Cartmill,

Throw some clear rattle can paint on those LCA's and they will be easier to keep clean. Good work so far keep it up.

 

carter, that is the plan! i will post a big update today.

the marman/transition did not come in the mail yesterday, so i've got a little holdup for actually driving the car.

also, this turbo does NOT fit on the ebay style manifold without the compressor housing hitting the shock tower. i've decided to say "F this" and massage the shock tower a little bit and also grind on the compressor housing a little to get some clearance. about 1/4" needed to be cleared in total, which is unfortunate, but do-able. i read on this very forum that a guy mounted a BW S366 on his ebay manifold and had clearance, so mine must be slightly different (it was an old thread).

ya get what ya pay for, right?

 

Please do not bash in an FD RX-7's shock tower so that you can fit an Ebay turbo manifold.

 

The only thing I don't like about those eBay manifold is the T4 flange, it doesn't form a smooth transaction to the turbine housing.

 

QFT. Or take a grinder to a halfway decent turbo.

 

Perhaps he is keen on venting his frustration on the FD with a hammer.

Remember, the FD isn't the problem here- the owners' neglect and abuse is. Don't further this cycle of abuse against FDs.

Are we going to have to organize an RX7Club intervention for you?

 

Back your engine mount nuts off and give the engine a push. s366 will fit in a RHD with about 2mm gap on one of these manifolds

 

MPS, only one mount is slotted on the subframe. the driver side (US cars) is not slotted, only the passenger side, so i won't be able to scoot the engine over 1-2mm...


this manifold must be slightly different than the earlier ebay ones or something. it needed about 5mm of clearance. other people have said theirs fit.

 

ok nice update:

got the pillow ***** installed, and i also did the rubber lined spherical bushing at the end of the lower control arm. the original ones were loose.
i got these via juan at j-auto, btw. great customer service and good prices.

 

update (continued):

i got everything installed and running, and i'm still waiting on my marman/vband adapter from himni-racing, which had shipping delayed because of the damn snow around here. nashville basically shuts down if it shows...

i hope you enjoy my creative repurposing of the stock twins crossover pressure pipe. i'm sure people will get angry that i've "rigged" this stuff, but please remain calm; it's temporary. also, i didn't have and 2.75" piping, and i DID happen to have 2.5-2.75" reducers, so i made it work








i'll be doing something similar to this. i am considering getting the cxracing cold air intake and modifying it to use one big 4" intake for the turbo, but that's money i don't have at the moment. (i think the cxracing intake box is an aluminum copy of the M2 intake?)



another pic of the altered and repurposed crossover tube (i am really happy about this for some reason)


and the chinese "single turbo downpipe" was very damn close to lining up. the borg warner is 3.5" marman, so obviously it won't work, but i ordered a 3.5" marman to 3.0" vband adapter/reducer from himni to see if it will fit without any altering. i may end up having to cut the vbands off and just weld the marman flange straight to the downpipe, and i already had to push the downpipe back a little bit to get it to fit.



hopefully i can go to my fabricator friend's sometime this week to get the downpipe altered, as i don't have a tig welder, but the car will have to make it to his house (~20 miles) so hopefully the himni adapter can get me there.

and one last part of the update, i discovered that i had zero'd the timing incorrectly on the haltech due to a lapse in brain function on my part. for some reason i was previously thinking the mark on the stock pulley was -5btdc but it is -20, so i had to rezero it locked at -5 but with a split locked at 15 with the timing light on the T1 wire, which lines up perfectly now. it has been 15* retarded since i got the car running on the haltech. i feel dumb, but at least i didn't do any boosting. just driving around cruising.

 

hurry up and get it on the dyno. i want to see the difference in the s360 and my s366.

building rx7s for the 2nd 3rd and 4th go around would be cake. Your just giving your self a challenge by not paying premo for pre fabbed kits.... and i like it!

 

thanks for the kind words, gilgy. i knew we were friends.

 

So the weather has warmed back up, and the oil smoke on startup is back. So it was the engine.

 

Did you ever send me the requested spark plug photos? I could have saved you a lot of headaches.

 

you're right, gordon. front turbo was in bad shape, but that wasn't the cause. it definitely wasn't helping.

 

i did not. i think i threw away the spark plugs shortly after changing them.


i think the pictures of the exhaust ports say enough...

