I finally fired up my new Malloy engine about 1/2 hour ago! It runs and sounds so much better than my old engine, it's unbelievable!

I suspect that I had a blown apex seal the whole time I owned the car. When I tore the old engine down, I found that all three apex seals on the rear rotor were broken, and the rotor was gouged. But I also noticed that the damage on one of the apexes had carbon built up on it... i.e., it had one broken seal all along, and never knew it. I always wondered, since my vacuum was terrible (8 to 10 in. Hg), and it had aweful throttle response at low rpms.

This new Malloy motor has awesome throttle response, and starts up a lot easier than my old one. It is REALLY eager to start when you turn the key, as opposed to my old engine which never wanted to start right.

Now I have to finish filling my tranny (POS Autozone fluid pump broke), bleed my clutch, and put on my hood, and I can take it for a spin! It feels good to have my FD back.

 

I'm jealous! I just spoke to Rob at Pineapple about my rebuild. It'll probably be a month before I see my motor.

Congratulations and enjoy!

 

Thanks James. I'm sure the wait for the Pineapple engine will be well worth it

Another little interesting part of my story. About 30 minutes before I first tried to fire it up, my roomate came out to the garage and was talking to me. He asked if, when I do engine installs (I've done several on other cars), does it usually fire right up? I told him, in my experience, I usually forget something stupid and it won't start.

This time was no exception. First I primed the fuel, then I checked for trouble codes; everything is ok. I tried to start the engine, and it just cranked and wouldn't fire. So I tried again, for about 10 or 15 seconds. Nothing. Then I smelled fuel coming out of the tail pipe. At this point I was pretty bummed, because I couldn't think of anything that I forgot to do. So I was looking around, and remembered unplugging my ignitor when I did the original compression check about a month ago. It was still unplugged! After that, it fired up on the first crank!

 

congrat's, thanks for the help with the gaskets on mine, should be ready to fire up in about a week. thanks again craig

 

Overall, how would you rate the difficulty of the whole process? I will be removing and reinstalling my engine and transmission in about 3 weeks and I am curious as to what I should expect.

On a side note, my engine pulls low vacuum, and has idled poorly since the day I bought it. how did your car idle before (with your potentially cracked apex seal)? I have suspected that this could be my problem for quite some time, but was under the impression that a cracked apex seal would make it really weak.
did you ever take it to the track? did it perform like it should have? (mine traps at 110 so that is another reason why i discounted this theory)


sorry for all the questions, but any help would be appreciated

 

Awesome job paw
However it is really weird that you didn't notice that your seals were messed up until now. Never been in a ride in a healthy FD?!! Maybe the carbon buildup was giving compression on that side. If you had all 3 seals broken on the same rotor then you would be getting like 40 compression all around. Not only would the low end suffer big time from a stop but the good rotor would have to lose horsepower to move the dead rotor.
It is really strange that you didn't have major problems with the car not keeping an idle or really having a hard time taking off and that it lasted that long with 2-3 cracked seals. You are going to enjoy this new motor and your car so much more now. You might even get gas mileage.

ISU what is your vacuum? I wouldn't really go on vacuum unless you knew what it was before and now you see it is getting lower or got lower after a certain spirited driving trip. You would feel down low that the car has a hard time taking off unless you have the idle set at 1000 or over. Also what does the idle fluctuate to? You should see a 300 rpm fluctuation or more with 1 cracked or "thrown" seal. You know a compression check takes about 10 minutes to do once the motor is cold enough? Why not find someone with a tester around you and check it out.
Also about how difficult it is to take out and install a motor....I think it's pretty damn hard and shops should charge more than 1000 to replace a motor honestly.

 

Snook: Only one of the damaged rotor apexes had damage that was covered in carbon. I meant to say that I think I had a single cracked or broken apex seal the whole time I owned the car. As soon as I broke the other two seals, the car was pretty much undrivable (wouldn't idle, barely enough power to go 45 mph). But I have owned the car for about 6000 miles, so it's pretty amazing that I drove it that whole time with a cracked seal. My old engine had no low end at all. It was a total dog off the line, and with the AC on, I had to give it a lot of gas to get it going. I just thought that was the way the rotary engine was... I'm glad I'm wrong! I know I'm going to enjoy this one.

