How much interest would there be in having '86-02 style rotor housings machined for coolant grooves for use with '85-earlier side housings?

13B housings could also be milled down for use in 12A engines. This would help bring back to life FC/FD rotorhousings that are edge-flaked or have too much side corrosion.

I have the potential to get this done but it needs to be done in batches (five-odd pairs at a time) and there are setup costs. I'm not looking for pie-in-the-sky "yeah that'd be cool" interest but genuine cash-ready interest, since the supply of rotorhousings for 12As and older 13Bs is drying up. And their side housings don't have coolant seal problems so they essentially last forever if you don't walk a side gear out.

Additionally, how much would you pay for this? I bandied about a figure but I'm curious as to what it'd be worth to *other* people.

 

Nobody is interested in this? The prices we were talking about were in the range of $100/housing for coolant seal modification and $200/each for narrowing 13B housings and cutting new seal grooves.

 

That's been done in my neck of the woods for many years now. Actually it's common practice in the rotary capital of the world!
The more common practice some time back was to cut the coolant seal grooves in the early tall port center housing.

 

Don't Rx8 housings have coolant seals in the rotor housing?

Could you just add a normal exhaust port to those, might be cheaper and easier, as the 8 housing seem to have part of the exhaust port already in the casting.

 

Well if they do it then they don't advertise it much

The RX-8 has rudimentary depressions but I don't think the casting material for the actual port is there, so you'd basically have to do it like a peripheral intake port, only now you have to deal with transferring heat away from hot exhaust gases so the sleeve would have to be "wet".

As opposed to just milling four or six grooves for the coolant O-rings, I know what has a much higher likelihood of success.