Hey guys -

Long time no see . So I'm getting back going full-bore on the RX-7...some back story first!

Bought the car in October 2004 with about 68,000 miles. It had a Mazda reman in it when I bought it that had just been installed - guy I bought it from bought it cheap with a blown engine, put in the reman, and made a few bucks flipping it. He did a great job and car was in top shape. I started upgrading things and got a little greedy power-wise and popped that engine due to me being dumb .

So in June 2005 or so I started at a new job and had to drive my car to go on service calls - yes, I was actually driving all over town doing calls in my FD. It did great, was my daily and did fine until as stated I blew the motor. That was around May 2007, not sure of the mileage but I THINK I was still under 100k at that time. I know I was racking up some mileage for sure. I'm guessing 90k or so.

Did a pretty stock rebuild, no porting, all stock internals, etc. Got it up and going good and have never had issues with that engine. Shortly after that I bought my first daily driver and at that point the FD became a weekend fun car. 2010 was the first year I went to Deal's Gap Rotary Rally and it's been every year but 3 since - one year there was no rally due to COVID and 2 years I went in my RX-8.

So....2023 I took it to DGRR, had a great time. After I got home I went for a drive and heard the tell-tale whine of a bad turbo. Pulled the intakes off and the primary turbo had obviously eaten something, banged up compressor blades. At that point (around May 2023) it really just got parked. I'm also planning on repainting the car myself, bought paint gun, paint, etc. and just lost motivation.

In the mean time I also got into being a Turo host - we are renting out my wife's Honda Odyssey and I bought a second Honda Odyssey just for Turo. With me working at home now and us living 2 miles from the Pensacola airport it has worked out great and been a great money maker. That has eaten up a lot of my time and attention away from the FD for sure.

So....shortly after I diagnosed the bad turbo I decided to go ahead and go single turbo with a Turblown 8374 kit. I drove @estevan62274 's car with that turbo and was AMAZED at the response and the power it made. Ordered it June 2023 and received it March 2024 so about 9 months waiting for it. After the kit sat in my garage a while I decided to finally get moving on the process - sent the downpipe off to get Jet-Hot coated, got a spare lower intake manifold ceramic coated by them at the same time (both look amazing) and that took a few months to get done.

Yesterday was FINALLY the day to get things started. Got some friends over, pulled the engine, and broke it all down. Odometer on the car is now 141,399. I drove it about 3 weeks ago to make sure everything was generally OK with the car and it ran great. The bearings in my Pineapple idler pulley died and it squealed something crazy on first start. But it's good to know it's all running properly as a baseline before breaking it all down.

So...what did everything look like after around 50.000 miles and 17 years? Amazing. Bearings have just the tiniest bit of copper showing, side seals were all free moving and still felt tight and great, water passages were clean and in great shape, just everything looks perfect. The car ran about 12psi of boost for most of that time with a jump to 14psi within the last few years. Every time the car went out there were full throttle runs so it was run hard. Goes to show a good tune can go a long way.

Few pictures.....

 

Big question I have right now is I would like to do some level of a street port on the engine but I don't want to compromise too much low end. Any thoughts or recommendations?

Dale

 

Good luck with your project Dale.
i have personally went with just ported exhaust and kept the intake stock so i wouldnt compromise the low end. Car is extremely responsive drives and idles like a stock fd (if not better) and i am very pleased with the outcome. I highly recommend it

 

I will concede I feel like I'm over-ported. To do it over, I'd go back to a mild intake port (smooth idle under 1k), and I wouldn't touch the rotors other than to balance the rotating assembly.