 

so a little more detail,

the weather has finally warmed back up here, and i have the turbo kit finished and have been driving it around.

SO, upon hot start earlier today, POOF --a big cloud of oil smoke on hot start.
so when i got back home from that drive i decided to just let the car sit in the garage idling and let the oil get hot, and when the oil got to about 200*F it started oil smoking out of the exhaust. this is also with relatively fresh 10w30 engine oil, so it's not like the oil is super old and thin 0w20 or something.

so this is not good. i bought the car from zach at addicted performance (APU) with a 1 year warranty, but it appears that the warranty only covers the labor of engine disassembly/re-stacking, (no R&R, no hard seals, no soft seals, etc.) which isn't much of a warranty.

i have never had this issue with a rotary. it seems like the oil control o-rings are simply not sealing well enough when they get hot, like they're shrunk or something. so when the engine is turned off and it's heatsoaking, oil is seeping past the oil rings and into the combustion. i considered just saying "screw it" and dealing with it, but i think when it gets hot outside in a couple months it's going to smoke very badly at hot idle, and especially at hot start...

 

Sorry to hear about the troubles.. that's a bit of a kick in the nuts I know its disheartening but don't give up on it

 

it's not the end of the world. i will talk to zach and see if i can get any assistance from addicted performance, as i did buy the car with an engine warranty. this is just a strange problem to have. it hasn't been overheated, neglected with oil changes, ran hard, or boosted more than 8psi.
i've never had a rotary oil smoke like this.

alas, it is definitely not the end of the world.

we pulled the engine out tonight (well, it's technically still in the engine bay with the chain and hoist attached to it) and i'll be tearing it down tomorrow and hopefully i'll get started cleaning the internals.

 

Lol... the new clean white fd is sucking you in. Red fd.....too many upgrades... wants simpler fd with less mods.... buys clean white fd....clean white fd doesn't want to be simple without excessive mods.... decides to make owner take care of her...owner objects..but has no choice but to give in.. they're all high maint broads hahahaha

 

you are exactly right.

all my car buddies say "so.... red FD was too hardcore, so you get an expensive white one to keep it stock-ish, then you tear it down and put a single turbo on it. ?????"


trust me. i really did NOT want to replace the turbos or pull the engine, ever.

 

so here's what i've been up to this week:
the engine did the oil smoking thing again when the weather warmed back up last week. when the oil reached about 190-200*F it would just start oil-smoking out of the exhaust pretty badly (and i verified this multiple times over the weekend while driving the car around) so i decided to pull the engine and tear it down. one thing of note is the second post below which shows the inner oil control o-ring inside the oil ring. the pic is of the oil -oring on the front rotor only (gear side of the front rotor, IIRC), which appears to be swelled. the oil o-rings on the rear rotor were not swelled at all, and were not "squiggled" like the one pictured, which was like that about 2/3rds of the way around the circle.

i'll not comment much on this and just post some pics. don't mind some of the seals/corners being out in some of the pictures. the pics werent taken to show anything missing. everything was there, and the engine had good compression (though i never test it) of at least 100psi. RA classic apex seals, fd corners/springs, etc.

 

we are doing the final cleaning and assembly tomorrow, then reinstalling into the car sunday evening.


cleaning stuff (it's been a decade since i've done this).

 

Why such a rush to put the motor back together?

Make sure you measure the width of the wear on the metal oil control rings against the maximum spec.

I see a common street port problem- the only correct port template I have seen is Judge Ito's.

See how the tips of the side seals that cross the top of the port horizontally are damaged/worn as circled in red? How well does that seal?




If you make a template by using plexiglass over the rotor/sidehousing/rotorhousing/e-shaft and a bent sideseal spring in the side seal groove to etch the path of the side seals onto the plexiglass as you turn the e-shaft you will see the problem.

The sideseal that comes up horizontal to the port closing line drops into the port unsupported and then hits the port side at the tip of the sideseal.

If you keep the tip of the sideseal from hitting the port side at closing (as shown in purple, but ported using your plexiglass template showing the sideseal's path) it will stop this damage and you will have a longer lasting, better sealing motor.


Needless to say, it is a very sloppy build in general and with a little time you could correct more.

 

TII is correct. Here is Gorrilla Racing's special tool made from an old rotor showing the side seal tip's path.
The side seal should scissor back onto the plate completely on the closing side of the port
so it's tip is not pinched.
Barry