I am doing some preventative maintenance on a S4 NA engine before I drop it into my HPDE car. One of those things is to replace the oil bypass pellet. Engine is out of the car on a stand. I know I need to keep the stack vertical when i take the front cover off so not to disrupt the needle bearing. If there anything more than just that to safeguard it?

Also replacing the oil bypass in the rear (with the FD one) and replacing the front spring (with the FD one). I'm going to replace the paper front cover gasket with the RX8 metal one. But I'm unsure of what I need to do with the oil o-ring and nylon washer in this setup. Anyone know of a good solution so the o-ring doesn't drop out?

Also what's the consensus on oil pumps? Leave the NA pump in or go with the turbo pump?

 

i think with the metal gasket you have a couple options. when Mazda went to the metal front cover gasket, they also deleted the O ring and the land for it (N3F1 front iron), you have the o ring land, so you have choices.

1. snip off the part of the gasket that does the O ring, and just use the stock O ring and retainer.
2. just use the metal gasket, it does seem to work.
3. use the metal gasket AND the O ring and spacer.

mock it up and see what you like best.

no consensus on oil pumps, the NA pump seems to be totally fine, the turbo pump is bigger, but mostly to supply oil to the turbo. if you're raising oil pressure and no turbo, the NA pump is totally fine. you're bypassing less oil, so bigger pump probably not needed.

if you have the pump off, i do like to put a little thin film of silicon to seal the pump to the front iron.

 

If the engine is out of the car, then it is easy. Set the engine on its flywheel, on the ground.

If you use the RX-8 cover gasket, you do not need an O-ring. I wouldn't cut that section out to use an O-ring, as that eliminates the prime reason for using the RX-8 gasket: no frickin' O-ring to blow out.

I am a huge fan of smaller oil pumps in N/A applications because they provide more than sufficient volume, but the deeper pumps are more likely to cavitate at high RPM.

 

Thanks for the input guys. Exactly what I needed.