The start of the Winter Project!

[Joeh]

are you going to use wiremesh to scrub it? because I\'m rebuilding and not sure what material to use

Thanks

[stuart wizy]

great thread guys, keep it up.
just thought to add a pic of side housing on a motor im rebuilding at the mo that has actually blown the waterway into the groove which the guys are trying to explain about.
This motor was full of water on the back rotor when stripped down.

water O ring failure .

[Ricco_04]

Good work guys - make\'s it look so easy! :Thumbs-up

[dandan]

Good work guys - make\'s it look so easy! :Thumbs-up

I can post up the 100 or so intermediate pictures if you want, makes it look a damn sight more awkward! I wouldn\'t say it was easy but it is a lot of fun and it is getting easier with practice.

Good pic there Stuart, that is exactly what I expected to find but didn\'t, we only had a slight ratty edge on one small section.

Joeh, I dont know what to use yet to clean things up, but i dont think using an abrasive on any internal surfaces would be advised, just good cleaning fluids and a lot of elbow grease.

p.s oil pumps are cool!

[StormBleeder]

Well it\'s been a while now since the engine came out so thought I\'d do a quick update on what\'s been going on.

Well I took all the plates, housings and rotors down to Tims a couple of weeks ago, to see if anything was worth re-using.   Unfortunatly the only thing that is still good are the rotors, so I have to get new housing and plates. :eek  
But at least I\'ll have an awesome little engine when I\'m done.

The plates are unusable because although they didn\'t have any breaks in the water seal yet, they were very badly pitted and thin around the edge of the water seal and would never make a decent seal, so there out.
The housings have cracked around the spark plug holes and have been scorched and marked quite badly.    See Pic...




Well at least I have some plates and housings that I can practice porting on now.   Anyone want to supply me with porting templates for a large street port I would be very grateful. :Thumbsup!
 
I\'ve also cleaned up my rotors, well got all the lumps of carbon off anyway.




I would also like to thank RXMotors and Tim especially for giving them the once over and telling me if they were any good, it is much appreciated.

[G@NDY]

Making some good progress matey:Thumbsup!
And Tim is a nice fellow indeed:Thumbs-up

[Bobfish]

Have you measured the plates yourself?

Its not a hard job. Not saying anyone is lying to you but i personally prefer to make my own judgements. If you put it back together and it doesnt seal its only going to cost you the cost of time to tear it down again. Id say thats worth the risk for a £900+ potential saving on parts. Obviously though as i say, measure them yourself. My car blew a water seal, and overheated quite a few times, and its survived 10,000 miles now and lots of laps on the nurburgring and full tilt all the time, it goes sideways daily and never gets driven unless its being abused and it still pulls perfect compression and doesnt use any coolant at all.

Im sick of people thinking that EVERYTHING has to be PERFECT with these engines. I can understand wanting to get it right if your paying someone 2000 to do the job and possibly having to pay another 2000 to get them to strip it down again if you dont get a new end plate, thats a big bill - but since your doing it yourself why potentially waste money? Its not hard to strip a 13b and a couple of little pits here and there on the end plates arent going to make your engine blow up in 2000 miles are they? (obviously it depends on seriousness though)

Check the plates before you dish out dollar

[Joeh]

Anybody got any street porting templates *max street legal please *

Thanks

[dandan]

Thats some good advice there bobfish, I think the housings are gone for sure, and even Tim said we could use the plates if we wanted, as the seal has not been fully breached anywhere, but the fact is a 50,000 mile plate will by definition only last another 10-20k typically, especially as the edges have obviously been degraded already due to lack of correct coolant (?) or whatever reason.
A few extra squid on brand new plates means peace of mind and possibly an extra 50,000 miles on the finished engine. Rich intends to keep this car for a long long time so it\'s all about longevity and ultimate reliability. He knew it wasnt going to be a cheap project from the start, and I think he wants to do it to the best possible standards, his engine ancillary shopping list comes to something like £9,000!
Plus if he buys all new parts he said I can have one of the housings for a door stop!

[Bobfish]

Dude, end plates go forever pretty much.

I had no noticeable wear whatsoever on most of my end plates that have done 75k, the most i measured was 0.01mm of wear which is still well within mazda tolerances.

The housings, fair enough - i always replace those. But the end plates - seriously, if they arent warped or overly worn (which they wont be with anything less than 150k on them) then use them.

[dandan]

its not the wear on the face of the plate, its the corrosion of the part between the water jacket and the water seal groove, the car must have not been fed the right things in the past so all the jacket edges are thinning out, some quite badly. There are no actual breaks in the edges but some pretty scrappy sections, so it would only be a matter of time before they went.

[Bobfish]

Yeah thats right dan, its up to you really if you want to use it.

The only part really to worry about is the front plate at about 5 oclock when looking at the surface of the plate. Theres a thin wall there where mazda did dodgy castings, and without using distilled water it tends to rot away even more.

If you can scrape the crap out of it without it breaking and you always use distilled water you neednt worry about it going again.

[StormBleeder]

Thank you very much for the info Bobfish it is appreciated as you do have a lot more experience than me at this, so I\'m taking it all on board and mulling over several options.

I think if I had to fork out for the plates I might well clean them up and try and flatten out and repair the water seals which are just really pitted from corrosion on the edges, however since my parents don\'t want my car sat on their drive for the next year or so while I save they\'ve said that they\'ll loan me as much as I need to get it moving again.    
So I\'m going to try and be slightly sensible and borrow about £6k from them and do all the ancillary bits that need upgrading before a big single goes in.   (Fuel system, ECU, clutch, flywheel and exhaust as well as the rebuild.)

At the moment I\'m cleaning everything up including the dead bits, as I\'m going to practice porting on them, so I\'ll be scrounging any free porting templates that people want to part with very shortly. :Giggle  :WaveBye

Bobfish I\'ll post some pics up of the corrosion on the water seals, because I\'d like to know if they could still be used as they are or with a little work, as I wouldn\'t mind putting together a second engine with "Experimental" porting in it, very ambitious I know.

[StormBleeder]

Right where to start after all these months...

Have been doing a little here and there leading up to and over Christmas, but was far to busy to get anything substantial done.  
Still planning on having it done by end of April with any luck. :2eek

So quick update.   I\'ve been working on doing some test ports and also getting all the plastics out of the interior and preparing them for respraying...

Firstly porting...
This is DanDan having a go on the air dremel.




This is the finished primary street port although it could do with more polishing on the inside.




And on to the dash...
This is dash out.




This is as far as I\'ve got with sanding the dash so far.




Right that\'s it at the moment I\'m sure I\'ll post a little more now that I have time to do things on my project.  

[TwistedHumour]

It\'s great to see that some people have made progress over these winter months :p  Porting looks cool!

p.s.  Your garage setup looks pretty sweet!