Takahashi808

Hey man, as a rookie to working on my FD, your videos are extremely helpful! Recently replaced my door handles and did the S2k antenna mod. Are you planning on replacing the susepnsion bushings/pillowballs? wouldnt mind a video on that, just sayin :P. Thanks for all your hard work

H_M

iTrader: (7)

I plan to replace them eventually. Maybe I will do them next winter when the car is off the road.

H_M

iTrader: (7)

I started removing the engine a couple of weeks ago. I've been waiting a while for the videos on the channel to catch up. There's probably be three videos this week (T/T/S) because I took the engine out over three days.

DaleClark

iTrader: (55)

Nice! I was going to chime in with some hints, but I think you already have the engine out by now .

Big trick on engine removal is doing as little as possible in the car and saving the work for when it's on the engine stand. Goes MUCH faster when you're not bent over the car trying to get to things.

Dale

H_M

iTrader: (7)

Hahaha, yeah the engine's been out and disassembled for a couple of weeks now. I got the rest of my rebuild parts today too. Should be pretty busy for the next few weeks.

H_M

iTrader: (7)

Continuation of the engine pull. I received the last of the rebuild parts this week so the rebuild should be starting this weekend.

H_M

iTrader: (7)

This is the last video of the engine pull. I didn't get any video of lifting the engine out of the car but it's super easy. Just get it off the motor mounts, pull the engine & transmission forward, and lift it out.

DaleClark

iTrader: (55)

I'm going to guess that you forgot to drain the transmission when you pulled it? Saw tons of cardboard and rags after the motor was out .

For the transmission bolts, I get a few long extensions (total like 3 feet long), an impact universal, and a short 14mm impact socket. Do them all from underneath. It's easiest to take the slave cylinder out to get to the bolt just above that.

While the car is sitting, put at least one bolt in the relay box so it's in place. If it hangs upside down, and the car gets wet or you clean the engine bay, water will run down into the relays, puddle there, and rust them out. Seen that on many occasions.

Dale

H_M

iTrader: (7)

Thanks for the tips. I was going to try to clean the engine bay if I had some spare time.

I completely forgot to drain the transmission, hahaha. Made a big mess.

H_M

iTrader: (7)

This popped up on my Facialbooks this morning and was pretty interesting. It was sold by someone local for a very good price.

Yes, that's an R34. Yes, that's snow. Yes, it's MAY.

H_M

iTrader: (7)

Engine's been torn down and taken apart. I found remnants of apex seals in the exhaust manifold. The apex seals didn't get in to the turbos, which means that I can use the turbos again. The turbos are actually in pretty good condition with zero cracking on the exhaust and very minimal shaft play.

Getting the rats nest out was probably the trickiest part. All the vacuum lines were solid after 22 years of sitting on the engine. I wanted to take the rats nest & vacuum lines off in one piece but had to cut some lines because they were not coming off their nipples.

DaleClark

iTrader: (55)

Yay! New Video!

The front pulley bolt wasn't seized - that's just how they all are. It's 2" of bolt that's slathered in Loctite. It's ALWAYS harder to remove it than the flywheel nut.

My technique -

- Heat it up with a propane torch for a minute or so. Heat helps loosen the Loctite.

- Make sure the engine is locked with some sturdy method, and get a friend to steady the engine. Put your breaker bar on the front pulley, then go get 4-5' of pipe and put it on that. I use my jack handle. You need a LOT of power to break that sucker loose. Once it's loose, it's downhill from there.

Also, there is no way the broken nipple on the vacuum tank contributed to the motor going. If anything it would have closed the turbo control door, lowering boost. I think you just had an original, tired motor that has been sitting for a while before you got it. The outside of the motor had a LOT of corrosion on it. I think with pushing the motor a bit you probably ran lean and fried the rear rotor. No biggie, it happens, now you can start with a fresh motor ready to make some power. I would also think about cleaning the fuel injectors - if the car sat for some time, it's possible they have a crap spray pattern.

Dale

H_M

iTrader: (7)

It could be that it was from sitting for three years, haha. I will check the fuel injectors. I'm in the middle of putting the engine together. The injectors are still on the table and easy to access.

7krayziboi

iTrader: (15)

Nice vidéo 👌 it does takes space to remove and tear down , it would be shitty if you didn't have the big garage you have .

As Dale mention , heating it up is the trick.
And Princess Auto has the 54mm nut for less than 20$...you'll need an adapter because I believe it's 3/4 . (Dont get the adapter there , it's cheap ****) ask me how I know ...

Yeah that rotor and housing are probably toasted ,

Don't forget to inspect the turbines wheels of the twins, the compressor wheels may seem fine without/lil shaft play but still,you had apex seals pieces at the waste-gate door.

It would be shitty to have a turbo blow up after you build the engine.

Lol I'm too worry for you , hahaha
Better safe than sorry , they would say.

Looking foward for the next video

H_M

iTrader: (7)

I checked the turbos over and they look good. The first thing I did was check the hot side and cold side compressor wheels for damage. They looked excellent.

I saw that they had a 54mm socket at Princess Auto. We don't have a PA here but I might take a drive to Saint John and pick one up. It's $35 but that's pretty much what a shop is going to charge me to tighten that nut... and you can never have enough tools, hahaha.

