There is so much about porting here and most people send there stuff off to brand names(shops) to get checked and ported.

well this weekend at the tunning meet several guys have bought so called ported and blue printed motors only to have them brake. One had a motor sent back three times. Now I will say I have seen the photos and have been on hand at another shop where the owners or the shop decide to say **** it and take the motor apart.

I was floored to see the bullshit porting. Side housing with runs on the surface from the die grinder, ports that are so big there is no way the motor can stay together( seals cannot pass with out dropping) , . An intermediate housing that is what we call an abortion motor is welded on with out the buyer aware of it.

So I ask you members..... should I try to get these photos and post for all to read and then let the individual builder explain? Why should these cats keep taking your money and producing crap with no consequences. It my understanding that these guys will not make good on these motors . I may see if the owners dont mind but you know how it goes.

Oh.....dont throw in bad tunning cause fucked up welded housing and un measuerd porting the picks blows that **** up.

If the admin says no way then thats cool.

imo those photos will be very helpful for the members who does not do their own engine rebuilds.

Show it! Mazda, RX-7, and the rotary gets the bad rap when these "builders" massacre these engines. these guys with these hacked engines then go to the strip and destroy them (If they make it there) and make us all look bad.

OK,OK,Ok....... heads up! These were emailed to me just now from the shop owner whom I emailed this thread to. This is the 1st guy/shop. I will submit the names after I get some feed back.The other engine is from a VERY common shop here on this site so I will get these from the New Orleans owner as soon as I can.

They were the one's with welded housings.

And my own nonbiased opinion...non of these cats have ever done work for me or my friends.The first guy I dont know but I have seen his name on RX7 Club.



[SIZE=14]REMEMBER THIS IS A FRESH REBUILD WITH ZERO TIME BEFORE BRAKING[SIZE=14] This is what they got in the second or third rework.

next...

rotor

seal damage

IF I get the next set from a totally different owner and the guys he sent his too, they are much more dramatic! I mean they lowered the port bottoms , raised the top and nonwere the same size. Timimng is way different , blowby on the rotorts etc.......this is what you pay good money for.

WOW! https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...IR#>/angry.png https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...1047683431.gif

i hope that **** is covered by the warranty (money back)

Now we can see why Ito's engines last so long while others' don't.

Argh, that just makes me mad.

Seeing those screwed up plates makes me all the more happy I found my engine builder. He lets me work in his shop with him as we rebuild my engines and some of my friends engines. We know exactly what the internals look like as everyhing is assembled and exactly what parts are going back into the rebuild. We then test them on a test stand for many hours before they get shipped out or installed into a car.

it hurts to see ppl getting ripped off like that. i say post all the pics you get

That sucks. https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...IR#>/angry.png That is why I learned to build my own engines. EEEEhhhhh 11 years under the belt. https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...closedeyes.gif I have done my share of at home, in the garage, engine building. heh, heh. https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...IR#>/bigok.gif

Hey Art,



I forgot to get your e-mail address yesterday. I will send you the pictures of my rotten PINEAPPLE RACING motor(s).



I need to take more shots at different angles to make sure I get a clear picture on everything. I'm on the orad this week but will be going to clean and more inspection of the parts next weekend.



Jack

This engine shows excatly what I'm talking about. When an engine is ported to a wild streetport the sideseal is exposed to the closing edge of the port. If careful pre-caution and proper sideseal clearancing is not done this is what will happen. The sideseal will smack right into the upper closing part of the port and get chewed up like this engine here. I also noticed they ported way into the oilseal tracks. There is no need to port towards the oil seals tracks. no horsepower is gained and smoking could be a problem for the engine if the engine is ported that way.



This happened because the time was not taking to carefully inspect and check the sideseal to port closing clearance. The same thing happens to the apex seals when the rotor housing exhaust port is not beveled for apex seal clearance.



This could have been avoided... again a reliability problem but it was not the engines fault..

I think the posting the pics is/was a good idea. These so called rotary engine builders are hurting our community, hurting the reputation of the rotary engine. It does not matter if someone hears about 100 rotary engines that last for 200K miles or about 300 HP+ reliable builds, people are going to hear the negative over the positive. Its just human nature.



Exposing bad builders will be a good way to keep people from wasting their money and getting burned.

i think pineapple puts out bad 2 rotors, i think they got their reputation on periph port motors and 3 rotors...the stuff that interests rob

BAM!!!!!

