Finally decided to start one of these here. I've had build threads on the two local forums, but I think I'll get better input here instead of just "when's this getting an LS1?"

The car is a 1993 R1, manufactured in EARLY 92 (IIRC January or February). Brilliant Black, ~64k miles on the chassis. When I bought it in July of '09 it had a reman motor with ~14k miles on it. The original owner had it put in sometime in 2000. The second owner bought it in roughly 04 and put on a greddy 3 row FMIC, Koyo rad, PFC w/datalogit, HKS DP, Greddy underdrive pulleys, catless midpipe, thermal exhaust, greddy type S boost controller, HSK turbo timer, ancient aftermarket stereo, Bazooka bass tube, apline amp, OZ Mito rims, SS omp lines, and some brand of lowering springs. He also did the poor man's non-sequential and a half-assed emissions removal. It also had a new engine harness put in about 3 years ago.

Problems when I bought it: leaky turbo oil feed or return lines (don't remember which), bad tune, horrid idle, blow bye, broken driver's side out side doorhandle, broken inner passenger side door handle (the "oh ****" handle). A few weeks before I bought it, despite being told why the car wouldn't start, the PO had it towed to a shop where they charged him 1000 bucks to solder the CAS wires back together, and a jumpy tach.

First thing I did was remove the UIM, tighten all the block-off plates, replace the gaskets, replace the vacuum hoses, install the efini y-pipe that I had sitting around that never got put on my first FD (engine fire victim), wideband, replaced the door handle (what a BITCH), and get a decent tune on it. With the tune that was on it I was idling around 11:1, and I put down 259 whp and 239 tq on 13 psi, after retuning it and getting the timing sorted out (it was originally all over the place) I never did get it back on the dyno.

Winter rolled around, I decided to replace the fuel pump with a walbro, change to 1600cc secondaries, rotorsports fuel rail, and fuel lab FPR, and chadwick idler pulley. Putting on the secondaries with the LIM still attached to the motor and in the car had to be one of the biggest pains in the *** ever.

She started up after cranking to build pressure, she was still having idle problems but I needed to get some fresh gas as she'd been sitting a while (parked in November '09, this is now March '10 roughly). One the way to get gas I blew the motor, don't even know how it happened. I didn't get one it, I knew better since I hadn't been tuned for the new larger injectors, and I was travelling at about 40 mph at 3k rpm. Limped her home where she sat for a while until I could deal with her. Pulled the fuel injectors out and sold them, and had the car towed to my new place in June.

In the mean time I had the motor, tranny, and turbos from the red car to disassemble which I did. The turbo's were a set of 99 spec turbos with about 3 or 4k miles on them. Shipped them to Ari at Rotary Performance and had his turbo guy inspect them. Got them sold along with the y-pipe, also sold a set of coilovers I had sitting around that I wasn't gonna use for a while. I also sold the tranny to Andy McKee while he was in town for solo and pro-solo nationals when his broke.

so I had the motor from the red car sitting on a stand with the car in the garage, was making some progress getting stuff removed from the motor while it was in the garage and still in the car, it was slow, but it was progress



in the meantime I started buying parts for my single turbo build.
PTE 6265 journal bearing, billet compressor wheel, t4 1.0 divided housing, 3" v-band outlet, 4" inlet, 2.5" outlet .70 a/r ported compressor housing (SP housing)




excessive LIM




here's the current pile of parts that I'm ok with having sitting inside my house


Precision 46mm wastegate, HKS SSQV limited edition black BOV, top feed primary rail, PTP (ebay) turbo blanket. Don't hate on the turbo blanket, my friend runs the exact same one on his 6765 powered s2000 and he doesn't have any problems with it. He can touch it within minutes of a hard run.

