Aloha all,

This is just a warning to check a couple of things when you get your remans. I just recieved 2 from Malloy and found some "not so good things"

So far On one engine( my customers) I had to remove the front hub to replace it with the unorthodox racing pulley. All went well until I removed the front bolt. When i removed it I noticed that there was NO oil sealing O-ring on the end of the bolt. NOT GOOD! All of the sealant that was on the flange was no a gooy mess as it got contaminated before setting up.

Also the front bolt on this engine was not very tight. It only took myself with a 1/2 ratchet and pipe for a breaker bar. Then i just had to push at abou1/4 strength to get it loose.( It should take like 500 Ft lbs. to get it off..at least)

On MY engine, well first off it got dropped somewhere along the way and the oil dipstick tube and filer flange got wasted! Ray believes they are replaceable parts. No biggy.

I went to pull the front bolt off of mine to check fpor the o-ring. Mine had the o-ring BUT, the bolt was VERY loose. As in I only had to use the 1/2 Ratchet. NO breaker pipe.

I have come to the conclusion that the reman builders( JAX) are torquing the engines to the 13B N/A specs. The front bolt is only 80-98 ftlbs on the N/A engines. That feels like what I had to break loose.

So, not blaming anyone( except JAX! ) But for all that have recently gotten a reman. You may want to keep a VERY close eye on your oil pressure and consumption. And also AT LEAST put a torque wrench on the front bolt and check that bugger. You DO NOT want that coming off while running.

Gotham has seen quite a few odd things when they tear down the remans they get. ( ie: missing bolts oil injectors,etc..)
So beware and take some precautionary measures and check the bolt for the o-ring and proper torque.

NOTE: Make sure you follow the proper procedure for removing the fornt bolt. You do not want to drop a torrington beariong down out of place.

Anyone else with similar experiences please chime in and share what you have (or have not) found

Aloha, Dave @ Kona Motorsports

 

Front bolt torque on the FD is 180-200 foot pounds

Sorry won't let me edit!

 

very informative, good looking out bro.

 

also the front counterweights they use are completely bone stock, not balanced to any degree...this concerns me

 

what's JAX?

i have a reman motor. what could i do to ensure my motor's well being?

 

jacksonville, florida...where they are assembled

 

Jax is the name that is on the blue tag on the front cover. It says assembled by Jax reman company or something like that.

Brian, That is not a good thing to hear. since this is for my single set-up. I assume you figured this out when you built yours up?
Who balanced it for you ?

Quality control is not what it should be for a comapany that just rebuilds engines for mass markets. IMO.

But in our slacker society it really doesn't suprise me that much

your quote is dead on Brian.." If you want something done right, do it yourself!!"

 

rick engman told me lots of issues with balancing/matching and remans...most of the rotor pairs are not of the same code/weight

and it's not detrimental to the engine at stock horsepower levels, but at high power/high rpm applications, it can be paramount

he can balance your assembly at a very reasonable price...send me a PM if you want

 

Also wanted to add that When i took the water pump off for painting the engine and tapping for the water temp sender. I noticed that they( the builders) used the correct gaskets AND a ton of "Hondabond" gasket maker. So much so that it had run into the water jacket area of the block and the pump, housing and thermostat as well. The thermo actually had a bunch of loose sealer stuck inside it.

The sealent was still soft so when the engine would have been run, it all would have been pushed thru the system. Potentially plugging the radiator insides,turbo cooling lines etc.., causing cooling issues.

Just one more thing to check and spend a extra 10 bucks on the new gaskets. And scrape all the goo out of the water pump assembly.

If i find more I will add to the thread accordingly. Sorry to bring this back, just trying to prevent bad things for others.

Aloha, Dave

 

I believe that Mazda closed it's Jacksonville reman facility last year. I may be mistaken about it but am 99% sure. I have toured the Jacksonville plant several times a few years ago and was impressed at what I found. I think the recent shortage of Mazda remans was because they moved the reman facility. Maybe the new $11 hour employee's are not fully trained?

 

i recently spoke w Ray Crowe/ Malloy Mazda re the mazda remans. he said that a co by the name of Williams Tech of Summerville N C has the current mazda contract and he gets one or two a week.

i checked and found that the co was acquired by Caterpillar this august. the company has 500 employees and primarily rebuilds automatic transmissions.

my guess is that the rotary rebuild is a minescule part of the business and generally after being acquired many companies are forced to focus on their major tasks...

probable outcome IMO is it will be cast off somewhere. less probable, but certainly possible, that it will be revved up. given the size of the biz versus Willams Tech, the former is more likely.

howard coleman

 

I don't think the imbalance would be that big of a deal on a stock or near-stock car. If you're going single turbo or some other big setup, you're crazy to run a reman! I'd get a motor built to specs by yourself or a good builder.

The torque spec really isn't that big on the front pulley bolt, it's just all the Loctite that's on the bolt that makes it such a bitch to remove. I typically put more work into removing the front pulley bolt than the flywheel nut.

I think it's a good idea to ALWAYS double-check things on an engine build/swap - never assume someone else did all the work. But, that is a good point to check for the o-ring. Fortunately that would be a pretty simple thing to fix.

Dale

 

I've heard good and bad about remans and certain shops.. my recommendation is to make sure you get it built by someone you could acturally talk to and witness.

 

all these stories about remans...... daymn I will just go for a rebuilt instead..

 

True and i am guessing this was a general statement and not directly at me. I am tearing my reman down. The only reason i went with this route was all my old components are paper weights. Soo i started with supossedly "good" components. we shal see once it is opened up. Oh Yeah the bolt did NOT have any locktite on them as well either.

