can you go straight out to the side? fewer bends in the intake = better.

 

I don't think I can if I want to run a decent filter assembly. The easiest options are to copy my old intake or copy the MFR.

I'm still not pleased about the hackjob on my rear counterweight.

In other news, my new but ported rear iron, is slightly too ported for me to be comfortable with using. The port was taken too close to the coolant seal and there's very little supporting metal (even once filled) for the corner seal. So, I bought a new S5 turbo rear iron.

I did end up filling what I could with devcon since it needs to cure for quite a while. I'll need to finish the devcon job next week when the new rear iron shows up.






While I was there, I cleaned up the casting flash in the oil pump cavities.

 

No major updates. Waiting on housings and my new 55mm throttle body to arrive. I should be finishing the devcon job this weekend, as life got in the way last weekend.

Since I'm switching to a 55mm throttle body, I need a new base plate for my air filter. Unfortunately, K&N doesn't make a 55mm DCOE filter assembly, the 48mm I have won't work due to hole spacing even if I drill it out, and they don't sell a blank base plate. So, I purchased a blank base plate an filter assembly from ITG. My only concern with this setup is the assembly is longer, so it may hit my FPR.

 

you should check out the new Aero Gray for the 2024 Mx5, its sort of close to the stock color of your car

 

Definitely not a bad color. I'm kind of on the fence with these pastel colors though. They look good on some cars, but I really prefer a metallic pop in something like the rx7.

 

Pastels very well could be a trend that dies off soon in automotive before a resurgence later. Your Nardo Gray and Grabber Blue solids have about made it to every type of vehicle by now which is usually when they die off in popularity.


One thing I agree on is metallic on a 2nd gen. Yes, solids look good but due to the time period they were built, they are the normal. I find the older boxy lines of the FC lend itself to less vibrant tones. Take . It is a really tame color when painted on a boring daily commuter car however, when on the R34/35 or this FC3S (with the right accents and trim,) the color just POPS and is completely elevated!

I see this becoming more common on Porsche's PTS (paint to sample) among the Rennsport crowd. They keep taking boring legacy colors, slap them on a wild car and man it shows up.


Take Porsche's Yachting Blue Metallic. The color is a drab early 2000's blue but, give it some black accents, gloss carbon and shine it up and slap it on a https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10159142333931984&set=pcb.10159142334331984It doesn't look too far off from Mazda's own Harbor Blue paint code. Maybe it is the lack of accents on most FC builds that stops up from achieving such a modern flavor on a classic colors.

 

Yeah, my daily is a pastel greenish-grey. It's a decent color, but I don't love it. Pastels as a whole are interesting to see, but I don't really care for them.

My problem with Millennium Jade is that it only looks good when the light hits it. For the FC, I think the color needs to highlight the lines of the car not only in light, but in low light situations. That said, I'm tempted to give this loud, 10K RPM car, a loud paintjob too. Sure, I'm getting "too old" for that, but I think the car deserves something that really stands out considering the noise it makes. Afterall, I've owned it for 13 years. I think if I do repaint it, my three options I've identified are:

• Repaint the Arctic Silver again, but with more gold flake and fix all the minor blemishes left by the last paint job
  • This is the most subtle option, and the least amount of work since the car is already Arctic Silver
• Porsche Ruby Stone Red
  • I've loved this color since I was a kid, and it's very in your face
• Mazda Innocent Blue Mica
  • I've never seen an FC in this pure blue color, so I'm not sure how it would look. It looks fantastic on an FD. Maybe add some gold flake to it, as well.

 

Not much for updates. Finished the devcon on the irons this weekend. Housings should arrive from NZ in a week. Still waiting on my throttle body. Then I'm out of town for 3 weeks.

I'll be putting the engine back together around the end of September,

 

PPRE Housings arrived late last week. I opted to get the version with the machined coolant jacket inserts.








55MM DCOE Throttle Body arrived too.