 

got the cooked motor completely stripped to the block

this is how I got it off the engine stand since I didn't have an engine hoist at my disposal at the time


Got the motor out of the black car on 10/10/10

I can't thank Jim (signal 2) and Fitz enough for all the help.

tore both of my motors down as well as wes's (jwcardy) yesterday with the help of the Omaha FD guys

Jim's mazda "special" service tool, used it to get the main bolt for the front cover off, had to keep the entire rotating assembly from, well, rotating. You can also see the "patent pending, custom Fitz engine stand" underneath.


cooked motor on the stand


we had issues getting the bolt off on wes's motor, snapped a craftsman breaker bar at the head, and air tools weren't working


we eventually got it off with a long pipe over a 1/2" drive socket wrench, the 3/8" breaker is what broke.

wes's without the front cover


here's what it looks like in front of the flywheel


motor out of the black car without the front cover or oil pump.


the cooked motor ready for the studs to come out. If you look at the difference between the black car's motor (above) and this one, you'll notice that one had red locktite on the studs, it's a re-manufactured motor and mazda got smart on some things, putting locktite on the studs was one of those things.


from here on the motor from the red car will be called the red motor and the motor from the black car will be the black motor.

there was some corrosion under the front cover of the red motor, don't know how water got in there it was still sealed tight when we went to open it up, oh well.


red motor opened up all dirty and carboned up.

 

black motor, look at that gash in the rotor! nothing but a cool paper weight now.


another chunk missing out of that same rotor


some of the damage to the housing


some more damage to that same housing, there's a chunk taken out on the top of the exhaust port, and a bunch of chunks taken out above that, no need to circle these.


you can see where the apex seal broke, and where there was a chunk taken out of the rotor, that circle isn't supposed to be there


despite having no compression on any of the faces, that was the only one apex seal that appeared to be broken.

you can see where that piece of the apex seal ended up, lodged in the side of the rotor


apparently it bounced around and around for a while before finding it's new and permanent resting home


front iron of the black motor, it was apparently lapped by mazda, still some coolant sitting there


front of the red motor, tons of carbon, guess that's what happens when a little old lady drives it like she's afraid of it for 80k of it's 84k life


red motor apart


black motor apart


there are 4, a, b, c, d, you can use all of the same, or ones that are one above or bellow, but no more. You can use two "c's", an "a" and a "b" or a "c" and a "d", but not an "a" and a "d" and so on, if you do the motor will not be balanced and will destroy itself. Luckily, all the rotors are "c" weight, so I don't have to worry about that, and I've got 3 good ones.

I really only lost one housing and one rotor. Despite the carnage on the rear rotor on the black motor, it appears that the irons are still in good condition. Once I get everything cleaned up I'll be spec'ing them out to figure out which parts I'll be using for the rebuild. All of the apex seals except the rear ones from the black motor were still usable, unfortunately the were the old style, 3 piece apex seals. All of the corner seals and side seals are reusable, but I'll probably buy a new set of side seals. Looks like the rebuild will cost me around $1000. I need all soft seals and gaskets, one set of side seals, and all springs.

Wes's motor really just needed to be cleaned up and he could throw it back together with fresh 2 piece apex seals (he had 3 piece seals also).

 

the teardown was from yesterday, I recently got my Garfinkle oil pan brace and engine torque brace in, no pictures of those or how the car is currently sitting, but that's where I'm at now. I also have the Dudemaaanownsanrx7 fast-reacting IAT and an OMP block off plate. I'm contemplating having Casey (jdmfantasy) modify my UIM to look like this.





He's also the one making my exhaust manifold and downpipe. The manifold will be similar to the one Howard Coleman made for his multi-turbo test.


I will also be getting a cheap resonator and having it welded into the midpipe to reduce the raspiness of the exhaust note.

Fuel system plans: ID 725 or 1000cc primaries and 2000cc secondaries, dual walboro pumps, and e85 (its in abundance here and it makes sense to run it, at least to me it makes sense)

I will be purchasing a set of CCW classics in May after the car is back together and running.