The other reman is for a customer running twins, and all the other crap you can put on the car. He does not want to spend the extra for a new rebuild kit and for me to check the engine out. Says he will just depend on the warranty.( This is also the engine that WAS missing the o-ring) A bad call on his part i believe.

As for me, I have already been forever without the car so waiting longer is no problem.

Howard-- Good info on the company that actually builds them. I was just going by the blue label with the ID #'s on it.( Which said JAX) William's Tech huh? Sounds like a trade school for mechanics. looks like the quality build of a school boy as well

 

My reman had an oil leak from the front cover gasket. The gasket wasn't even positioned right. I heard that this is common on the remans. But this would have been made a couple years ago. So it might not be an issue any more.

 

A little update.

The customers engine is in the car and waiting on the cut to fit plug wires to show up. Also having a BOV flange welded into the piping.
Then the engine will be run and oil checked with the frequency of a ex-lax user Hopefully it will turn out that the only thing they forgot to put in the engine was the front bolt o-ring

I recommend that if you go in this far you replace the thermal pellet with a Atkins plug. This will prevent the thermal pellet from failing, and not giving the e-shaft any oil. Pretty cheap upgrade.

On my engine, The new filler flange and dipstick showed up today from Ray @ Malloy ( Free of charges.. he is the man!! Takes care of you no matter what)
The replacement coudn't be easier. To my suprise the filler flange just came out with a few good wacks of the old BFH Really easy to get out. suprised the hell out of me. I thought it was going to be a press out deal.

The dipstick tube, same thing, just grabbed on to it with a pair of needle nose pliers and twisted and pulled it out..

Installation was straight forward. Just use a bearing driver for a good flat surface, and drive the new parts into the center iron until they bottom out. The flange will change tone(the hammer noise) when it hits bottom.

The dipstick has a ledged flange that bottoms out. pretty straight forward.

The biggest trick is to line the flange up correctly so the oil filler neck will fit on properly. The flange can be rotated once in the block by using a little tapping to align it.

I am awaiting a new o-ring for my front e-shaft bolt, as I sacraficed mine for the customer. Then i shall start the assembly of my car. FINALLY!!

Aloha, Dave

 

http://ww2.scca.com/soloresults.php?ID=27

That car driven by Andy McKee has new reman engine put in a few weeks ago. He broke it in at an autocross. then off to nationals. So I guess reman are good!

 

This wasn't a post to say that ALL remans are crap. It was just an informative check things out before the engine goes in the car type things. that's all. **** anyone can forget a o-ring or bolt but hopefully that is the only thing. ya'know.

That is good news to hear though nonetheless. That his engine servived the rigors of Auto X and is still ticking. Keep us updated on his if anything comes up would you? Just for comparison sake as to what caused it.

Thanks.

 

if I could have read this thread 1 day before..I could have checked all that...but now its already installed...

 

Well back again

This is the deal now. I am still figuring things out but it doesn't look good so far.

I Have the customers engine in his car and everything that we were waiting on( stock parts. little clips and crap) came in. So in goes all the fluids and battery.

Primed the fuel system, checked for leaks, all good. Ahh the moment of truth. I turn the key and it fires right up! Good sign huh?

Well after about 10 minutes of warm up and fiddling around to get the idle straight and such i shut it down and check things over.

Start it up for a second warm up and the idle is waay crazy. Revss then drops...( like a big port or cam) fiddle around check a few things and see the CEL flashing.

Pull the code and the fuel thermosensor is not working ( no continuity to Ground on the A wire, also no voltage on the B due to the first problem)


So OK that would cause some issues. Still resolving this.

Next for the sake of it I did a compression test.. The front rotor turned out a nice 85,85,85.. The rear turned out a disturbing 60,60,80 Dave is not a happy camper!!

Now my dilema is 2 fold.. I have a bad Fuel Thermosensor, which can cause rich running and/or a retard mode in the ECU. The second part of the dilema is the compression. I know it is a "new" engine but that is too big a difference and too low besides that.
BUT,, how much time to invest in the fuel thermosensor problem when it may not be causing the bad idle or causing retard mode in the ECU.

I am/was going to install the PFC in the car after the break-in. With this I know i can modify the thermosensor output to not affect running

However i think the underlying problem is really the compression.

My brain is a mess right now as i have been crazy busy with all the cars in the shop. and now after all the time i put into this. I am just frustrated and at a loss now. Venting really. but that's part of the fun ..right?
The best/funny part is that the builders actually wrote 80 psi on both rotor housing

Any suggestions on how to stay sane are welcome

 

Well you've got to fix the fuel thermosensor one way or another, fix it, let it run a bit and recheck.

I agree that the compression number split is not good.

 

yeah. I am still trying to figure that out. The wires have good continuity from the connector to the ECU plug. But still no voltage or ground. hmm...

I think i am going to track the wires all the way back and see what's up. Also going to recheck and then re-check again that i am looking at the correct pins at the ECU I am soo tired i am seeing triple.

Going to take a break from this car and do another FD's KOYO install this weekend.

I just don't learn do I.. Just keep coming back for more punishment!!

The other issue/problem with swapping to the PFC is that it has to learn the car. And if it is running like crapola, that won't be any fun. So i "have" to figure it out with the stock ECU first if I am correct. I don't think i can adjust the Thermosensor settings prior to the learning process can I?

 

Watch your water temps. I had a reman ported by Pineapple and after installation my car ran really hot. I ended up getting a koyo radiator and the temps are normal. I'm guessing that the sealant used to rebuild my motor clogged my old radiator. My heater core is still clogged

 

could you post a pic on where this bolt is for the noobs?