down by flowing through the radiator as the water pump is not circulating coolant. Thus, the water temp rises over the operating temp, expands further, and overflows.

These same symptoms occur with O-ring failure, BUT, the coolant system usually will not hold a vacuum, rather the O-ring leak bleeds air into the coolant system on cooldown, which disallows coolant being drawn back into the engine.

Pressure relief caps for coolant systems are actually two way valves. Under pressure (hot running), the main rubber seal on the bottom of the cap seals the coolant system up to the relief pressure (13 lbs on our cars post recall). Then the spring on the cap is pushed against by the pressure, and a little coolant seps past the seal. When the coolant cools down, its volume shrinks (simple physics), creating negative pressure in the coolant system in the engine. If you look at the center bottom of your coolant pressure cap, you see a small metal disc. That disc should be able to be pulled out slightly, with little or no effort (some caps the thing just hangs, but not ours). Further, liquid should easliy be able to move from the back side of the seal through this little passage. If either case is not so, then vacuum builds up in the engine, but coolant does not replace this. Thus your problem.

I hope.

thanks alot for new inputs guys!

Well, it was my first time that there was a vaccum when the filler cap was taken out. 10min of white smoke is from coolant I supose. It smells sweet. and yes I have main cat.
The hose was not changed after installing the reman. The both ast and radiator caps are new from mazda reman....Turbo was replaced with low mileged turbo. I supose its leaking some oil because it puffs out some dark blackish smoke for first few sec.

It could not be the motor, but I still don't under stand why the car smokes for 10min during warm up with sweet smell if its not an o-ring problem.....seems to be everything adds up to be the o-ring problem....if I didn't have the 10min smoke* I would suspect something else....but then again, how could a rebuilt motor come with shot o-ring...damn mazda reman :banghead:

ok I'm tired of this... :rolleyes:
Should I just spend another $800~ or so on labor and install another reman? Mazda is willing to trade with another motor.

No. Replace all your coolant hoses and the AST cap, and pressure test the system. Hell of a lot cheaper than $800.

ok so you still have not had it pressure tested????

I had a reman in for about a week took the car to Summit and was overheating after 5 laps. Couple of sessions later coolant was shooting out the exhaust. Engine never ran right from day one. Ray at Malloy thought it was probably a pinched seal.

My advice is spend the $800

Pressure test was not done, but I just hate to see 10min of white smoke out of my exhaust worring my ass off if its the o-ring or what not. (I did that for passed 1 year with my old motor) I'll take Fritz advice...since it is possible to have a reman motor with bad o-ring.... :) Here goes another $800 out of my pocket.

thanks for your inputs guys! :bigthumb:

Last bit of advice... get the motor from Mazda, and have a shop tear it down, inspect it, and build it right. You'll probably pay a bit more, but be happier in the end. Just my $0.02...

I'm on my reman 20k miles with no problems so far *knock on wood*

Um, dude. Before you go blow a grand, perhaps you should have the system pressure tested, and at the least put on a different set of rad/ast caps. Unless you are independently wealthy, makes sense to me. Motor R&Rs aren't exactly like swapping out a catback or something.

teflon o-rings = mandatory upgrade

got them installed when I had my reman ported....thank you Chris Rogers

Just drive it hard let it sit over night and then check the plugs. If they have water on them then send it back.

I think EJMACK also got a bad reman engine.

It should not be steaming for 10 mins when you start it.

I've had another engine that first started steaming a bit then start running on one rotor and finally not starting without fooling with the plugs. While all this is going on the overflow tank will boil over etc.....

A pressure test is a good idea for sure but sometimes the test fails because you have a leak somewhere else. If it's really bad you should see the champagne bubbles once the car warms up and the thermostat opens. I think the stock thermo opens around 83c or so.

Good luck

This has been mentioned, but not explicitly explained:

The fill cap on the engine has only a seal to the atmosphere. It lets coolant flow freely to and from the AST. The AST cap is a pressure-relief unit that vents to the overflow tank at 0.9 bar (if the coolant recall was performed).

Make sure you have the correct caps in the correct location. If the caps are reversed or faulty, you could lose coolant. Of course, that does not account for excessive steam at start-up.

Caps are both new. I supose there must be something more than coolant systems due to 10min. of white steam during warm up. I did the Champagne bubbles test and there was no bubbles, and plug was dry. But, all these symtom that I get now is almost exactly what I've had before with old motor. After driving 1 yr with those symtoms, the motor started to hasiate when i crank and so on...

I just want to replace the motor now, before its too late (warranty). I know the motor with shot o-ring can last for pretty long time from my experience...

Not tring to be a rehatch bad memories, but could it be possible, you
got PFS'd????

Shop took the new reman, used it on something else,
and rebuilt/fixed your original motor.

Teflon o rings eh?? Duuuh. Damn should of coulda woulda..

^lol, no. I used to live 30sec. away from his shop so I'm really cool with the manager there.

Oh, I noticed one more thing thats wierd about the maz reman. I opened the oil cap and "OMG" theres whole bunch of that white stuff building up from the cap to all way down the pipe. Little is nomal, but its enough to make you remind of the time when you fingered your ex-gf while she had a yeast infection... :rlaugh: ...maybe thats just me.

opps