I'm still debating if I want to replace the spoiler after this happened while not paying attention. I do like the wingless look.

what exactly did I do?
I had the garage door partially open to let the fumes from evaporating gas out of the garage because I had the gas tank open. I went to close the garage door and didn't notice that my hatch was high enough to hit the garage door, but I didn't think it would mater anyways because the garage door at my parent's house closes even if it's only a little open. Well it just opened anyways and "crack" off went the spoiler.

 

OK, I'm pretty sure that's everything. Questions, comments, advice?
Goal for the car is make 400 reliably and have 500 on tap when I want/need it. Would like to only push about 20 psi, but I'm willing to go a tad higher to hit 500, around here drag racing is big so that's where it'll probably see the most action, but ideally when all is said and done, after I graduate I'll hopefully be able to start optimizing it for auto-x competition.

Oh, and I've already paid for my tail lights to be modified by theory, and I'm replacing the passenger inner door handle with the metal one from sakebomb.

 

with E85 you shouldn't have much trouble meeting your power and reliability goals

 

Nice build. I wish I had E85 in abundance around here. Closest station to me is about 18-20min away

 

i have never seem anywhere that sells e85 or know anyone using it, interesting

 

Your right but there's more to the balance thing. So that others members don't get confused, you also need to keep the rotor weights matched to the counter weights of the engine your building. If all your rotating assembly had "C" weight rotors that got damaged, that doesn't mean it's safe to use a matching set of some other weight rotors. Just because the rotors match, doesn't mean they will balance with your rotating assembly. All the counter weights get drilled to match the rotor weights. Soo another matching set wont work. Thx for keeping it rotary. All those local LS1 heads can shove it.

 

The only thing I see that may be a problem is the turbo manifold. Even though the manifold is under pressure, you will get better boost control if the wastegate exit is upstream of the runners and not completely reversed like that.

Think about it this way, if you were in your car driving 200mph and all of a sudden you had to change direction to make a 130 degree turn, there is no way you would be able to do it without slowing down 1st. All moving things will take path of least resistance (air included). For better boost control, the exhaust gas needs to merge out of traffic and not stop and change direction. The only way the wastegate works to it full potential is to get as much exhaust energy to enter the wastegate runner so it can be vented when it opens. Now I'm not saying what you have wont work, but it's not the most efficient design.

 

Not sure I can completely agree with the foregoing conclusions regarding the exhaust manifold. While I understand the logical arguments that are made, there is more at work here and I suspect the overall performance of Howard's manifold is going to surprise a few people (even if the WG is slightly compromised). In any event, the jury is still out until his testing is completed.

If I were doing this project, and given what has been laid out, I would keep the HC style exhaust manifold and ditch the short runner intake manifold idea. The increase in flow for the intended application is dubious, whereas the torque band produced by stock manifold is not and will likely be more appropriate for the power level and RPM range that the OP is seeking.

 

So much anger and hostility lol. OP awesome build, it makes me miss my cornfed HBP. Good luck with the project, I can't wait to see the results.

 

Thanks guys. I really do appreciate and like the LS1 swaps, but it just wasn't for me this time around, maybe somewhere in the future, or perhaps in an FC.

We've got 4 e85 stations in Lincoln and 5 in just the main part of Omaha. The ones in Lincoln are all withing a 10 minute drive of my house.

Thanks for the input on the rotor weight t-von.

As for the manifold, I understand what you guys are saying about the design not being ideal for flow to the wastegate, however if it can work for Howard, I'm sure it will be more than sufficient for me and my purposes.

I also just picked up the entire cruise control assembly today, the module under the hood, the control box, and the switches for the dash and steering wheel. I enjoy going on road trips so this was something that I knew I would get as soon as I made the decision to purchase an R1. IMO Mazda should've left it on as it doesn't remove that much weight.

I also currently have an AEM Uego wideband that I was having issues with as far as working with the datalogit. I'm going to rewire it and get it grounded better, and if it still doesn't want to work right, I'll be switching to an Innovate LC1.