With the arrival of these parts, I've got everything I need to get the car back on the road. I picked up a complete overhaul kit for the rotors (oil control rings, apex seals, springs, corner seals, etc.), so I should be able to start putting it back together towards the end of this month.

 

Looking at the housings, they look great. The only slight concern I have is the exhaust ports look rather small. PPRE did state these housings can and have made 300WHP with supporting modifications but in comparison to Defined Auto, the PPRE ports are definitely smaller. The exhaust on Defined Auto opens earlier and the intake closes later. Shown below:

 

Mounted the velocity stacks to the ITB's for fun. Discovered they're a bit too wide to install correctly on these throttle bodies. I need to remove about 8mm total or 4mm from each stack in order for them to fit. If I shave that much off the circumference, I'll lose most of the bell mouth shape. So, I think the best course of action is cut them both on the inner edge and "Siamese" them.

 

Spent Saturday working on the car.

Cut the velocity stacks down to size. I didn't do a great job considering all I had access to was a belt sander, but they'll be covered by an air filter anyway.

Painted the irons gloss black and the housings/front cover silver. I also clear-coated the housings and front cover. This photo doesn't show it, but I did finish filling the side ports with devcon after painting.




Pressed out the old stationary (forgot to take a photo) and rotor bearings, installed all new bearings.



Corner seals/springs installed.


Next weekend I'll clearance the side seals and get the engine sealed up. The following weekend, I'll have the engine back in the car and I can start to button everything up. I can't make the intake manifold until the block is in the car, so I can check the clearance inside the engine bay.

 

Got the keg assembled yesterday. Not too many issues aside from burning through a couple side seals sanding them a bit too far. Seeing as this is the first engine I've built, I'll chalk that expense up as a learning experience. After figuring that out, all side seals were set to 2 thousandths.

First plate, bottom dowel is solid. Upper dowel is hollow so I don't need to run a loop line. I reused these from my last engine.


First housing and rotor down. Mazda OEM 2pc apex seals and springs were used. If I had known about the success of the I-rotary steel seals before I bought these, I would've given those a shot. Next time.


Second rotor


Assembled! End play was initially recorded at .0028" which is at the max of the spec listed in the FSM. To correct this, we torqued the e-shaft bolt down to 95ft-lbs and ended at ~0.0018". Perfect!





Next weekend ​​​I'll get the engine back in the car and start buttoning everything up.

 

Got the engine back in the car on Saturday! Unfortunately, had some setbacks reinstalling the transmission, so I wasn't able to get everything put back together.


Popular to the guidance I found online, I discovered that Turbo FC3S Clutch kits don't fit an S2 RX8 transmission. At least the ACT HD street/strip clutch doesn't. The S2 RX8 trans has thick metal ribs near the starter area which actually contacts the pressure plate. Since I wasn't going to wait for a new clutch and try to resell this one, I did the next most logical thing. I ground the casting down to eliminate the interference. Now any RX7 and RX8 Clutch kit will fit this transmission! lol


Clutch disc installed. Didn't take a photo of the pressure plate after installation.



Engine and transmission back in the car!




I noticed the ACT clutch has an extremely soft pedal feel in comparison to my old OS Giken. I'm hoping that adjusting the clutch pedal and rebleeding the system will stiffen it up slightly.

 

No major updates yet. Hit a snag in fabricating the intake manifold last weekend. Parts that were supposed to fit didn't, so some machining and custom work needs to get done next weekend.

I did, however, make my new PTFE oil cooler lines, install the alternator, oil filler neck, and get fluids in the transmission/engine. Hopefully, the car is ready to start next weekend.

 

I have had the sticky sun roof gaskets since 1989!
So gona try the oil stabilizer!!!

 

Since I upgraded to 55mm bore throttle bodies and the PPRE Housings have a 48mm intake port size on the housing, I needed to create a tapered manifold system. Thanks to a good (and patient lol) friend, he machined up some new flange adapters that incorporate a taper from 55mm down to 48mm. The adapters are basically identical to the ones that came with the PPRE housings, but they are much thicker which allowed us to achieve the taper.