 

Good luck with the build Dale! Glad to see you diving back into it. On the porting, IDK, I guess it depends mostly on what your priorities are. My FD is running stock 13B-REW intake & exhaust ports, Cosmo LIM/UIM, GM 90mm DBW throttle and a BW SXE364.5, 1.0 A/R turbine housing, so that should be similar to your EFR 8374 (i.e., similar sized compressor & turbine wheels, etc). Once I got the DBW tuning done, it idles great, has fast & responsive spool up and a wide power band right up to redline. Top end would likely be better if it were ported, but it's fine for my needs as-is. On my S5T2 FC, I did a pretty large street port on the intake & exhaust when I built it, and it's running a BNR stage 3 turbo for the S5T2. Getting a nice idle on that thing was a challenge - just has to idle a little higher than stock, but the porting really opened up the top end.

 

Good stuff Dale… when you drove my car it was stock ported @15.5 psi.
I’d say keep it Stockport and do a little clean up on them.
My current setup is a large street port and I actually prefer the stock port over this one for a semi-daily driver.
Also I highly recommend porting the wastegate.
Tito’s car,(brand new, stock port EFR 8374iwg) would overboost to 20psi that’s not good for 93 pump.
So port the wastegate now before you install it… good Sir!!

Steve

 

I also have the ported exhaust and stock intake and my engine has a fat power band. Starts and idles fine.

Glad to see you getting back to your car. Side hustles are great, Uber paid for my engine and turbo kit..lol.

What are you doing for fuel injectors?

Xaiver recommended me 550 pri and 1700 sec for better transition and tunning.

 

Awesome, looking forward to see the build progressive.

I haven't had any street ported REWs but for DGRR and driving around town, I think I would want stock ports for the low end power.

 

Thanks for all the input guys!

As of now I'm leaning towards some exhaust port work and maybe a touch up on the intake ports, VERY mild. The stock primary intake port is so janky it just needs SOMETHING lol.

My go-to for porting templates has always been Pineapple Racing but they are no more. Any particular shops that make quality templates for my purpose?

Next question is going to be apex seals. I have been running stock but would like to go to something more modern. I bought a set of ALS apex seals ~15 years ago (no joke) that I'm hoping I can find somewhere in the mess of my attic. That's one option. I also have a set of RA Superseals that I got a deal on, they had nearly no miles on them. I've also heard good things on E&J. Going to be running OMP only so I don't want a seal that I have to do some crazy premix ratio on. Thoughts there?

Dale

 

I'll buck the advice trend here in your thread and recommend a nice healthy SP of all four intake ports--- you're correct in that the stock primaries in particular are woefully tiny. Also, more air in is always a good thing where I come from, smooth idle be damned (also occurs to me that BP and PP exist for a reason! haha) If you'd like a template I may be able to loan ya one

Take a hard look at RxParts seals that can be secured through Roan Farquharson (sp)....... only thing I'll use in a modified 400+ build. Tried and true and have even very satisfied. Seem to wear the housings much less than the RA Black seals, which used to be my go-to for cars that didn't see a ton of miles.

 

Im curious. Why change out the apex seals? Don't stockers make the best compression if I'm not mistaken?

 

They make great compression until you get one hard knock or detonation event on boost, then you're instantly batting 0.000

......rotors, rotor housings and turbine wheels aren't cheap, especially in 2024

 

Quick update -

Got a new battery for the digital caliper today. Apex seals that were in the engine are right around 7.5mm, 8.00mm is new spec and 6 is the wear limit so they've done quite good. BTW zero premix used, just good ol' OMP, Valvoline VR-1, and 3k mile oil changes.

Also got one of the Noco NLP30 lithium batteries on the recommendation of Anthony @Djseto -


$199 on Amazon. I swear the box it came in weighed more than the battery. It almost feels like a toy or something. According to Anthony he's had great luck with it - running for many years, starts up great, and once when he killed it it was easy to re-charge and get going again.

Dale

 

Another quick update -

Pulled out the "hope chest" of various parts that I have bought that will be installed at some time Found 2 biggies -

- The ALS apex seals. Going to have to check them over but I think I may be running them.
- A new in box brake master cylinder, it's made by the OE that made them for Mazda. Even has the little brake sticker thing on top! Bought that AGES ago, box is ratty but the MC looks great.