I've gotta rewire the fuel pump sometime as well.

 

one more thing, it was in fact a 1/2" breaker that broke. We made the mistake of using a deep well socket, we were able to get the front hub bolts off without too much trouple when we switched to a regular length socket. The laws of physics prevail again...

 

There's no anger here. Just frustration when the LS1 guys think their engine is the most logical choice to replace the rotary for whatever reason. They forget, it's only logical for those that only know how to work on those engines. So yea I really do understand why that conversion gets done so much. Familiarity! That familiarity is also why I will always stay rotary. Hell if the engine in my M5 ever goes bad, there's plenty of room in that engine bay to do a 4 rotor conversion. LOL!

 

Personal preference my friend. That's all it boils down to.

 

got the gauge cluster pulled to fix the solder points on the tach and install the cruise control stuff. Now I don't mean to brag but...

yeah, no broken tabs

as she sits now, and yes, those are the stock rims powdercoated gloss black with a smooth finish.

 

Howard would love the carbon build-up on those rotors

 

Why do you think the iron was lapped by Mazda?

Also, that's red paint on the heads of the tension bolts--- it means that they were properly torqued to the Mazda spec of 24-28 ft-lbs. No loctite..... if anything it would be on the threads, it doesnt do much on bolt heads anyway

 

cuz its a reman? I knew the motor was a reman from mazda when I bought the car, and that little surprise greeted us upon disassembly. The reman sticker is on the front cover still too. If there's another reason I would love to know.

 

Ha ha, I'm sure he would, the ones on the 15k mile motor weren't all that bad, but that's to be expected with that low of mileage and the way myself and the previous owner drove it.

 

I would like to thank mazda for using an obscure capacitor on the back of the tach circuit board, no local computer stores carries capacitors that are 50 volts, 1 mili-farad, and 17 amps, wtf...
it might've been micro-farad, I don't remember, I'm letting the computer guy who is replacing the capacitors and doing the soldering for me figure it out.

 

ok, so I haven't been out to the garage to do much of anything at this point. Too damn cold and not enough room. The parts have been sent to the fabricator. I changed my mind on what ports I'm going to use. As much as I would love to have BDC HBP the motor, I would rather just get it on the road. So I ordered the pineapple street port templates and I'm going to have a local machine shop port it for me as well as remove the stubborn carbon from my rotors.

I also have been bouncing back and forth between ignition set ups. I originally purchased an HKS twin power and harness from a member on here, but after talking with a friend in Omaha with a single turbo FD, he's been using the MSD 6A with great success for a few years and seeing the prices of them used on here, I've decided to pick one of those up and sell the twin power (hint hint). I got scrub's 3 bar map sensor bracket in and it looks great.

The guy I have my tach to to fix has disappeared and won't return my texts so I'm gonna have to swing by his work and try and see whats up with that. I don't know why he's not responding, its not like its a high demand piece in these parts. if I can't get it fixed I'm contemplating just getting the 99 spec cluster from bryan at rx7boutique. I'll try and have an update on that this weekend.

 

BOOOO!!! Send those bad boys to Brian, I promise you won't regret it. I convinced a buddy of mine to go HBP on his last motor and he loves it. His 500R builds boost faster and has more power under the curve than his SP. And who doesn't love the brap brap brap?

Either way good luck with the build. I'm always curious to see what these cornfed motors can do.

 

you do know that an MSD box is single channel? It will only work for the leading unless you buy 3 of them. The 6A boxes were really meant for a distributor which is by definition single channel. They're also bulky and have a messy install. For the Rx-7 ignition system (wastespark leading with individual channel on trailing) it's a bigtime downgrade.

I personally have had bad luck performance-wise with single MSD/Crane boxes on single turbo Rx-7 applications. They still blow out spark, even with FC leading coil. There's really no point in running 3 boxes either.