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Rx-8 Build Thread / Re: Vera's Story - '09 RX-8 Sport
« Last post by toplessFC3Sman on September 13, 2022, 09:43:16 AM »
The rebuild ended up going pretty smoothly, with new housings, the front and center iron from Kevin, and new seals all around (the old apex seals appeared good, but were at the minimum 4.5mm thickness). The only hiccups were a pinched coolant seal and a dropped apex seal corner that promptly disappeared somewhere in the garage. Fortunately I was able to get these parts alone, and slowly got the engine back together. Grinding the side seals was a bit tedious, requiring a lot of care and a delicate touch, but I put together a simple wooden jig to hold the dremel and help align the side seals to get a more consistent curved surface on the side seal end to mate to the corner seals.


All of the side-seal clearances landed in the 0.15-0.2mm range, so on the tighter side of the general range I could find. It took a while getting everything back together and into the engine bay again because I wanted to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything or mixing anything up, and time is just limited with kids etc. However, things finally fell into place a few weeks ago for the re-installation, which went really smoothly. The first start was completely uneventful, and Vera has continued to have no problem hot or cold-starting. Seat-of-the-pants feel is about the same as before, but its hard to tell when keeping the engine speed under 6000 RPM for break in.

50 miles in, the compression numbers (corrected to 260 rpm etc) are 6.7-6.7-7.3 in front and 7.2-6.9-7.5 in the rear. I'm not thrilled with the individual rotor spread, but we'll see how it progresses as I put more miles on her.
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Other Car Projects (Non-Rotary) / Re: The rest of the fleet...
« Last post by toplessFC3Sman on June 17, 2022, 06:28:44 AM »
When swapping the summer wheels back on a few months ago, I noticed that one of the rear shocks was leaking badly and the rest all seemed a bit soft at the very least- it looks like they were all still OEM parts at ~122k miles. Anyway, they all got replaced with Bilstein B4 shocks - slightly stiffer than new OEM but still appropriate for stock spring rates & ride height. They were notably stiffer and more controlled than the worn out shocks that were there before, but still provide a good ride. At the same time, I greased up the bottoms of the front springs and both sides of the rears where there was a little bit of abrasion, slid some fuel injection hose over a coil, and reinstalled into new mounts. This should better protect the ends of the springs and slightly increase the ride height (maybe 1/4" in front, 1/2" in back with two hoses) so that the van is a little more level when loaded up with a cargo carrier hanging off the rear rack.

To avoid messing around with spring compressors when replacing the front struts (those things scare me a bit), I was using a jack under the lower control arm and the knuckle to gradually relieve the spring compression to disassemble it from the worn out strut (with the jack & LCA constraining the bottom end of the strut so it wouldn't fly apart when unscrewing the nut on the shock shaft), and then doing the reverse using the jack to re-compress the spring until the shock shaft pokes through the upper mount and I can get the nut onto it. On some cars (my previous Saab 9-3's for example), this can all be done without removing the driveshafts, but the Mazda5 required the the LCA and knuckle to swing down further, which pulled the inner CV joint apart internally and pulled that joint off of the intermediate shaft (I was working on the passenger side first). My guess is the MZ5 springs are softer but longer than the 9-3's, therefore the uncompressed length is significantly longer. Anyhow, I then had to remove and rebuild the passenger's side axle in addition to the struts. To avoid all this on the driver's side I pre-emptively removed the axle nut to allow it to slide in the hub splines, which worked better.

After doing all of that, the driver's side front wheel bearing got loose (I suspect I may have caused that by allowing the spline to slide in the hub, which could have pushed on the hub and un-seated part of the bearing), but this time the drive axle nut needed to be cut off the drive axle - it had completely seized up (probably contributing, if the threads were messed up then it'd get to torque before being fully tight). Once that was off, I was using one of the on-car wheel bearing pullers that you rent from auto parts stores, but the wheel bearing was so rusted in place that the puller broke one of the caliper mounting ears off of the suspension knuckle!