I have the engine apart. I'm working on the video now. It should be up in a few days. The rear rotor and rear housing are completely written off.

H_M

iTrader: (7)

I took the engine apart. It's pretty simple really. There aren't very many parts the the actual engine. I probably spent 3-4x as much time taking off all the accessories than I did disassembling the actual engine. Now my garage looks like a big mess.

My garage is so cluttered now.


Rotors. Good one in the front. Bad one in the rear.


Housings and irons. All except the front iron, which is on the engine stand.

H_M

iTrader: (7)

Found out that the insurance company still hasn't sent me the insurance for the car. I had a temporary insurance card that expired on May 15 and I was supposed to have received my official insurance paper long before that. Now it turns out that they cannot find the VIN number for my car in their database and that's why they haven't sent me the official insurance document.

So I paid the insurance in full six weeks ago and I still do not have insurance. Not only have I lost about $150 from this but I could have been in some serious trouble if I would have been driving the car this whole time and gotten in to an accident.

They want me to take a picture of the VIN plate on the car and email it to them. Hopefully this will resolve the issue.

Dvst8

iTrader: (6)

sub'd!

H_M

iTrader: (7)

Slowly getting caught up with the videos. Everything should be caught up in a week or so.

H_M

iTrader: (7)

The rebuild continues. The engine's almost complete and we'll be dropping it in next time. These engines are surprisingly easy to rebuild. The long part was stripping everything to the keg and then putting everything back on, hahaha.

DaleClark

iTrader: (55)

Did you use a front cover gasket? If you just used RTV, you could have a problem with the front cover O-ring. Either use the paper gasket with the O-ring and white spacer or the new metal gasket with no O-ring/spacer.

I screwed that up on my very first engine rebuild in my FC, ended up pulling the front cover like 6 times to fix all the crap I messed up. That is NOT FUN to do with the engine in the car in an FC, probably 9 times worse on an FD.

Are your motor mounts good? I'm surprised the aluminum one would be good, pretty much every one I've seen has been torn.

Still loving the videos!

Dale

K-Tune

iTrader: (26)

Using RTV only can also increase the air gap between the crank shaft sensors and the trigger wheel on the main pulley. Could cause ignition problems if not accounted for. That orange RTV also isn't the most oil resistant, it's intended for high temperature applications like exhaust.

7krayziboi

iTrader: (15)

Yes!!!

I'm just a little worried about the amount of RTV that you see sticking out, because you probably have the same amount in the inside , add oil temperature and 60k and I bet your oil pick up tube will be half "clogged" , I might be wrong , but that's my experience when seeing that amount of RTV in between the block and oil pan.

Also, i believe you bought the Kit from Atkins , I believe they've been putting the Rx8 rear oil seal, it's been reported that they leak.
Wanna check that out bro.

H_M

iTrader: (7)

Yes, I used a front cover gasket. I did not use RTV on the front cover. It seemed kind of silly to me to use RTV on the front cover in case some got in to the OMP gears and screwed up the OMP. I used a paper gasket with the o-ring and white spacer.

The motor mounts were in great shape. There were zero tears in them.


I didn't use RTV on the front cover. I used Orange RTV on my old Ford Focus oil pan and that held for years without problems.



I'll need to check the RTV on the oil pan over time. It's not like this will be my daily driver. Probably some weekend trips, autocross, and you know how our winters are, haha.

Yes, it's an Atkins kit. I didn't know that they supplied RX-8 rear oil seals with the kit. I will keep an eye on the rear oil seal and check it over time. Hopefully it does not leak because it'd suck to pull the transmission and replace that seal.





On a side note, I got the engine to fire up on both rotors yesterday afternoon and it ran like a top. All the wiring checked out so the only place left to eliminate was the ECU plug. I unplugged the ECU, checked the injector ground plugs (they looked fine and were giving me the right resistances from the injectors), and I plugged everything back in. For some reason it fired right up on both rotors and ran perfectly. I just need to solve a fuel pump voltage issue and then everything should be good to go.

I also picked up another toy on Friday night. I'll take some pictures and post them on here. It's loud and a lot faster than the black RX-7.

H_M

iTrader: (7)

The engine's back in the car and finally running right again. We got the engine in the car about three weeks ago but couldn't get it to fire up. Then I spent the last three weeks troubleshooting and figuring out what was going on with the engine. I eventually got the engine to fire up but it was running very rough and only running on the front rotor. Eventually I determined that the rear primary injector was not working.

I pulled the everything apart 10-15 times over the last three weeks, rewired all the injectors, directly wired the fuel pump, change spark plugs, deflood, change spark plug wires, etc.. I finally got the engine to fire on both rotors and it purrs like a very loud kitten. I didn't film any of this because it was the same thing every day over and over again. I'm now in the process of putting everything back together and rewiring the fuel pump.

The plans have also changed for the car. I'm going to put some stock pieces back on, break it in, and then sell it. I'm going to leave a lot of the reliability mods like the koyo rad, vacuum lines, check valves, AST, intercooler, and intakes on the car for the future owner so they will have a good RX7 in good working order that will last them a long time.

Here's the video of us finishing the engine and the running car at the end.