Hey you let the cat out on the next set. Thats the worst crap I've seen and I 've been rotor racing since 92'. Hey I have built crappy port jobs for myself but I would never impose mystuff on someone else's dime because its not right. I will and have refered people to guys whom I know stand to much to lose by building expensive garbage.

I engine builder should never let a motor out his shop with out telling a customer

whats up. Let the buyer make the decision on what is his problem and if you can fix it .Your sure as hell dont sell port jobs that the high school hang around did to get experience.

I have had many motors built most I assisted in and just recently I decided to go gambeling.

But I will say, that I soon as the builder received my parts I got a phone call that says it all. He went down a shopping list of what was broken ,burnt and not to spec.

I then called my good friend who built my last motor, its in my car now,( he now rents race cars and doesn't have time to build motors at the track) and asked him about these things that the new guys stated.He agreed and stated why these things would be because of inherent defaults. I gave the new guy a green light and have some confidence based on our conversation....before I spent a dime.

Come on people your getting paid to do it right the 1st time.........

I tore my Pineapple down yesterday. I found nothing major, just a bunch of "questionable" items. I will post pics later

BTW: when Rob says "Minor clean-up port" He means that, I doubt if he spent all of 10 minutes with a grinder on ALL my plates combined.

this is why i build my own motors. well actually everytime i let someone else do it its taken at least 5 years....

Art, the FULL history of this rotor and housing will explain the pics. clearly. The same guy who built this engine did mine and I stand behind him 100%. As you saw after Steve's tuning of my engine, everything points to the outstanding job this guy has done on my engine. This same guy has built a countless # of kick ass motors all over the country and has been racing competitively and building engines for 9 years. He is an individual builder who has no reason to try and rip people off as he is in it for the love of building motors and for the sport of racing Rotaries. He will respond on THIS thread with the details of what went down.

^^ So be good! For goodness sake!^^

VERY interesting topic. Since I'm in the market as a modifier and engine builder targetting more on the performance side of things, this struck my attention. Even looking at this as an enthusiast, business aside, I find there tends to be a fairly big difference between large shops and guys that do this more on their own on a smaller scale (Judge Ito, myself, Don Marvel, several others, etc.).



In a practical business model, you've got three major factors that come into play here. In a perfect world, all three of these would be at 100%, 100% of the time. As the real world dictates, however, only two of the three will ever be good while the third is left out in the cold or neglected. Those three factors are Quality of Product & Service, Timeliness in delivery of product & service, and Price.



-) Large-scale shops and high dollar operations tend to do very well with Timeliness in product/service delivery, moderately with pricing, and poorly with quality of product. I think what the original poster is getting at here is emphasized by this. I've seen it time and again myself; it's probably one of the biggest reasons, besides being an enthusiast and having a personal interest, why I chose to do things on my own. Even though their strength lies with the number of labourers working to churn their product out on a timely manner (usually), they tend to be too expensive for the average guy and also tend towards lesser quality work.



-) Guys like me, Ito, and a score of others that work alone (keyword here; we tend not to employ anyone else and do everything ourselves) and do this as a means for a living pretty much invariably excel on Quality of product and service (I think the largest reason behind this is because it's just us, ourselves, doing all of the work instead of having to deal with quality control or other groups doing "their chunk" or portion of work), we do fairly well on pricing (we lack the overhead so we're not as much 'under the gun' to charge a comparable rate for labour and work that a large-scale operation would do on average), but tend to not do as well when it comes to timeliness on the delivery (since there's usually only one, maybe two of us working on something at a time).



Differing from larger operations, we usually tend to shine when it comes to the quality aspect also because of the personal relationships that are built between us and the customer; more attention and care is given to the work and labour perform to better suit the customer's personal expectations instead of it being more about just earning and buck and flipping another project over. I think this is why we tend to see better stuff from private entrepreneurs over those of the shops that do the exact same work. When you've got 14 guys working on the same thing, I think it makes it easier to louse things up and also doesn't endear to personal care that's taken. That's my opinion on it.



I think the focus and intent of this thread is right-on and I think it's the right idea. However, as with everything that comes down to pointing a criticizing figure at a business entity, care has to be taken so as to prevent it from marching into something slanderous. Adequate proof and evidence have to be given and hopefully the party that's being blamed for bad work (in this case) needs to have the opportunity to defend themselves. I don't know how Vosko or the other moderators feel about this but I think it's a good idea, generally speaking.