ISU: My car had never idled right the whole time I owned it. When I bought it, it had a blown LIM gasket, causing it to idle at about 2K rpm. After I fixed that, I could never get it to idle right. And it was always hard to start. I had TONS of power at high rpms, though. I never took it to the track, but I raced a Supra TT twice (he was stock except for a catback) and we were very close both times (he won), so I figured my engine couldn't be that bad. A compression check would be the only way to confirm your supsicions of a cracked seal. I wish I had done that.

As far as how hard the engine remove / install? It is somewhat involved and time consuming. There is nothing that is terribly complicated or difficult, but it takes a lot time and patience. My car has been down for about a month (I think?), or maybe 6 weeks. I can't remember.

 

I just got back from taking her for a spin! TONS more low end than my old motor. And I don't know if it's the ACT S/S clutch, or I still have air in my clutch line, but the clutch is a lot grabbier. I almost stalled it several times, just backing out of the garage.

And my 3K hesitation is gone... go figure

 

Good job man! If the igniter was the only oversight, you did well, or you were very meticulous.

Just take'r easy for a few hundred miles and then change the oil.

Jeff

 

Hey, this is mike from down the road, im glad to hear your car is running now. I sure would have liked to check her out before the engion install. But thats OK, i guess ill see you on the street.
mike

 

He really meant to say:

Hey, this is mike from down the road, I can HEAR that your car is running now. I sure would like to beat the **** out of you for making 150mph passes up our residential street at 9pm when my child is sleeping. I also would have liked to have seen the car before the engine install but since you didn't include me like I asked its OK I'll just see your slow *** car on the street buddy!


Paw glad to hear everything is good. I'm almost excited for you. Do you plan on breaking the motor in? Do you know if you got new housings or even rotors for sure? Just from a common sense standpoint I say just break it in (it can't hurt anything and if it helps well that's great too)

 

Oh yeah, I'm definitely breaking it in. So far, I've put about 20 miles on the engine (heh, I don't have much free time), and it's a total blast to drive, even at low boost. It really feels like a different car! I couldn't tell if the rotor housings were new, though. I mean, they were clean, and I looked in the exhaust ports, and the housing walls looked newly machined from what I could tell. I think it's hard to tell without tearing down the motor.

Unfortunately, I'm leaving, this saturday, for Washington DC, where I'm staying for 3 months to do some research for school. My plan was to leave the FD behind (I'd hate to use it as a daily driver, and break in the motor on a long highway trip). But my daily beater ('94 Beretta) sprung a major power steering leak on sunday. That's my project for tomorrow . But, hey, if something goes wrong, I can always take the FD to DC with me

Mike: Yeah, sorry we couldn't get together. Maybe when I get back from DC we can have a little FD chat or something.

Snook: How's your car coming? Is your mechanic rebuilding the engine?

 

Nope, I got a pettit streetported motor. My cars been back up for over a month now I'd say with the new motor just haven't driven it that much lately. I've got this HUGE boost leak and need to figure it out. This is after converting to non seq but since the new motor went in so it was all done at once. I get about 7psi at 3500-5500 and then at 5500 you hear tons of air leaking almost sounding like from the glove box and the boost fades down to hardly any by 6000. Wanna hear something really sad though. Before I got 7 psi I had 3 psi and then a friend I met at rotorfest helped me and he kinda got it up to 7psi. At 3 psi I beat a new mustang gt and I started pulling at about 80mph I couldn't imaging if we were able to go faster!! Either my car is amazing or those gts are sad.

word out

 

If it sounds like the leak is coming from your glove box, that is where the secondary turbo is located. Have you checked to make sure the pipe that bolts to the back of the turbo is tight?

 

Yep. Been there done that When I put mine in I was determined to have everything perfect. Checked all the fluids and caps several times, the wires and ignition harness, yada, yada, yada. Primed the fuel pump and then hit the key. Not a damned thing happened After wondering what I could have forgotten I cycled the aftermarket alarm once and she sprung to life THe alarm was still pissed from hooking the battery up and had the starter kill engaged.

My old motor blew at 98K and my Malloy reman is very strong. I knew it was good news when I opened the shipping crate and turned the flywheel. All 4 of the plastic plugs in the spark plug holes immediately shot across the garage. Yeah baby!

 

That's the intake for the secondary turbo; no boost there.

 

Congrats.

 

Congrats man!!! I've got some questions for you though...

Did you replace your turbos? Did you send them off to have them checked or pull the turbine housings off to verify they were ok?

STEPHEN