well, i don't think i've ever done a build thread so now is as good of a time as any to start so...

i will break this up into sections as i don't feel like spending half the night doing it in one sitting. anyways, i will start with the engine bay. the customer wanted the engine bay painted gloss black while the engine was out, while hesitant on a white car i did it anyways while being careful in the process to avoid issues with the paint, even though at times it was near freezing even in the shop i had to preheat areas of the old surface to keep it from "fish eyeing".

first i stripped most things from the engine bay to get access to the portions needed to be cleaned and painted. next i took a can PPG DX330 that you can find at most paint stores and went to town degreasing the old paint, firewall, wiring harnesses, rubber components, nuts and bolts, hangers, etc, etc, etc.

DX330 is an excellent do it all cleaner for engine bays but as a disclaimer if you choose to attempt to use it read the directions and follow them. use it in a ventilated area and use gloves as these solvents are harmful to your squishy insides especially liver if absorbed through your skin in decent amounts. DX330 is good because it doesn't vaporize in seconds like most other chemicals like carburetor cleaner and brake cleaner will, it is also good for turning oxidized rubber components their original color again, unlike that **** they call "back to black" which is nail polish and doesn't do a damn thing... this solvent is good for the series 4 exterior rubber trim pieces.

anyways, here is the engine bay originally after yanking the engine out:


after masking and painting the hood and half the engine bay:


after finishing everything but the tougher areas, course it would be easier to remove the booster but i don't want to brake open the brake system, bleed it out and flush it as i already wayyyy undercut myself on the cost of this part of the job:


painting is done, hanging wires back into place also cleaned the nastiness that was once a transmission bellhousing for the new ACT puck clutch:


and the finished product waiting for the engine to be reinstalled:


will post in the next day or 2 the engine cleanup and assembly process including the pinning of the block and marking the gilmer pulley for TDC(since they have no markings whatsoever...). this was at one time a 10th anniversary, although not much of that remains any longer, this car is mainly being built for 1/4 mile use now with all solid mounts throughout the drivetrain. once the dyno is repaired i'm guessing with the current injectors about 350WHP(stage 4 hybrid with extras and 720X4 with kenney belle boost a pump and walbro 255 pump, being run by a microtech LT10 with dynatek ignition and blaster coils) but a bigger turbo is planned for in the near future as well as larger injectors. this is a 9.4:1 high compression build with auxiliary injection.

by the way, that was using $1 per can paint from home depot(6 total for the engine bay). it does take a bit to dry, goes on thin but actually gives a very nice finish. i'm not a licensed body shop so i can't do it properly. i actually despise body work.

 

Be looking forward to the finishing photos. good luck with the build

 

umm those are the wrong injectors and fuel pump Ben...
720 x 2
1680 x 2
Supra TT (modified Denso 1020) fuel pump

 

The original bay paint looked pretty good, I would have stopped after cleaning (maybe a bit of touchup...).
IMO, black- the hardest color to maintain properly- is a terrible choice for the engine bay (unless the whole car is black, because I like the bay to match the exterior).
Anyway, not your choice, so...

BTW, what's up with the heater hoses?
They seem exceptionally long.

 

In the picture the bay looked ok but it was all turning pretty yellow and looked like oil had been spilled everywhere.
and i am pretty sure the heater hoses are stock length, just some braided hoses to look a little better and extend hose life

 

Oh, OK then, carry on.

 

it's been a while, i thought it had larger secondaries but they looked like greddy 720's. in that case then at the higher boost level it should be about 400whp.

if i can see the part # on the injectors i think i'm going to double check to be sure.

 

I wouldn't always trust the part numbers on injectors... I sold a guy a pair of 720's one time, and he got pissed because when he checked the part number... It came up as some Toyota 250cc injectors or something. He ended up getting them flow tested and cleaned, and sure enough... They were 720's. I bought them off of some other dude, and I guess they were rebuilt with a particularly different plastic injector connector piece.

