My heart would love boost but my budget enjoys naturally aspirated.

so I pulled the motor the other day and found this to be a problem (besides my 70psi compression)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj-TOrjm5ns

so out with the old and in with the new!
OUT
3mm atkins apex seals
stock s4 eccentric shaft (maybe)
s4 rotors
broken motor mount

whats its getting (besides gaskets and etc)
IN!
mazdaspeed motor mounts
2mm rotary aviation classic apex seals (if they are strong enough for airplanes, they are strong enough for me)
s5 9.7:1 compression rotor
rx8 eccentric shaft (.6 lbs lighter, still in the air though)
FD corner seals and corner springs

larger street port job (I have ported cylinder heads, throttle bodies, intake manifolds to boot, haven't ported a rotary yet though)
some intake port matching/gasket matching and overall modification of intake manifolds

my cardomain link is in my sig but its a bit out of date but it gives a semi-current details of what the car is up until now.

 

Sounds good. I did a rebuild and the video and FSM is a must. Mazdatrix ported my intake (perfect cheap upgrade). They lap the center and end plates witch is what you will need to do as well. I had them do it all together "port and lap". Other than that, replace all the rubber. Vacuum, fuel, ect. I love the power I got out of mine from just a street port.

 

I got haynes and factory service manual on my side so I'm just concerned on two things

1. rebalance the rotating assembly with rx8 e shaft or not

2. side seals look a bit easy to screw up... lol

but yeah until rebuild time its study study study, hell I built a build table to work on my engine in my closet!

which video did you use?

 

1. yes, send it somewhere good, like AZ rotary rockets

2. once you get the hang of it side seals are easy. if you havent done it before, its not a bad idea to get 13 instead of 12, that way you can screw one up, ive built plenty of engines, and it happens.

 

I have access to a balancer so I plan on doing everything myself, do you have a phone # for AZ rotary rockets?

I require more literature on balancing procedure!!!

or if anyone knows any good NA rotary shops, all the ones by me seem to just deal with boosted rotarys

 

http://www.azrotaryrockets.com/

they do plenty of NA stuff, but its not as "cool" as the turbo stuff

 

I dunno if I will keep my OMP either, everyone seems to ditch it but mine works fine and I'd rather not be stuck somewhere without some two stroke oil.

 

You are NOT going to break apex seals with a N/A engine unless you do something stupid, by which I mean driver error not tuning error.

It's not about strength, it's about wear. I've seen too many horror stories about RA seals to want to use them in a street car. Rotor housings don't grow on trees, and the difference in cost between RA and, say, Atkins, or even RA and stock, is less than the cost of a pair of good used housings.

I guess it depends on if you're planning on rebuilding after 10k, or 150k, and how much engine you expect to be left.

 

so the RA classic seals wear faster than carbon seals or do they cause more wear on the housings?

ps; I like the rally rx7 in the sig.

 

the RA seals are harder on the housings.

 

Use RA seals if you dont put a ton of miles on the car. RA seals are great for high HP cars as they will not break and withstand detonation. They will wear the housings faster, but the odds are they will last longer than you plan on keeping the car.

 

I'd say I put around 5000-8000 miles on it a year and probably less now that I have a DD. If I had to rebuild it 60k miles from now I would be fine with that.

but if I was to rebuild it again I wouldn't use my housings because they would have near 200k on them (or so) my engine has already been rebuilt.

I bought the car a couple years ago with runing issues (poor grounds) with a rebuilt atkins motor done up with 3mm apex seals, I have a lot of previous records and the original motor had about 100k on it when the rear rotor lost compression, then it sat in the owners back yard for a couple years then the guy who I got it from was the second owner and tried 'restoring' but fucked up a lot of stuff but managed to put about 50k miles on the rebuild.

now do I keep with my working OMP or go premix, I don't see really much definitive answers for either side.

that and I guess I would probably not get the rx8 e shaft and spend that 200 dollars on more useful things. but every lb or fractional lb loss is helpful.

decisions decisions decisions...

 

You won't need much more study than this.

http://www.rotaryaviation.com/overhaul_video.htm

 

Got it apart this week:






Next up, a lot of cleaning and a lot of measuring

 

as long as your stock S4 shaft specs out and there is no physical damage to it, you should use it. if your omission of the S5 flywheel and front counterweight is because you didn't get them, then you'll have to balance your assembly for those S5 rotors anyway.

 

Here's my opinion for whatever it's worth. DO NOT use the Renesis e-shaft. There is evidence that they are actually weaker as one has been bent! The current theory which has yet to be confirmed is that there is a hardening step that Mazda has omitted from these shafts that they did with the old ones. Saying this, I haven't seen an n/a that has bent one. If you believe in insurance though, stick to a 13B shaft.