Cue a couple weeks of waiting for a new knuckle from Mazda since I originally ordered the wrong side (the picture was for the correct side and I was doing it on my phone...oops) and no wreckers had it within 100 miles or so, but when I finally got it everything went back together without a hitch. So, lots of extra work caused by my aversion to spring compressors....
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Rx-8 Build Thread / Re: Vera's Story - '09 RX-8 Sport
« Last post by toplessFC3Sman on May 06, 2022, 09:35:57 AM »
Well... shit. Over the course of a day of daily-driving back in Feb (all in-town, dropping my son off at school, going home, running an errand etc) Vera started misfiring sporadically, then almost constantly above 50% throttle, until the low oil buzzer went off as I was getting home and I pulled the intake off and found that it was completely oil soaked. I check the oil level regularly, and had changed it about 600 miles before (that mileage spanned 6 months and two HPDE days, plus the first ice racing event), so I know it didn't start off low. The catch can that I had installed when chasing down a similar issue at a track day a couple years ago was completely full too (the catch-can has been dry almost since I installed it, the issue was topping off the oil in haste before my session with the engine idling - some got sucked into the various vacuum lines). Anyway, even a small amount of time running would result in pumping a lot of oil out of the crank case and into the catch can, then into the intake. The engine started up pretty well (as long as the MAF and plugs were cleaned of the oil), and idled fine, but rotor 1 was low on compression on all faces. Anyway, after taking apart and cleaning the intake, oil fill manifold, and the associated tubes a couple times, I had convinced myself it was rebuild time.

So, on to the rebuild, the rear rotor looks pretty much fine... a bit of wear evident on the housing plus 2 minor gouges (not sure what those were from), and one of the side seal springs had broken apart into a few pieces, but all the pieces were still contained behind the side seal. The front housing was a bit more roughed up, and two of the three side seals on the center iron face of the rotor were at least half-missing, with no springs left behind them and only a couple tiny bits of metal found on the trailing plug face and in the exhaust port. The oil seals on all rotor faces were intact and appeared undamaged.

So now, repair plans:

First, I'm planning on new housings front & rear - the front has some obvious damage from bits of the side seals getting driven into the exhaust-face of the housing, so I don't think this one would be reusable even if it could be re-surfaced.


Otherwise there are minor scratches, most of which I can't quite catch a fingernail on. There's also a bit of a different wear pattern in the center vs sides along the housing, with some slight chatter marks, but none of this seems unreasonable for an engine with 93k miles on it. Oddly, there are some notable grooves running around the whole inner circumference of both the front and rear housing that don't seem to be mirrored in the apex seals, and the rear housing also has some similar evidence of something getting driven into it by the rotor on the exhaust portion of the surface. Maybe bits of the front rotor side seals made their way into the intake and over to the rear rotor? Either that or this engine has been apart before and the housings were re-used. There was a lot of RTV squeeze-out between the housings, irons, and sump, and the clutch is pretty new, so maybe?

On to the irons - the wear pattern looks pretty normal I think, with the exception of a couple spots. The trailing edge of some of the ports looks a little chewed up by bits of broken seal that got caught there, the finish on the trailing edge of the exhaust port does not seem as smooth as elsewhere, and particularly on the front face of the middle iron, there are some deeper gouges and divots presumably from the side seals coming apart (this was the face that the broken seals were riding on).

Front iron, mostly good except for some chewing on the trialing edge of the lower intake ports and different finish on trailing edge of exhaust port:

Middle iron, front face, definitely some damage at the trailing edge of the intake port and on the sliding surface from breaking seals:


Finally, the rotors. The rear rotor looked fine - some carbon deposits but thats not unexpected. The front rotor was a bit more scuffed up, including scrapes around the rear face presumably from the side seals coming apart.

Also, on the leading edge of the apex seal groove there was a bit of metal junk building up. Its definitely sticking proud of the machined surface, and doesn't seem like its been pushed up from inside the apex seal groove (not sure how this would happen, especially on the leading edge of the groove and not on the trailing edge), so I'm guessing that this is what happened to the missing parts of the seals and their springs... most of them got chewed up and squashed by the rotor here, getting stuck as the rotor spun and dragged them along until they hit the apex seals. This is on all 3 apexes of the front rotor, only on their leading edge, and is not apparent at all on the rear rotor.

The apex seals mostly look good, and I'm on the fence about re-using them, but figure if I'm getting new housings, may as well get new apex seals to try to get as much life as possible out of the rebuild.

