I wanted to give an update and create a new thread that will now focus on my next mods.
Rotoryrocket1(Joe) was at my place yesterday and we worked out a couple of electrical gremlins. Turns out the harness was damaged behind the alternator plug causing the alternator to feedback. This resulted in the car not shutting off. Not really the worst problem in the world but annoying. Anyhow, we fixed it and the rebuild has a grand total of 20 kms on it.

The car needed a compression start last week but it fired up under its own steam yesterday on first try. I guess it has built up compression rather quickly.

The biggest problem at the moment is how to keep the RPMs down for the breakin period. The car is so much more responsive than before and it is just begging to be redlined. It will be a very painful couple of months since my daily commute is only 20km round trip. I can’t wait to introduce boost.

Anyhow, I have to say that Rotoryrocket1 has restored my faith in Rotary technicians. I look forward to giving him my business in the future. He has been patient with all of my questions and allowed me to participate throughout the process. I feel confident recommending him to anyone looking for a rebuild or anything else for that matter. He has an open door policy that instills confidence.

Back to my car. The next mods will take place after my last law school exam on April 22nd, 2005. I will be heading up to Rotoryrocket1s to install:

Greddy FMIC
HKS blow off valve
Rtek 1.7 ECU
Freshly cleaned 550 primaries
New Greddy 720 secondaries
Griffin aluminum radiator
Wastegate ported S5 Turbo and manifold
Greddy profec B

We already installed the walbro pump, and aeromotive fuel pressure regulator. I would like to take a baseline dyno run before I install the parts but that will depend on time and funds. I will definitely take it to the dyno after the mods are done, I am hoping for 240-250 rwhp. I will then turn my attention to detailing and blingage.

I have attached some pics of the JHB housings during rebuild.

 

It was a beautiful day yesterday so we threw on my 17 inch Kosei rims, S5 tails, and clear front indicator lenses.

 

Good to see things working out with your rebuild....And yes Joe is a good kid, I hope all the best for him in his business venture.

 

Good stuff man car looks great! The FMIC will be a nice addition.

 

Sounds great. Awesome that its perfect.

Keep me updated on those JHB housings. I was looking at it again. Seems like a good idea and cost if these actually work.

Ian

 

Oh ****, I didn't even know you were using JHB housings. Wow, that's great as I am deciding what to with my scored housings. Let me know how it works out.

 

I wish I could be more insightful about the JHB housings but we're really not going to know anything unless I have to open it up again. I am hoping that will not be necessary anytime soon.

As far as my experience with them to date, Marc Couture seems to be a very busy guy. He responded to all of my messages within 24-48hrs. I didn't send my housings into to be coated. I bought some he had on hand and sent mine in as cores. My cores had some corner seal grooving in them and they were considered acceptable cores.

If I was doing it again I would port my housings first and then send them in to be coated. I don't know what JHB uses to clean their housings but your housings will look brand new when they come back.

I don't expect to reap heat saving benefits since I didn't coat the rotors and irons. I used the service as a cost effective way of getting as close to new housings as possible, they were US$317 a piece plus about $50 to ship there and back.

 

You can buy new housings for $369us from rx7 specialties. I did ask him if these were brand new Mazda manufactured housings or resurfaced used worn housings. He guaranteed them new. (How would I be able to tell?)

Now I have read that possible resurfaced housings offer less durability and sealing characteristics. And have been dyno proven less hp.

Now this was some time ago and JHB offers 10x the durabilty and 16% less fuel consumption and reduces cooling load by 25% and rotor cooling requirements by 40%. (Based on their Cermet A coatings on all motor parts I would assume.) Now if this is true you would supposedly not need a bigger better rad or would ever have to worry about engine temp since even my fluidyne rad only in theory dropped temps by 15% and it was over $410us.

Anyway before I get carried away www.jhbperformance.com.

I would have to say that this claim would have to be 100% true and the coating cost about half the price of a new housing before I would go with this.

I for one have never heard about these guys or seen any real world proof to substantiate these claims.

Also interesting stuff on using their whole coating practive on an entire engine you would think it would be virtually indestructible. Wonder why Mazda does not use this on their motors?

Ian

 

This Is the first time I've heard of JHB Performance aswell. By the looks of It I can have my Engine detonate like an Internal Bomb, disassemble It and send In the Individual components to be treated which will result In 10x more durabilty, with 16% less fuel consumption and a reduction cooling load of 25% and rotor cooling requirements by 40%?

I'm not down sizing this practice but I'll treat It with sceptisim for now. If It works - great! I'll rely on testiments for now, so keep us updated Lawyer's Spirit, b'c I think we'll be hearing more about JHB and It's work.

 

Congratz on the rebuild. You should be able to hit those HP #'s no prob. I made 250RWHP with a HKS EVC IV, 3 inch exhaust, FPR, and Walbro 255 lph fuel pump. Good luck. I was also wondering where you got those clear indicator lenses?

 

Well Mazda did coat their Le Mans cars, JHB claims that their Cermet A coating is the same coating as used by Mazda. I think one great advantage of the Cermet A coating is the ability to repair localized damage. Once parts have been coated in Cermet A JHB can repair the damaged portions in the event of failure. This is an expensive safety net considering it costs about $2400 to coat an entire TII motor. But if I had thousands into a race engine I might do it to preserve my parts in the event of apex failure etc.

As far as knowing that you've purchased new housings, I think it very easy to inspect the sides of the housing to determine whether a o-rings have ever been compressed against it. Even after JHB cleaning process I could still see the outline of where the o-rings sat. I would expect new housings to have no such markings.

I bought them from a fellow forum member that made them from another application. He made an extra set and sold it to me. He will probably not do it again but you can take a closer look at mine and make your own.

 

https://www.rx7club.com/rotary-car-performance-77/plasma-cement-ceramic-coatings-first-impressions-389435/

Some more info I found.

Anyhow something I forgot to ask - since its a coating what about clearance issues etc. They talked about that in the above thread.

 

I have read all of the threads regarding JHB on the forum. The inconsistencies were not present on my housings. Others have written about clearance issues where in parts of the housing it was 0.2mm thicker than stock. I chose to take the risk that the extra pressure on the apex springs and possible additional heat created would be minimal and probably not effect anything, especially after a careful engine breakin.

I have been in touch with 'Now' and I am continuing to follow his threads. He is very thorough in his analysis and a perfect person to be trying these housings out. I was impressed that JHB were willing to fix what some may not have considered an error to keep the customer happy. I am less impressed with another thread where 'RotaryRessurection' has lost $2900 dollars worth of parts in the mail. But that is what insurance is for and if you don't take it you can't really blame anyone other than yourself.

What I would really like to know is how much new housings will cost if you qualify for the Mazda Motorsports discount? I know that if you qualify for the discount you're not allowed to tell non-members the price but a yes or no to my question would suffice. If it brought the cost of housings down to less than $400 Canadian then the debate for me would be over and I would buy new housings for my next motor.

Anyhow, a little over 60km on the rebuild now. The 17 inch 255 summer tires were not happy in the icy conditions last night. It made for an interesting white knuckle drive home.

 

Bringing this back to add an update.

Over the weekend, I was at Joe's (Rotoryrocket1) adding parts to the car. I have about 1300 boost free KMs on the car now.

We installed:

Wastegate ported S5 Turbo and manifold
Greddy FMIC
HKS EVC Boost Controller
Rtek 1.7 ECU
720cc Secondary injectors
Greddy EGT gauge
Greddy Boost gauge
Iequus Water temp, Voltmeter and Oil Pressure guages (I know I'll replace them slowly with Greddy gauges)
Yanked the airpump and all other emissions
K & N cone filter
Custom TID

All in about 12 hours with many hands making the work light. Thanks to everyone that helped out on Saturday.

I forgot to put a CF card in the camera b4 I left home so I wasn't able to take before and after pics.

Unfortunately we were unlucky with 4 bad used TPSs in a row stopping us from testing the new set up but I picked up a new TPS today and will try to take pics and throw them up.

 

A trick that some Insight drivers use (not me) is to attach the pedal to the bar above it with a velcroe strap. This prevents you from pushing the pedal past about 1/4 throttle, but if you need to stamp on it, the velcroe will let go. Seems that it could solve your dilemma.

 

Hmm... not a bad idea. It was hard for me keepin' the revs down duing my break-in, but I'm into my 2nd week of worry-free driving...

 

Couple of pics, I know I have a long way to go catch up with the Bling masters (IAN and Evilrotor) but maybe by the end of the season I'll feel comfortable opening my hood around them.

I am still debating how to mount the gauges since the Boost controller, cd deck and SAFC need to fit also.

 

Its looking real nice.

 

Haha...I don't care what it looks like under your hood.
As long as you drive like a man and not like Ian...he's all show and

But, like FC3S.dorifto said, it's looking pretty good. I like the red manifold

 

what are JHB housing?

 

Check out Jhbperformance.com, they resurface internal rotary parts.


Here are some pics next to the infamous Bill's car ('wrx drunk'). His car hauls ***.

 

It looks like you finally got all the spare parts stuff cleaned out! I bet the car pulls real nice without that extra couple hundred pounds of weight in the hatch!

BTW: your car is very comparable to Bill's WRX, you guys are going to have to line up sometime

 

Just updating the thread.

Almost 8000kms on the engine and she is running very strong.

I have been fighting electrical gremlins since I bought this car and finally seemed to have fixed it this week. The car would experience hesitation just before secondaries were supposed to come on and continue threw the rpm range.

What I tried:

TPS was out of range so put in a new one = A little better.

Set timing = no difference

Changed coils and wires = no difference

Changed Thermo sensor = no difference

Regrounded the car as per Kevin Landers' write up. This cleaned it up in terms of gravity of hesitation but still not perfect.

Grounded the 4 ECU pins at the ecu to chassis directly = 100% fixed, for a couple of hundred kms anyway.

With the hesitation I kept the boost controller off so it ran at what ever the wastegate dictated and dynoed 208rwhp at about 6-7lbs of boost. (I am probably gonna dyno it again this week to see how much HP I freed up)

Now with the bugs worked out and the engine completely broken in it is time to turn up the boost and start tuning the SAFCII.

I picked up a PLX R-500 and I plan on learning how to do this myself. Hopefully I can demystify the tuning process for other novices along the way. Should be interesting and I'll keep you guys posted on whether I blow it up.

 

Who told you it was some big secret? They want $420 USD for new 89-91 Turbo rotor housings.

BTW, for those that autocross at the CSCS event during the Bruce Cruise, you will be half way to qualified for the discount.

 

I think thye just bead blast the housing and then put them through a steam cleaner like any other engine rebuild shop. My comment is, did you check to see ensure that the housings were reground to the correct tolerance? and... what is their RA?