 

well yes but i have been contemplating checking them anyways before taking it over to the dyno(takes 10 minutes to remove the injectors on the simplified engine). the supplier for my measuring tubes for my FI test stand have been on backorder for over a month and the local shop doesn't give any info like measurements when they service the injectors. i can ship them out but i would prefer if i would just get those damn graduated cylinders in! these injectors were all basically new but now several years old yet have less than 3k miles on them.

this car has been problematic and i want to cover all the bases with it, unfortunately there isn't any injector shops locally which just makes it a huge pain. the AFRs have always been quite conservative but it's had issues keeping the rear iron in one piece, granted that could also be related to the original timing pulley being MIA for as long as i can remember so timing has always been in question. which is why i set gauged the engine while apart and used several pulley sets to compare figures against.

 

I just double checked the injectors, they are 1600cc not 1680cc, and the are Bosch

 

yea i checked the numbers and they came up as Bosch EV1 1600's: 0 280 150 842

sometimes it's difficult to tell with the older Bosch injectors as they look almost identical to Denso units.

so the current setup is 720X2 and 1600X2= 4640cc/min and the pump system is good for 500whp(limitation being the stock rails and lines). the turbo has a peak range of about 400-425whp. only going for 17psi max so will likely be right around 400whp.

 

No local injector shops in Vegas!?

 

just a diesel shop which doesn't give anything aside from a thumbs up or a thumbs down. one carb shop i asked laughed at me when i mentioned flow testing and balancing and i hung up on the old geezer. apparently he doesn't know anything about forced induction and that even new injectors are not gauranteed to flow accurately, he told me to buy a new set if i needed something. all the others do on car servicing which does nothing aside from emptying your wallet.

in a town with 1.5 million people you would think there would be more diversity. at any rate once i get my own stand setup then at least there will be one more alternative.

 

No kidding. Not to stray too far from the thread... But I'd like to stop by and check out Rotary Evolution next time I'm in Vegas.

Can't wait to see the progress on this build! That's exactly how I painted my engine bay.

 

sure thing, i'm here 7 days a week.

i do dislike the camera though, it sometimes highlights things a bit too much. the bay looks a bit better than the pictures represent as it looks more cluttered than it actually is. as noted by the first picture, the flash is almost blinding but not much i can do about it even with the other settings they net similar results. the engine bay was quite yellowed in many spots.

 

naked corksport "80mm" downpipe:


wrapped up snugly in some AEM header wrap:


naked ebay SS manifold:


wrapped with the same wrap:


series 4 stage 4.5 BNR hybrid turbo showing the bored out hotside which now causes an issue with the downpipe gasket, we chose to fix this issue this time around shown next:


again the downpipe is larger than the gasket, that is good otherwise this wouldn't work:


taking the series 4 downpipe gasket and retiring it i grabbed a series 5 multi layer steel gasket and went to town on it with the die grinder and ported it to match the outlet on the hotside of the turbo. this took a lot longer than expected with the inconel material that the S5 gasket is made out of as it is VERY tough to cut down. here i ported the standoffs from the corksport downpipe so that the exhaust flow won't hit the squared off edges and will go more directly into the exhaust with less restriction:


here is the ported gasket to match the turbo outlet. the stock gasket was blocking about a 6mm lip on the outlet which was 12mm in total surface area. less restriction = using more of the turbo's potential and possibly something the higher stage BNR guys haven't noticed, take a look and you will see(you may be losing power and not even know it, it's also a choke point for easily blowing out the gasket):


and here is the turbo blanket fitted to the turbo. less heatsoak and more potential from other things, should be worth the extra efforts and costs:


keep in mind alot of the labor involved is out of my pocket(not all of it, namely the labor doing the engine removal, disassembly, cleaning and reassembly) so this isn't a greatly detailed job but still doing my best, this car has eaten 2 rear irons so far. soon up will be pictures of how i plan on fixing that!

 

Why is this?
If you're doing free engine builds I may reconsider the V-8 swap.

Keeping in mind that I know nothing of turbos...that bored out hotside looks like it was gnawed by beavers.
Is that a normal finish for such work?

 

Turbo blankets ftw!



