I never realized this was your build .

Glad we could get the power you were shooting for!

 

Time for another update. Quite a few things have taken place over this summer, including a cross country move!

Let's start with the not so great:

Right after making 300whp on the dyno, I subsequently lost compression on the engine the very next day. Both rotors, all faces were at an even 50psi. Not only was this deflating, I was moving across the country in three weeks. For a few days, I wobbled between selling the car, leaving it in storage and not taking it with me on the move and potentially doing a different engine swap down the road, or just fixing the damn thing. After speaking with some friends and the tuner @dguy, I decided to rebuild the engine while I still had access to lifts and spare parts/tools.

Towed the car to a friend's shop and pulled the engine:



Upon tear down, there was once again no obvious smoking gun to the failure aside from warped apex seals. All the stock 2PC seals had a visible crown in them. While I was running 87 octane, I'm also using NGK race plugs in the 10.5-11 range and hoped that would prevent the seals from warping again. Obviously, that didn't work. Further inspection of the engine found nothing damaged besides the apex seals and some odd rear bearing wear. As far as we were able to determine, EGT's must have been too high which resulted in stock seals warping. To be safe, I ordered a new Rx8 eshaft, rear bearing, corner seals, competition side seals, and @dguy 's recommendation, Ianetti 2PC ceramic apex seals. ​​​​​​The ceramics should be able to resist EGT's a bit better. Being pressed for time, I didn't take many photos. However, we stacked the engine after cleaning and slapped it back in the car over a very long weekend. Thanks to @rx7tech for all his help and wisdom.

Devcon looked to be in great shape with no delamination or signs of failure


Ceramic seals getting prepped to go in.



Installing the Ianetti Ceramics. The springs on these are no joke and were a pain to install.



Once the engine was reassembled, I slapped an ACT Extreme pressure plate on the flywheel as I hated how soft the pedal feel was with the regular ACT Heavy Duty pressure plate. We put the engine back in and it fired up first try! While not much break-in was required with the ceramics and my housings, I did give the car a ~1000 mile break-in period just for peace of mind.

Then I shipped the damn thing to my new home in the Midwest! Here's the car arriving after its journey.

 

Oh shoot man, super sorry to hear about the engine situation. I guess the blessing in all of this was the damage was very minimal, and it didn't grenade the rest of your engine.

We lost another PNW guy! I hope the midwest treats you well.

 

With the car in it's new home, I started working with @dguy to get the tune ironed out and ensure EGT's aren't too high. I finally bit the bullet (I should've done this forever ago) and purchased a Haltech EGT controller and picked up probes/thread in bungs from The Sensor Connection. I'm also switching to 91 octane from 87.


Installed the EGT controller in the corner and installed the probes per instructions by drilling/tapping holes in the header. Set the probes to the same distance and depth for accurate readings. When logging into NSP, I found both rotor EGT's are reading very close to each other, indicating a well built engine and a good install on the probes. If anyone has a stock wiring grommet for the passenger side firewall, hit me up. I need one, lol.




Another noticed when datalogging, is that IAT's are much higher than I would like. After a moderate drive, I'd see IAT's hitting ~130F and not really dropping when cruising at highway speeds. It's clear the stock T2 hood scoop does nothing for getting air into the engine bay. I debated wrapping the exhaust, but I don't want to deal with premature failure of the header. Especially since this header has been modified with different flanges, EGT bungs, etc. For the time being, I picked up a Racing Beat Heat shield and installed DEI silver heat reflective tape on the bottom. While this doesn't prevent heat soak, I did record that take longer for IAT's to increase. The next step is to work on ducting to actually get some fresh air inside the engine bay.



After driving for a while, I decided to get a little saucy and uhhh.... exploded the NA rear diff with a 9K clutch dump. Lesson learned. That being said, the NA diff was the last weak link in my driveline, so I kind of expected it to go. I still need to disassemble the diff to see how bad the carnage is, but it definitely sounds like a bag of gravel when trying to rotate the stub shaft. Also, the driver side stub shaft and axle are definitely destroyed.

The stub shaft moves in and out a solid 2 inches.


Pretty sure that bearing should be inside the CV.



I managed to find an S4 T2 diff locally, so I bought new replacement GSP axles, dropped the subframe, painted the diff, and reinstalled everything last weekend. New fluids, and I had the rear driveshaft flange swapped at a shop for the T2 flange, as it's larger than the NA. This must be my 3rd or 4th custom driveshaft in this damn car.

 

"Oh shoot man, super sorry to hear about the engine situation. I guess the blessing in all of this was the damage was very minimal, and it didn't grenade the rest of your engine.

We lost another PNW guy! I hope the midwest treats you well."


Thanks for the kind words! Yeah, I'm glad the housings and everything were completely in-tact.

Who knows, I may end up back in the PNW as my family gets older.