Dale

 

I'm pretty curious about this since I'm waiting on an IWG 8374 kit from Turblown myself... Is creeping up to 20psi something a lot of people have seen? It was my understanding an engine with stock ports usually hold 15-ish PSI no problem.

Sorry to hijack... this looks like it's going too be a great build.

 

Stephen has said that a friend with that turbo had a lot of overboosting issues. After porting the waste gate that sorted it out.

Going to be doing a good port job on the waste gate for sure before the install.

Dale

 

Yeah Dale, port that internal waste gate as big as you can get it, or you will have over boosting issues with the EFR 8374.

Somewhat related to the overboost topic, what ECU are you running, and will you be making the jump to a DBW throttle? Because switching to a DBW throttle with a modern ECU allows you to add additional DBW based protections that make over boosting & boost creep a thing of the past.... Your turbo setup might WANT to overboost/creep, but you can use the ECU to force the DBW throttle to put the kabosh on the party if/when it does.

 

^Can confirm this 100%. I suffered a boost t-fitting failure recently after down-shifting to 4th at hwy speeds. Thankfully, the protections instituted by my tuner (Syvecs ECU w DBW setup courtesy of Chris Ludwig) kept the potentially runaway boost under control; thereby, optimally protecting the engine during an otherwise highly stressful condition.

I run a EFR 8374 IWG kit wout any specific WG porting. Additionally, I recently swapped my Tanabe Medalion exhaust (w internal 2.25" restriction at the muffler) with a higher flowing 3" TGS dolphin tip catback unit. My upgraded, modern ECU easily paid for itself during this one-off/happenstance event.

 

Going to be running the PowerFC with FC-Tweak. It's been doing great so far.

I will be cleaning parts this weekend and finalizing what all I need to order.

Dale

 

@Mardanov
A few people on here have. ptrhahn had a big thread about it https://www.rx7club.com/single-turbo...check-1092302/

 

Boost creep to 20+ psi is pretty rare, unless its super cold out in your region.I just had 3 more customers dyno with full 3" exhaust and hold 14 psi last week ( V1 8374 cars, pump gas, stock ports)
Keep in mind E85 will usually hinder boost control.

If you have a DBW car, you can simply close to the throttle plates vs RPM/gear and this will lower the boost FYI. This way you don't need to port your wastegate.

 

OK, little bit of an update. Did a TON of cleaning today.

- Irons, rotors, rotor housings all look great. They are all getting re-used.
- Bearings look great, VERY tiny amount of copper. All getting reused.
- Found the old school ALS apex seals and they look to be in good shape. Gonna run them.
- Side seals are in excellent shape, comparing the thickness to a new one they are damn near identical. I organized them on disassembly so I should be able to just pop them back in their home and good to go.
- Water pump is JUST starting to leak from the weep hole. Gonna order a new one from Ray.
- Thermostat is new-ish and in perfect shape so it's good to go.

Found a few misc gaskets, injector air bleeds, etc. so don't have to buy those. YAY HOARDING.

Also got the tension bolts cleaned and painted. Not totally necessary but I just hate re-using old crappy looking ones. Hit them with the wire wheel and painted black.

Ordered a pile o' stuff from Atkins, see attached pic. Going to order the rest of the stuff from Ray Crowe - all the seals and springs, some water hoses, new oil pan, new water pump. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have a good idea on what else I need to order, I try to get it all once so I'm not paying shipping over and over again.

Dale

 

SUPER exciting Dale!!
You went from a paint job to engine rebuilt and single turbo conversion within a year

Looking forward to this thread!

 

I wound suggest the high flow water pump mazmart sells: https://mazmartstore.mybigcommerce.c...x-7-1993-2002/

I put one in on the recommendation of @seckerich in mine.

 

Is there any recent "FD Engine Pull and Install" thread with tips for easier R&R? I've read the old ones, but just wonder...