Patiently waiting to see this... ^

 

considering the rear iron failure can be caused by a number of things i am doing the work as a warranty repair. usually the engine twists either due to preignition(timing issue which is covered by the lack of a timing mark for the engine later) or simply due to power levels and the weak casting of the rear iron. if this engine lets go, well then i know it was my fault in tuning error all along(partially, hindsight being 20/20 i should have timed the engine last assembly while it was completely apart), if not then it was likely just pushing too much through the stock unreinforced S4 block. power goal eventually is going to be well beyond what it will sit at with the hybrid anyways so pinning the motor was inevitable.

keep in mind this is also a high compression modified turbo setup, hitting full boost right around 3k RPMs which can easily put a fair amount of stress on the engine twisting forces of these engines making power down low.

yea the machining work on the turbo could have been done better but it works. i don't know how Bryan does the milling but the rather rough cut i doubt is going to hinder it that much.

this is also the first full bridge on a hybrid i've put together, even though temporary i am curious if it will keep up with the porting. the last trip out it seemed to be doing fine during a road tune all the way to 8k(wasn't quite done tuning yet) without dropping boost like so many keep saying "the turbo will run out of steam behind the bridge". was tuned to 15psi but lost the rear iron during a moderate acceleration at 50mph at 3500RPMs in 4th at about 5psi, it survived many many full throttle runs but decided to give it up while basically cruising, AFRs in the upper 10's, the microtech's wideband had died so i was doing it on the fly but never once spiked indicating a fuel system issue, so i wasn't able to log the AFRs during the event.

it's nothing new or revolutionary, just one of the services in my sig. sorry.

 

but here is a quick set of pics anyways.. stock there's only 2 studs, after pinning the engine now has 6.



only having 2 dowels stock still allows the engine a bit of freedom to twist, and eventually break the ear off the iron... later model 13B engines had a thicker casting in this area and less prone to failure under higher horsepower applications.

 

I know... I've just never seen pictures of it. How much more strength does this give? Does anyone sell kits to do this? Or is there milling that needs to be done??

 

pinning requires milling the stock tension bolt holes through the whole engine so the whole block has to be done at the same time. there is also oversize tension bolts and studs which do similar but mostly pinning is deemed to be superior but a little bit more expensive to perform and not something for everyone as shipping a motor shell adds to the cost. some oversize bolts and studs also require milling the block, there is no easy way around it.

for durability, i can guarantee this engine won't come apart. most of the engines pushing up to and beyond 1k horsepower are pinned.

but also remember that even though the engine can no longer twist doesn't mean seals can't still blow out. but a good combination of seals like ALS/Goopy in combination with pinning is about as bulletproof of a rotary engine as we will likely ever see.

 

Nice!

I noticed in your sig it also says, "HP coolant seals and coolant seal savers™(in testing)" - Are they still in testing or do you have results?

 

beyond testing stage but now seeing how much interest there is in producing them. so far not as much as i had hoped.

https://www.rx7club.com/vendor-classifieds-276/gb-interest-thread-coolant-seal-savers-977152/

i stock all 3 types of coolant seals: OEM, FEP encapsulated(similar to rotary aviation inners) and viton seals. FEP and vitons are reusable, OEM not so much. as well as stock viton oil seals, also reusable unlike the OEMs.

about the only thing i don't really have a hand in are apex seals at the moment. but maybe eventually will work on something, i planned on working with ceramics as i believe most of the current ceramics are a bit overpriced, granted the material is quite pricey and requires diamond tooling to cut, or waterjet... you get the idea. ceramic seals basically keep wear to a minimum, so rotor housing life is exponentially increased as well as seal life BUT when and if they do break the result is usually loss of that half of the motor almost completely. but imagine naturally aspirated engines running 400k+ miles and almost no failure possibility with the coolant seal inserts. just be sure you keep oil and water in the engine!

i think the seal savers would go further if i was in the production stages but i don't feel like investing $600+ in equipment if not too many people are interested.

 

Where did you get that turbo blanket, if you don't mind me asking?