Long story short, its time for a rebuild and i'm weighing the options on how I want to go about doing it. My big question is, should I just buy a rebuild kit from a shop like RA or Pineapple or buy all the parts from Mazda. The only reason I am considering buying from Mazda is because when we go through mazdaspeed we get parts at 60% of list.


Questions

1. Am I going to save any money by going through Mazdaspeed
2. If I save any money, is it worth the hassle?

 

Personally I would do the rebuild.

It's much more customizable and, if done correctly, you stand a *very* good chance of having much higher compression numbers with a rebuild than you do with a reman/new engine from Mazda.


You purchase items directly from MazdaSpeed for 60% off???

 

I think he was asking who he should purchase the kit through. I say deal with Atkins, you dont have to run their seals if you dont want but they will beat any other pricing you find, I think.

 

RA has the cheapest kit for us normal people that dont build motors in bulk. Hehe

 

I just put a motor together with the RA kit and if I could do it again, I wouldn't use their soft seals (I've had good results with their Super Seals). They just throw a bunch of orings in a bag. It's hard to tell them all apart when they are very close in size and you don't have them in OEM bags with OEM part numbers. Also their inner coolant seals have a questionable reputation and the viton oil control rings don't fit as well as the OEM ones do. These issues may not matter as much for an experienced builder but for a first-timer (like myself) they were frustrating.

 

Mazda Motorsports all the way. Much cheaper than anyone out there.

 

i always buy the aviation basic kit and then buy the mazda oem coolant seals cuz i dont like the aviation ones

 

Stay away from RA kit. I just did a build with there seals and just broke the engine in with 1000 miles. Its now overheating for no reason, so I may be pulling the motor again to replace the seals with oem seals from Mazda.

 

Thats correct. I'm getting the parts to do a rebuild not thinking about buying a reman.


We do buy them directly from Mazdaspeed but we get parts for 40% off/60% of list price. If a part costs $100 from a dealer we get it for $60.





New question, does anyone know if Mazda has a part number for a rebuild 'kit" or am I going to have make a shopping list on my own?

 

Are you 100% sure it was the seals? I also broke an engine within 1000 miles. They were Atkins but I doubt it was the seal's fault. Seals don't just break for the hell of it, they break for a reason, no matter what brand they are.

 

i think he means stay away from the coolant seals. cuz in my opion they wont seal very well not like the mazda ones. and the super seals cause housing flaking. but no teh apex seal cannot cause over heating at all

 

Yes they do. Call them up. Give them your member number and tell 'em what you want. Almost as simple as talking to Ray Crowe.

 

Good deal, thanks.