As far as seals go, I am a firm believer that if you can't afford Ianetti Ceramics, you need to stay with stock Mazda seals. I don't trust ANYONE else's! Use Mazda's 2 piece 2mm seals. The one thing I would make an exception for however is Atkin's corner seals. Those I like. They are solid but have another neat feature. Look them up. Use the 3rd gen corner seal springs.

Whatever series rotors you are using (S4, S5), you need to use the corresponding counterweights front and back.

When it comes to porting and rebuilding, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to do it yourself. The biggest key is in taking your time. Buy a porting template along with a couple of videos. Mazdatrix has a nice porting video for a good price. There are also various rebuild videos out there such as Atkins and Rotary Aviation. Watch and study these and make sure to measure everything carefully. Do not skimp here in the name of time. Get a set of feeler gauges, a dial caliper, and a micrometer. Follow factory specs in the workshop manual when assembling the engine.

Do not get carried away when porting the engine. Way too many people here get too carried away with going larger. I see people all the time complain that the Racing Beat templates are too conservative. That's complete crap. These people waste their time and typically turn perfectly good housings into junk. Resist the urge to go as large as possible and resist the urge to bridgeport it. If this isn't a full time race car and you don't have a standalone ecu, don't waste your time in more agressive porting only to go slower in the end due to the inadequesies of the rest of the setup.

The best piece of advice I can give is to clean, clean, clean!!! How many pictures of engine rebuilds do we see where the parts are dirty? Too many! If you can't eat off of your parts, they aren't clean enough! No that is not an exagerration. You need to treat it like magor surgery. You wouldn't want to go the hospital to get operated on only to find out there are poor hygene practices in the operating room. This is no different. Bad things can happen during a dirty rebuild.

Clean everything. Measure everything. Take no short cuts, especially not in the name of "budget". If it is out of spec, regardless of price, replace it! It's cheaper in the longrun. Trust me! Take your time and do it right. There are only 2 ways to do things, right and wrong. Cheap and expensive are not valid criteria in determining this. MOST people do it wrong! If you like the budget of a staying n/a, I sure hope you are ready to spend the amount to do it properly because there is no such thing as "the budget rebuild". There is only right and wrong. Budget is nothing more than how much it costs to do it properly. Remember if this gets expensive, forced induction would have cost much much more! Be one of the few here to do it right and keep us updated!

 

Lol, that's funny because I used a Racing Beat template and actually chose NOT to cut in one area because I felt it hurt velocity too much, haha.

I have to laught about apex seals and what some people don't know about "x" brand's seals.

 

I gotta measure it tomorrow and see. I won't use the s5 flywheel because I have a racing beat aluminum flywheel, I just need the s5 counterweights. After researching and evaluating, I probably will just use my s4 shaft I'm not worried about a renesis shaft (if I was to use it) flexing considering they are identical to the 13BREW one with an extra oil hole drilled into it. I will get the front s5 counterweight and A/T rear counterweight for the s5 rotors though.

for cost sake, just going to use my shaft (if it measures within spec) and for reliability sake I am going just go with mazda apex seals, when the subject engine building everyone tends to get a bit overzealous when looking at what you would want into the rebuild heh.

and rotarygod your not telling me anything I don't already know. I'll have to post pictures of my "facilities"

however, I have never ported a housing before but I have done porting polishing on some bike cylinder heads, my TB, various gasket matching and some other stuff.

I have one of these:
http://catalog.ferris.edu/programs/297/

so whatever porting I am going to know how to do it and test it.

I did forget to mention in this thread that I plan on using s4 NA ECU setup that incorperates the SAFCII (operating in engine load readings rather than throttle position readings) via the map sensor and my AEM UEGO wideband, but I need to get a new gauge because it got stolen out of my car a couple months back I called AEM and its about 200 dollars for a new one :|

I would just do a larger streetport than what I have, right now it is pretty mild (if I can re use my housings, get to measure them tomorrow) and get rid of the exhaust diffusers/replace insert and polish the **** out the exhaust.

and now I gotta drill that pin out for the housing and get that insert out.

 

Spent a bunch of time cleaning and measuring, the irons are within spec, but I still need to measure them for stepped wear with a dial indicator.

managed to get the busted insert out:





anyone make any good replacement ones? or should I just buy new ones and modify them to flow more efficiently?

 

Get turbo sleeves, you will have to take off some material on the back side to fit them.

 

can't rebuild it, too much funding required. It is now all about motor part out and use funds towards a used s5 NA motor.

 

That's the right thing to do. Many others would just go ahead and use bad parts. Sometimes when budget is a concern it's just better to stick with a used working engine rather than spend tons of money on a rebuild that might not last any longer thanks to worn components.