FAO: Brett

[initialD]

saw the stats on your car, looks pretty cool.

do you have more details of what you have done to the car? did you do the rebuild yourself?

do n/a cars have lsd?

[Brett]

The full rebuild was handled by myself and my Father. (He\'s a much better grinder/engineer than me, must all those years of experience)

 As for more details on the rebuild, what can I say?  We got the red book brand new in 1986-87 (Red book is the Mazda workshop manual), dug it out again when this car needed a rebuild.  Shopped around for prices, and TBH did not like what I saw at the time.  A fair few of the so called experts were interested in nothing more than taking my money, an equal number were on hand with decent information.
 I ordered up about £1500 of engine parts and £800 of exhaust, and set to work.
 Basically the engine was only running on one rotor. (Blew in the rush to get home for England vs Argentina \'02)

 Got the car into our workshop and got down to it.  Engine was removed form the car and stripped. (I might add that removing the OE exhaust and Thermal reactor was a ****ing nightmare)
 Looking at the wear was quite interesting, the block had covered 155k from new and this was its forst strip down, basically everything was worn!  The main culprit for loss of compression was housing wear, the triangular section of the tip seal had worn a track around the edge of the housing, completely cutting through the chrome.  Each plate was worn and it took a full days grinding to get them back to flat. (A real bitch of a task TBH, you have to go slow and remove a nats chuff at a time to prevent warping the plate)
 The rotors had loads of carbon build up, so they were lowered into a tank of decarbonising fluid for about 4 days, then thouroughly cleaned with water then parafin to get them back to new looking.  Interestingly enough the slots in the rotors were still well within Mazda tolerances and could accept standard tips no problem.
 Every single part of the engine/ancillaries was checked and thouroughly cleaned.  Many small parts were changed (Its this sort of thing which will raise the cost if you get it done by a pro)
due to wear and tear.  I cant even begin to list them all, but by far the most important were the following:-

 Oil control, Wax pellet thingymajig.
 Short Oil injectors had failed.

 (It is the belief of both my Father and myself that the failure of these components due to age/wear is what kills off a large proportion of Rx7 engines. Less oil=more wear)

 Upon reassembly the oil control arm was changed for a new one of our own making, its slightly shorter and so increases standard oiling throughout the rev range.

 We experimented on the old housings to see what could be done to improove the flow of exhaust gases.  In short the cones came out and the ports were smoothed a little. (On the new housings)
 The intake was also smoothed and polished, and the inlets in the plates were increased slightly.

 During reassembly it was found that the side seals had very little wear (it being the corner seals that had caused the damage to the end plates) so they were reused but with new springs.  All the other rotor seals were replaced and new springs used.  TBH reassembly was pretty easy, to reassemble the main block took less than 20 mins (this time is dictated by the sealants that must be used), although we had done a \'dry\' run first to get the proceedure right.
 The engine was assembled and 95% of things reconnected for the test run. (Exhaust was left off as were a few other bits and bobs) We set up an extra oil feed into the inlet track as well for the first few runs in the workshop.  I turned the key, it started pretty much straight away :cool   The noise was unbelievable and the twin purple cones of flame coming from the exhaust ports were equally impressive! :cool  (Oil was mixed with the fuel as well for the first 200miles)
 The rest of the ancillaries were fitted, and then the exhaust.  (The electric fan was fitted about 3 months later)  My Dad got first dibs on the test drive (bear in mind the workshop is about as secluded as Rx motors is) and the sound of the car pulling out of the drive way and off down the road was awesome.  Mods were made to the settings of the AFM to increase fueling at around this time, new injectors went in too.
 The best thing was that the car was now ready for JAE 2002!!(Which was the following weekend! The car was finished on the Sunday, JAE was on the saturday.)

 So, I spent every evening that week driving in a big circle (A264, A272, A23/M23 then back A264) and had clocked up around 300 miles by Friday evening.  Everything went well and the engine was running like a dream. (The engine was not revved hard, or above 4000 rpm for the first 1000miles, after that the limit was raised gradually)

 Then came a fatefull Sunday morning drive, a blow out put me into a lamppost obliquely, writing off F988 CON
 About 4 months later a came across a very sick looking Rx, and luckily I had opted to keep the whole of the previous car.  I stripped the old one and transferred the engine into this one. (This car had only covered 114k too)
 I\'ll admit I was sh*tting it when the time came to fire that engine up again, all sorts of worries were going through my head as to wether or not it had been damaged in the crash or not.  Cut a long story short, it ran up first time and still sounded strong
 I took it easy for about 500miles to make sure the engine was in fine fettle, then really went for it through the tunnels on the A27, what a sound!
  I know I\'ve probably missed out loads of bits, but I\'ll PM you them if I can think of them.  

 And as far as I am aware the Egi\'s never had LSD.

[Carl]

Hi Brett,
I think if you reused the side seals that your engine must have been rebuilt at some stage because the EGI engines that I have pulled with over 100,000 miles have very worn side seals.their depth as well as length but more so the depth.
I think that it is great that you have had a go at this and well done.I reckon you must have around 200hp with the current mods.
Kind regards
Carl:)

[Brett]

Could well be, but the car was one owner from new, and TBH the amount of dirt build up on the block indicated it hadnt been out, so if had been rebuilt it must have been late 80\'s or early 90\'s.

[Brett]

Thanks for the kind words BTW!   I was told by one well respected person that I\'d done it all wrong and the engine would\'nt last 4000miles! That was about 9000miles ago....:rolleyes: