Took the motor apart and found the front rotor bearing seized to the crank and front stationary gear cracked.
Contaminated oil also damaged the bearings in the turbo causing shaft play and compressor fins to smack the housing.
First and last time using synthetic.

Small clip during the tunning sesh
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap8qRD2n8Is
Drew a ***** on a new bearing for goodluck before pressing in.




Motor is rebuilt with all new bearings, crank, and staionary gear. Oil pressure is bumped to 100psi.
Going to stay with regular oil !
Just waiting for the new clutch in the mail and turbo to be rebuilt.

WIll be ready for the first round of topdrift in March!

Yeah so forget all the rumors, its a fact synthetic is no good. Ive ran regular oil for 5+ years and never blew a bearing before[only bllew apex and water seals]. I ran synthetic for 2hours and blew a bearing lol

 

Synthetic oil didn't cause that.

 

thank god someone who has common sense.

 

Yeah for real. It wasn't the oil.

 

hey DK
Ill stick to the oil you use

 

thats a fucked up looking ****

 

says the **** specialist.

 

Motor ran great with regular oil , untill I decided to try out synthetic for the first time and in less than two hours of run time it siezed.
Rene[ RMS] showed me some of his bearings/front stationary gear from running Royal purple and redline synthetic from his race engines and he had similiar spun bearing worn damage.
He told me cheap regular oil is the way to go.

Just wanted to share that.

 

lol The **** might add some hp

 

aside from injecting synthetic into the housings via the omp (the burning properties of the 2 types) oil is oil.
i've used royal purple for well over 10k miles... this current motor has had both conventional and synthetic, either walmart oil or royal purple...

not saying it isn't possible for you to have gotten a bad batch that may or may not have been contaminated, but as ive said from the beginning i dont think oil could physically do that in the short amount of time you had it running...

if i didn't blow up motor all the time, i'd run royal purple all day, but not at $70/oil change when walmart has the hookup at $8 for a gallon.

 

I think it's more likely you had oil surge.
I have been running Mobil 1 5w50 in my FD for a couple of years (not the same oil, I change it regularly) with plenty of track driving - never an issue.

 

http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/cms/in...=article&id=83

 

Agreed.

The fact the OP stated the front stat gear was cracked may have been the root cause of the seized bearing and subsequent contaminated oil and other issues. Who knows.

It wasn't the oil.

Crispy
- 10+ years running synthetic in my rotary. Tracked regularly.

 

ok why were you running synthetic???

 

It does not matter what oil you run. It only matters when your motor that 20 odd years old that has ran standard oil mixes with the synthetic is when your problems occur.

I cannot remember where exactly i read this but it has been proven on rotary. i think it was mazdatrix..

but it has something to do with the different properties?

 

No.
Oil is oil, as stated above. The only "bad" thing about synth oil is that if you are using the OMP and injecting engine oil then it is possible, but improbable, that you will have carbon issues because synth oil burns differently than non-synth. Although, those test conducted years ago were inconclusive.
Oil did not directly cause the above failure.

 

maybe synthetic cant handle the high rpm and heat? Maybe its just Penzoil Platinum? Theres alot of factors i guess..Who knows. All I know is, I Im not using it anymore. I tried it just to try it, to see what happens.. ANd I saw lol Its weird because only the front bearing was majorly damaged, the rear rotor bearing was okay. Front stat gear was cracked too..
I replaced all the bearings anyways, and also replaced the crank.
I gotta try the rx8 hardened staionary gear on the next motor build. I also bumped modded my oil pressure regulator for 100 psi to ensure no oil starvation on the new setup..

 

my FD gets cheap Rotella changed every 1,500 or 2 events which ever comes first

 

No.

It's only a problem when your engine is 200k old and the seals are rock hard and the only thing preventing them from leaking is a dam of oil residue that the synthetic washes away. I've done this on a personal vehicle.

I've also switched cars with lower mileage to synthetic with no complaints.

I've also run Mobil, Brad Penn, Agip, and Shell synthetics in rotaries, alternating between them and decent quality standard oils with no issue.

However, some things I've never done:

I've never pressed in new bearings, always used old. I've never dyno tuned or raced an engine that didn't have at least three or four hours of run time on it, and I prefer a minimum of 1000 miles. And I certainly have never had an engine with new bearings on a dyno after only two hours.

The Mazda break-in guidelines for new engines say that engines with new bearings be given a much longer break-in period than engines with used bearings. It's about double the length! I infer from this that Mazda knows that new bearings are very difficult to set precisely and WILL be irregular to some degree, and they need to be run-in before putting any heavy loads on them.

 

Turbo longevity.

I ran dino based oil in my ITS 2nd Gen normally aspirated racecar.
Regards,
Crispy

 

I'm in the same boat as Crispy, have run synthetic in my FD engine for years, to include track use. For some reason the damn engine just keeps running at 500+ rwhp

I also recommend synthetic to all customers after motor break-in..... these are engines under our shop's warranty.

 

Maybe you revved the **** out of it and cracked the stat gear leading to bearing to e-shaft collision? Hmmmm? Maybe? You do know the stat gears in an FC will break if overrevved, and sometimes even if they are old and a little abused? Say, like when your getting your dorifto on and holding the engine at redline? Hmmmm? Think of that?
Because that is likely what caused your issue, not the oil.

Yeah, I do not use Pennzoil myself, as a large percentage of thier oils are made from recycled stocks, which bothers me a bit. I like virgin oils

FWIW I ran some non-synth Valvoline oil in the FC when we ran Pikes peak, and that was just about the slickest non-synth oil I recall having used. Even the tech guys thought it was synth. Despite losing both rotor bearings the e-shaft looks fine, no scoring or signs of hot spots. Obviously it needs to be checked for straight, if and when we ever need to use it again. We used the Valvoline instead of Redline because the engine developed an oil leak and it makes everyone cry to see $50 worth of oil dripping to the ground.

Also good point about the rotor bearings PJ. Care must be taken when breakingin new bearings or you get to do the job over again. That Lynn Hanover fellow has made some very insightful comments regarding this, those interested might want to search the web for them.

 

someone say turbo longevity?
i really need to look into the forum deeper.

 

We ran Redline synthetic in our race engines running 40psi of boost and 9500rpm and didn't have bearing problems. Just sayin.

 

I had my redline set at 8500, which isnt very high for a rotary.. Then again that stationary gear has been reused and drifted on for a few years now.Its a used hardened sationary gear I bought from Kyle mohan @ mazdatrix a few years ago. The bearings were about 2000 miles on the engine though.. Im guessing maybe, Im not getting enough oil pressure. I know my gauge was reading no more than 60psi, and around 30 psi idle.. But thats what I ran all these years of drifting and had never blown a bearing. Anyways just in case, I did the oil pressure regulator mod, and this time it shouldnt have any oil starvation if that were the case.