New motor that has been sitting a year?
 

Just looking for some advice. I am looking at purchasing a pretty nicely modified 13b block, motor has been in run in for 1000ks before he pulled it out. (I believe he crashed the car). The motor has been sitting for a year.
The owner has been turning it over by hand every month he says and putting oil in to keep the seals working.

My question is, before I look at outlaying a bit of money, is will this motor be fine to chuck straight back into my car without pulling it down? Perhaps put some oil in the housings etc and turn over before firing it?

What's your opinions? I don't want to purchase if the motor possibly needs pulling down and checking as defeats the purpose of what I'm doing!

Cheers.

sounds like he's taken care of it in terms of making sure it was stored correctly. There is no guarantee that he actually did what he says he did however. I wouldn't buy any used motor without doing a compression test. Hook a transmission or bellhousing with a starter to it and hot shot it with a battery. It won't be as good as doing it while the motor is hot, but at least you'll know if you're wasting your time.

I agree that the owner seems to have taken care of things. The bottom line is that there is always risk associated with buying a used engine without warranty. This is much of the reason the purchase should be noteably cheaper than buying fresh.

Also, cold compression tests can be very misleading. Would it reveal a completely dead rotor? sure. But testing things at proper temperature shows the true health.

Personally I'd pop it open regardless if I was buying it.

You'll have peace of mind at the cost of some soft seals and another break in, as long as you're comfortable re-assembling it.

1 yr is no big deal if it has been sitting inside.

I had a TII motor sitting for 5 yrs and fired it right up and it ran mid 13s. It ran for 5 yrs after that.

I don't think you need to worry about it.

Yea, it would be a shame to buy it and there potentially being something wrong. I haven't re-assembled a rotary yet, only watched dvd's of how it's done, and it seems well within what I am capable of doing.

However, when you pull a rotary down, how do you get the apex seals back in once the corner part of the seal has separated from the main piece? And is it just a matter of replacing the rubber seals basically and put it back together?

It's a $12k odd motor which has been on trademe for ages (nz version of ebay) and he has reduced it to $5k to get rid of it, so seems like a pretty nice deal.

This is ideally what I wanted to hear haha. But really want to be safe about it also! Hmm.

It all boils down to if you trust the guy you're buying it from. Or know where he lives :)

Sorry forgot to answer this. All seals come in 2 pieces (well, except OEM which can also be 3 pieces) new. You just need a very small amount of superglue and something flat like a piece of glass.

And yes assuming everything is good inside you'd just need to replace the rubber sealing o-rings (I use hylomar to help hold them in place). Maybe the front cover gasket if they didn't use the metal one.

If you've never put one together and want to learn how now would be the perfect time :)

Thanks a lot for the info dude, I think I'll purchase it and then decide once it gets here on what I will do.