Now that I opened the can of whoop *** on the crank shaft pulley bolt, (see thread on crank shaft pulley bolt) I got the engine apart and found the broken water seal. It broke because there was no metal to support it. Its like the water seal was the only thing bridging the gap across the water jacket. Anyone ever seen this? Its a 87 N/A with 59,000 miles on it. I got pics, but my digital camera is C R A P P Y !

 

Another crappy pic, but I circled it so you can kinda see what I'm talking about. There is no metal on one side of the channel that the water seal sits in.

 

 

Yes, that happend because the owner did not change the coolant at LEAST once a year..

This is very important for rotaries. but people always seem to neglect it.


-Zach

 

Oh, and ONLY run distilled water.. NEVER tap water..


-Zach

 

what will tap water do?

 

It has salt in it.. and when the water passes between to different metals (iron and aluminum) it creates electrolisys(sp?) and ruins the housings.


Salt is just bad period anyways.. it EATS engines!!!


-Zach

 

Bzzzt - try again.

Sure, high amounts of salt (ions) could cause corrosion, but this is probably not the case.&nbsp We don't have any real good, high quality pics of the area, but can you confirm if it was erroded or broken - there is a difference.&nbsp Most likely a piece of metal broke off and got sucked and lodged somewhere in the cooling system - most likely in the radiator.

What weakens the metal is electrolysis.&nbsp To induce this phenomena, all you need is two dissimilar metals and a slight acid.&nbsp Distilled water helps, but it will NOT prevent this from happening.&nbsp A lot of (acidic) blow-by comes from the combustion gases itself.

50k miles is awefully low for a side housing failure...
Was this car sitting around for a long time somewhere?


-Ted

 

That is why i also said that it needed to be changed at least once a year also...


Of course there are other reasons, but do you disagree with the use of distilled water and changing it frequently???


-Zach

 

Gee, thanks for shedding your light of wisdom so as to eliminate the shadows of doubt we've all cast on ourselves.

Why don't you try being a little nicer in your delivery.
Zach was only trying to be helpful in offering a perfectly plausible explaination.

 

I got the engine from a member of this forum who lives near here. He said one day that it just started to make white smoke so he stopped driving the cat. He replaced this engine with a Jspec so I bought this one off of him. It hasn't sat for very long. I sent the same pics to mazdatrix, and they send me this.

They say it the casting is weak and just breaks away. It can happen anywhere, but usually occurs on the lower half of the plate.