O-ring seated in the same place as the PPRE flanges had them.


Mounted up. This is a much smoother transition then what I would've been left with.


Once the adapters were done, we mounted them on a fixture I bought from PPRE and cut the tubing to length. In the interest of not completely redoing all my wiring and fuel lines, I decided to keep the runner length close to my last manifold at 8". I'm hoping the increase in air volume and having and additional 40PSI of compression on the rear rotor will get me to the 300whp mark.



Outside welded up.



We also welded the inside. Once that was done, I ground down all the welds and smoothed the interior surface. Also installed some press fit vacuum fittings for the FPR and MAP sensor.



Studs installed. This was a mistake, as the studs should've been installed in the throttle body. Since the 55mm Jenvey throttle body is much shorter than the 48mm I used to have, there is no room to install bolts or nuts due to interference with the casting. Not thinking far enough ahead, I drilled the throttle bodies flange holes out to 8.5mm to fit the studs. Only then did I find out the interference issue. Unfortunately, an 8.5mm hole is to large to tap for an M8 stud. So, this weekend I'll drill out the manifold and the throttle bodies to use an M8 to M10 stud. Minor setback.


Mounted up just for mock-up.



Marked out the base plate and cut it with a hole saw (not pictured).



This weekend, we'll be fixing the last little issues and hopefully starting it!

 

Throttle bodies finally installed. I had to use 30mm spacers in order for the air filter base plate to clear my FPR. I supposed I could mount the FPR to the firewall in the future if I want to reduce the intake track length. I still need a small spacer in order to clear the fuel rail though.


Annnnnd, it's alive! This past Saturday, we finished modifying the throttle body and manifold for M10xM8 studs, and reconnected everything. While cranking to build oil pressure, we definitely forgot to tighten a couple fuel fittings but those were easy fixes. As soon as those small issues were resolved, we set the timing and it fired right up! It sounds healthy and happy.



So the plan this coming weekend is to get the tune reviewed so it's safe to drive for break in, and bring it back home from my friend's shop. I do need to revisit the throttle cable linkage set-up, as it's less than ideal and has always been an issue with these Jenvey throttle bodies on a rotary in this configuration.

 

Not many updates right now. Putting miles on the engine. Once it's broken in, it's time to retune and hopefully hit 300whp!

 

Sorry I'm late to the party. This is one of the threads I usually stay up to date on, but I've managed to get behind on it. Looks like you already have the car running but here is my attempt at smoothing the flow into the RB header. Not great I guess but better than nothing. If I ever redo my exhaust, I'd like to add some tubing to extend the length before the bend.

 

Thanks for the feedback, @Dak . I need to do some repairs on my exhaust soon (cracked welds, hangs too low), so I'll probably knock this out at the same time.

 

I've slowly been putting break in miles on the new engine and finally hit the 1000 mile mark. Before getting the car tuned, I decided to address the weak point I've always had with the Jenvey throttle bodies. The throttle linkage. I've been running a hokey custom bracket with a hole drilled through the throttle lever, which ends up fraying the cable and has left me stranded before.

Turns out Jenvey offers a throttle linkage kit, so I picked that up. Comes with a cut to length cable, mounting brackets and everything else I need to finally fix this. I'm waiting on few more parts and then hopefully, this should install relatively easily.

 

Finally! An update! I've been putting miles on the motor and doing some street tuning with David Guy at Machine Werks. The car is running better than ever, road manners are great for a peripheral port, and after a long day of dyno tuning, I finally hit 300whp! It's clear the intake lenght was a little too long, as we only hit 300whp after removing filter and the 30mm intake spacers. Putting the spacers and filter back on resulted in a loss of around 7whp. Dyno is a Dynapack hub dyno.



Based on the graph, it's obvious that reducing the intake tract length net more overall peak power. So, next step is to adjust my intake setup to reduce the tract length to optimize the setup. Overall, happy camper!

 

I looked forward to all your updates.

 

Good to know things worked out despite the earlier setback.