So, anyway the plan is to try to get good-condition used front and middle irons (Thanks Kevin!), or barring that get the ones I have re-nitrided. Clean up the rotor surfaces and that debris on the front rotor apex groove, get new housings, apex seals & springs, side seals & springs, corner seal springs, and all the soft seals (all the oil seals and bearings look like they're in good shape). The corner seals themselves all look good, but I still need to look through the FSM to see if there is a spec to measure them to.
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3rd Generation Build Thread / Re: 1993 red R1
« Last post by murz on May 04, 2022, 05:13:02 AM »
Car has been unchanged really, besides the fact that the CPU2 is starting to go, I'll need to fix that soon. I'll get some pictures up sometime when I get around to it.
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2nd Generation Build Thread / Re: Murz' 1986 Arctic Silver GXL aka Silver
« Last post by murz on May 04, 2022, 05:09:59 AM »
Just a small update, car has been good to me these past few years, though i'll admit it doesn't get driven as much as the FD does. Wheels and tires, and suspension is next!
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Rx-8 Build Thread / Re: Vera's Story - '09 RX-8 Sport
« Last post by toplessFC3Sman on February 03, 2022, 06:00:11 PM »
Some pictures from the event: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login


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Rx-8 Build Thread / Re: Vera's Story - '09 RX-8 Sport
« Last post by toplessFC3Sman on January 24, 2022, 12:17:09 PM »
Well, one of those walnut shells I mentioned in my last post came back to bite me... Sunday morning I was heading out to go ice racing and it was lightly snowing with an inch or so on the ground. When I turned the wipers on, they swept for most of a cycle before *thunk*, and they stopped dead. It wouldn't be safe to make the 2 hour drive without working wipers, so I had to pull the cowl panel up at a lit gas station at 6 am and break up the walnut that was wedged in the mechanism. It was a bit of a pain but only set me back about 10 min, so ultimately not bad.

Anyway, Ice racing was a blast. The lake was great, with nice smooth ice covered by about an inch of snow or so, and I was in the first run group so there was plenty of snow on the line through the gates for my first few runs at least.
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As the session went on, some of the sharper corners got more slick, resulting in a few spins, but overall it was a ton of fun!
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Rx-8 Build Thread / Re: Vera's Story - '09 RX-8 Sport
« Last post by toplessFC3Sman on January 19, 2022, 07:33:16 AM »
After sitting for a while between events, I got into Vera one day to warm her up and noticed that the blower motor wasn't working. When I turned it up to full blast, there was a whole bunch of grass clippings, dirt and other debris blow out the vents, plus a funky compost-like smell. Well... some animal decided that it wanted to make its nest in Vera's HVAC system and had chewed through the fresh/recirc vent door, cabin filter and a few other bits of the HVAC housing in order to do so! It had then packed the blower hamster wheel with all sorts of lawn debris, which had jammed the motor at lower speeds and caused the variable speed resistors to burn out (actually, melt a piece of solder "thermal fuse" put in place to protect the resistor and motor if it was stalled).



I was able to get the resistor pack out and add new solder to bridge the thermal fuse gap, and that got the blower working well again at all speeds. The housing was a bit more challenging, especially since I didn't want to take the entire dash apart to remove it. Lots of fiddling, bending, gluing and time with my head crammed in the passenger footwell resulted in a screen that the vent door could mostly close against for recirc that should keep critters out (at least until they chew through the plastic all around it).


I haven't noticed evidence of any more critter activity, but I think one of them may have left some walnut shells in the windshield wiper cavity since I hear something rolling and bouncing from one side of the car to the other when cornering hard, and the wiper mechanism seems to hang up on something every once in a while. Need to take the cowl plastics off again and try to get a vacuum or something in there to get that stuff out still.
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Other Car Projects (Non-Rotary) / Re: Quick Hello & Garage update....
« Last post by ~Groll69~ on August 20, 2021, 05:50:20 AM »
awesome,  look forward to seeing it. 
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Other Car Projects (Non-Rotary) / Quick Hello & Garage update....
« Last post by pjr on August 16, 2021, 06:10:23 PM »

Hi folks!   Hope everyone is doing well and staying safe.

Thought i'd say hello and do a quick update.  My garage has changed a lot in the last months.

The daily driver (Jaguar XE, V-6 supercharged 380 hp version) has been replaced with an Alfa Romeo  Guilia. It it a beautiful car (my first Italian) and it's quite a nice handling sedan.

I sold my white 2013 MX-5 Club edition back in May.  We had a fun 3 years together!  It was a "rebuilt" title but you'd really never know it.  I did a tune and some suspension work and it was a blast.

In July i sold my F-Type after 4 years of ownership.  It was a great vehicle; i had tuned it up to 605 hp and it was quite fast and comfortable.  However, i really wanted something a bit more engaging, something with a manual.

So, the latest ride: another 2013 MX-5 club edition!  This one is liquid silver, and has a engine swap: a 2.5 MZR with an aggressive cam and headers bolted into the stock trans.  It's a quick little bugger and so far a lot of fun!

Maybe I'll see some of you on Woodward this week.  Best wishes!




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