so, just to lighten things up a bit from the drama. whats the craziest engine death stories you all have. i've got a few. i was a little out there when i was a young chap. actually got mad at a 79 rx-7 i owned back in 92 cause of something stupid. so i unloaded a clip in the damn thing. almost hit myself with a riccoche. should have ahad a 45 instead of a 9mm. felt good to do it though. didn't really pierce anything to do with the block, but sure went into intake manifold, alternator, and water pump. just left the car where it sat and moved on.

 

Years ago maybe late 80s or early 90s I bought a 76 cosmo over the phone. It was in seattle, I was in spokane. I didnt run. My friend and I took a tools and a rope in case we had to tow it back. We were real adventurous then. We got over there saturday evening and I worked on it till around 10 pm and we finally got it going. Drove it home.. seemed ok.
So we get the bright idea to take it back to seattle to watch the road rally in Olympia. Well , we started getting a little white smoke when we got there and we barely made it back to spokane. I knew enough from my rx2 days to just keep it running and not shut it off. A later tear down of the engine showed the worst elecrtrolysis that I have ever seen. Worm holes in the aluminum and not just chipping but sheets of chrome missing from the rotor housings. Amazing that it ran at all.

 

I was sponcering a friend that was running a bugeye sprite for autocross and hill climbing. We were experimenting with a periferal port idea that I had and he would run it , break it, and I would fix it. We did this all year long and we ended up learning alot. I asked him how the last motor finally expired. They were running a stretch that was just short enough to be between shift points , so the kept bumping up the rev limiter to get though to the corner with out shifting. He said it finally let go of an apex at the 11,500 rpm limit. Btw Joe and his gf set some hill cllimbing records with the car, He figured it must have had around 300 hp.

 

I had a street ported 76 4 port 13b, holly 600 rb intake and header and some other **** in a 79 rx7... I bought one of those tornado things, I was REALLY into street racing at the time... well it didnt really make anymore power UNTIL after 7500 rpm Well I dont know how high I was revving it out too but I was thinking 9000-9500 rpm WITH the 74 rotors... the rotors were makeing contact with the rotor houseings, killed a cornor seal, cast irons were fried... Still ran though... ended up decomissioning it becuase it was burning more oil then gas... funny my little pos smoked like a ************ and still could kill a ls1 camaro...

IT WAS FUN

 

Well I know that i've crushed near 6 of the damn things, Taken 7 Cores to Atkins. I've upsold 4 of um, and Stripped 3 of um.

I too am "******* DONE"

As now I have bought a 93 Civic

 

A friend of mine where fabbing up a CAI for my 74 repu with a SDS fuel injected Peripheral port 13B in it. Seems that I forgot to tighten up one of the little nuts and lock washers. On my way home, I got after it. Around 9,500 in 3rd gear the washer and nut I forgot to tighten whent through the rear rotor. Damage to the motor was'nt realy that bad....but still expensive non the less.

I had a 90 Rx-7 awhile ago....when it had the stock engine in it with 123k miles on it, my now wife and I where going to DQ to get some ice cream. We rolled up to a stop sign, and I put the clutch in. Engine died. I thought...thats funny....hit the key, and the car would barely run. That realy sucked because it was due to the previous owner babying the car around for 120k of those miles. Carbon deposits where the killer. CJ

 

I remember getting my rotary truck years ago in the tri cities
I took a motor with me because it didnt have one , intending to drive it back to spokane. worked and worked on it , finally gave up and tow bared it back-- rear end was wrong , trans was wrong, wires were melted behind the dash ect. So a couple miles from home I get the great idea to pop it in gear and spin the motor for awhile so maybe it will be easier to get it running( i was tired from the drive and swaping work). So I tow the thing in 4th gear for a quarter mile or so and there is all this smoke comming from the truck. i look, burnt clutch bbq.. they had put the wrong year shifter in the car- it was backwards pinned.
I had the truck in reverse,,, ran it backwards siezed the motor( no oil pressure) fried the clutch. all just a mile from my house.

 

i'm loving my 85 toyota pickup now... its a great vehicle, need to get a header and exhaust for it tho, i can tell the stock stuff is a bit much... get rid of emissions too, try and get a little bit of gas mileage...


as for blowing motors... bought my 74 REPU vert for 1500 from jeff's friend tom... had a holley 600 on it, 13B 4 port street port with a 5 speed RX3 SP transmission... well i was on the highway and it was a 55 zone, this lady was going 35... so i do what anyone would do, down shift to pass her... well, as soon as i pop it in 3rd, pop goes the apex seals on the rear rotor.... i still passed her tho hahaha... but yeah that happened the weekend i got that truck and that was seriously the beginnings of most of my rotary problems...

 

I hate my Toyota, its driving me through the roof. One thing after another. I just put a fawking new engine in it I just rebuilt, but whaddaya know, something else breaks. Ive gotta replace the rear driveline (two piece unit got fubard), fix the rear springs (center bolt broke on both packs, axle sitting sideways), rebuild the front knuckles (globs of grease leak out), etc. The list goes on and on.

~T.J.

 

Ya dude, totally hear you on that one. This civic gets 42mpg in city, and 47mpg on highway. I'm going to make it a Riceariphic Sleeper. And the parts are a dime a dozen... 1st thing to go is that damn small airbox lol

 

maybe since its a 4x4? i dunno... mine seems like its been taken care of pretty well... i'm gonna be changing the oil soon, cause i don't like 10w30... gonna run some 20w50 in it... not to mention see what the oil looks like to see if theres any kinds of metal shavings ala bearings etc, just for piece of mind... gonna put lucas oil stabilizer in it too...

 

In nine years and ten or eleven rotary cars, I have yet to blow an engine. I did blow an engine in a friend's 84 Ford F150, 650 miles into an 8,000 mile trip, towing a race car and trailer. Damn unreliable V8s! The closest thing to disaster I've had in a rotary is when I broke the output shaft of the transmission...4,000 miles from home (Orlando Speed World)...at 5pm on a Friday (JYs closed)...50 miles from the hotel (hitched a ride with stoner rednecks who listened to Rap, smoking a doobie while driving)...on SUPERBOWL weeked when they were playing in Tampa (50 miles the other way). I had to get to Daytona to even rent something to drive, and I was forced to sell my car and fly home due to the need to be at work the following Wednesday (no time to fix it and drive home). I did, however, fly home in First Class with the proceeds of the sale and my ordeal became the subject of a three page feature article in Grassroots Motorsports magazine (April 2002?).

 

I blew one reving the motor in the driveway with the TB cable. How the **** did that happen (Carb 13b FB).

My dumb *** re-set my waste gate controler and pushed 1.5 bar on the BNR stage 2 twins, I had no fuel or timing for that area and limped home (FD). oops.

After pushing that much boost through the BNRs I checked them, thought they were still ok. Replaced the motor only to have the front turbo lock up and take out my new motor 3000 miles later. ****.

I had a coolant seal go out on my an SE FB after the single (my fault) alt belt (took the others off) broke and did not spin the water pump. I get a call from my ex girl friend and she said the battery voltage was low and the battery light was on. I told her to get home fast. Then I hear the temp was rising the whole time driving home. I go out and look and I remembered I only had one belt on it so the water pump was not spining. ****.

Damn. I'm sure there will be more in the future.

Joe

 

Some people get lucky.

 

I do have one question...I never rebuilt one of these before, So im not trying to say i know everything..? BUT kettle those groves Just look like the apex seals where pushing to hard into the housing!!! i could be wrong. But DO they test Apex Seal Spring Tention? on outer and inner?

 

well lets see...

in my 86 sport i got for 100 bucks with a blown motor, ended up having stuck side seal missing corner seal spring, and spun rear rotor bearing, and all the other bearings were shot and the housings didnt look to great either...

my turbo II and 83 gsl both have no compression on the front rotor, i cant imagine how the inside looks, wont know till i crack em open!

 

ok i got a story. i was driving back from bot hell and i own an auto, so i put it in first sometimes so it wont shift to early. Well i sorta had a pop in my hand so i didnt hit the shifter hard enough by then i was allready past 9k and BOOM. Ok well there was no sound, Just Lost power and this reeking smell. lifted my foot of the gas for a second and went to ZERO rpm, (had it in nutral). So i could see if what was up, Lucky me there was a driveway i pulled over and looked at her. took the plugs out and turned her over, and there was like one or two pulses per rev only, ouch

 

I've owned 3 dirvable FC's. 75,000 total miles I have put on them combined. 1 engine lost compression from a broken OMP line, Strill ran when I rebuilt it. Now it has over 10k on the rebuild and runs great. Have I just been lucky? My FC's have never let me down.

 

awhile ago, 7years, i bought a pontiac 6000 for $75 at an auction. needed a timeing chain and front berring. pretty easy, went to chang the timing chain and realized somebody rebuilt the motor. except they must have dropped a bolt in the oil pan and left it thinking the rock-guard pickup would keep it out of the engine. well obviously it got sucked up into the timing chain and snapped it. kinda funny in that aspect.


back to that same car...... i went to Idaho with my wife in the car and was doing great. the car ran real well for a couple hundred bucks all together. anyways on the way back near pendelton oregon i'm dead asleep while she is driving. i hear HUNNY HUNNY... WHATS THAT SOUND? clink clank clink clunk look at the oil pressure 0 . i say, sounds like a berring cause theres no oil pressure. so i told her to make it to the gas station. we left it there and her mom came and picked us up. moral of the story, if you rebuild a damn engine make sure you have a good oil pump! and don't let your wife drive.