I was reading another post tonight, "Building the Bulletproof REW" and it inspired another question, that quite frankly, I haven't seen discussed on this board in the two years I've been on it.

So many engines seem to go out from seals blowing, was the topic mentioned in above thread. Well, what have aviation issues taught us? I've studied a little about aviation mechanics, engines, etc, and every manufacturer has specified rebuild schedules. You might see an engine with a 3,000 hour rebuild time, for instance.

Well, why not a specified rebuild time (in either hours or miles) for the 13b-REW?
It seems like when little replaceable things wear out it takes a very expensive toll - total or near total engine replacement in our cars. Why not just replace all those little parts with the Mazda rebuild package at 45,000 miles - or 75,000 miles and save a bunch of money by not having to replace rotors or other major castings?

I'd like the opinion of the best and brightest on this site, what would that number look like from your experience? 35,00 miles, 48,000 miles, 75,000 miles??? Would it really make a difference?

 

If it ain't broke, why fix it? These engines could last 2 miles or 200,000 miles, why test fate?

 

Well, let's face facts. If you read enough posts on this site you see that a lot of 93 engines were rebuilt or replaced somewhere in the 48,000 mile range - probably at a cost of $5,000 or more on average. It costs - what - about $3,000 for a total seal replacement - labor included. 94 and 95s, by the way, seem to fare a little bit better - maybe 80,000 miles - anyone hazard a guess why? - not to hijack my original question.

 

my guess is that by the time that the 94s and 95s came out, people knew that they had to be a little more careful.

 

I think the high cost (in labor hours etc) of pulling the engine and reinstalling it makes a "scheduled' engine rebuild way out of the practical range. Why pay $2gs in labor of pulling and reinstalling the engine ALONE, plus another $3K for the rebuild (as per your quote). You're right at $5K, the average price of an engine rebuild. Doesn't seem like a major money saving scheme IMO, esp when you could have put that money aside for other mods, or even buying a reman and letting it sit there while you wonder when the ticking time bomb will finally go off. There are ppl on the forum who have 120K plus on their original engine. I've got 87K on my original now, although if I went by forum trend, I would have for SURE expected it to blow by 70K.

 

i remember reading a japanese site that suggests rebuilds every 50k.

 

just buy a reman and have it ready hahaha

 

I agree on waiting. There is not much money being saved to rebuild the engine every 45k miles. If your engine lasted 100k then you would save 5000 dollars that you would not have saved by rebuilding it 2 times.

I would say they rebuild avaition motors b/c they cant take the risk of the engine failing while in flight. we can take that risk and save money or maybe loose money. It kind of like going to a casino. Maybe you car will last 100k miles or 10k. who knows but i am a gambling man i would rather take the risk

 

some of us blow our engines so often its like we are rebuilding every year. Does that count?

 

hahaha i hope i don't become one of these people

 

i have yet to rebuild mine, i'm a little scared because it's my only car at the moment. I'm on the original engine with 79k miles. i've had no major engine problems so far. I thought my coolant seals were going out, but i'm nope, i just have a hose leak somewhere, i could smell the coolant in my engine bay but not out the exhaust.

 

Scheduled rebuilds make sense in the aviation contexts because you want ultra high reliablity. The consequences of an engine failure at 30k feet on an airplane with 300 passengers are a lot more serious than the consequences for a stunna on a Saturday night who blows his engine when racing his buddy in a Civic.

Given the huge variance in time-to-failure for engines in an FD (ballpark guess: nearly all fall in the range 70k +/- 30k miles), it makes no sense to rebuild an engine at 50k miles when it may last 50k more miles. And rebuilding early does not necessarily save you anything (and brings the time to the next rebuild closer!).

 

I like to agree with FD newbie, in that it is a tedious labor to remove and reinstall the engine if everything is fine with the engine. And as others have mentioned the engine could break at any point in time. Eventually after reusing the parts for rebuilding at some point they would have worn too much and basically become so out of spec they are unusable therefor forcing you to buy another block.

I would think that after a 100,000 miles it would probably be a good idea to rebuild. I think that would be a comfortable stage to say that most of the seals are weaker then they started out to be.

I think if you were so lucky none of the parts were ever damaged just worn you could probably get around 300,000++ out of the block.