I'm not personally afraid of it concerning my own work. I feel that I do good work so I'm not threatened. However, I'm not above criticism or reproof and I know that I've got to continue to increase my own skills to provide a better product and service so I don't have an issue if someone has a problem with or question about anything I've done for them.



My comments on the first porting and other pictures posted -> VERY lousy work and no attention to detail or care given there at all. Whoever did the work needs to change jobs. https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...DIR#>/wink.png



B

Agreed. Whomever did the porting work didn't know what they were doing. Their work was VERY sloppy and didn't appear to be uniform.



But, you know, those kinds of guys tend to not care -> wanna know why? They'll never see you (the customer) and they figure that the customer will never know what's on the inside of this engine because they figure that you'll never tear it apart to see their work up-close.



This is _the very reason_ why I take pictures of everything I do for people.



B

The surface rust in the port runner and outlet is what's called "flash rust"; that happens very quickly after finishing a port job on the irons. The freshly exposed & raw iron quickly begins to flash rust. This is further accelerated and exacerbated when the irons sit outside in the weather (for some reason unbeknownced to me). I've yet to find a decent way to prevent this but I've been thinking about either applying a light coat of vaseline or perhaps WD40 or something shortly after finishing a port job.



B

wd-40 is common in piston engine rebuild for prevention of rust on finished iron. nasa did make and call it water displacement formula 40

IIRC, it was actually their 40th attempt at making a water displacement formula work?? https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...IR#>/smile.png



Anyway, slightly more on topic, the first motor I pulled down (shat apex seal) i found some real interesting things, the intermediate iron had REALLY rough porting, looked horid.. and all the corner seals on that side of the rotor were chewed up and all of them cracked in at least two pieces..



Unfortunatly Im not sure what company did the porting, as i bought it dead from a mate..

but still goes to show its not a very localised occurance.. https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...IR#>/smile.png

i have pics of my blown pineapple motor, but rob wouldn't let me take pictures of the port job....



now i'm sorta pissed that he wouldn't let me

We PAY someone who sells us on thier ability to perform a service correctly.

It is not for the buyer to have to inspect the work before hand. Why would you? Then you would capable of knowing how to do it yourself.If the only way for mail order motor building to be regulated is to expose a bad job then so be it. I ate a lot of money making good on jobs that my employees would **** up. Guess what? even when made good they still talk about the bad service you provided.

So here on an international forum so many of us spute out well read rotary info and numbers to have several builders take advantage of those in need, well with thier praises comes the blame. I mean this for the obvious faults not BS bedroom engine tunning that kills a good build.

OK we post some picks that are what they are. Hey dont charge me for some abortion motor and frieght while I wait 4 months to get it and find that the damn thing smokes because the **** wasn't clearanced. Why would I want a motor that doesnt run....I already had one and sent it to ya?

If you dont want your work exposed dont put out crap.



Have you ever got home from B.K. and realized they gave you what you didnt want?Thats easier. https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...IR#>/smile.png

Seems kinda like he knows its a bad port, and doesnt want proof of such. Its pretty obvious to see who here among the builders takes great pride in the art of porting. You see their pics, without so much as the slightest protest or hesitation from them. If I dont feel a port is good enough to be shown off to others in the field(either professionally or recreationally), it shouldnt be put in engine.



BDC, that was very well put on the time vs quality vs money thing. I see that EVERYWHERE, including my own work. Its all about finding a satisfactory balance of each. And its not necessarily the same for each person.

I think that is alright to send plates away to get ported, but I don't trust a shop to put it together without me seeing the quality of their work. There is always that chance that one worker can ruin the reputation of a shop by done low quality work.

my current plates i sent to gotham racing for steve kan to port, i will get to see his work up close when it comes back



and if he asks me not to take pictures, (which i'm sure he will), i'll respect that- but I myself want to see the ports



i'm glad i'm doing this myself and letting someone else port it, total piece of mind

you didnt place teh corner seal in teh right spot in that picture u forgot to account for either the distane from teh water seal groove to teh outside of where teh rotor housing actualyl sits or the space that the rotor has from all the way on its apex to the corner seal plus the gap of the rotor apex to teh rotor housing. basicly the corner seal insert seems like it would fall right in since the corner seal woudl be more on the inside and the side seal might crash into teh top of the port like ito has mentioned.

Damn, Brian at BNR spent hours street porting my enigine and I just figured that was a normal occurance and that all builders did that. I guess I see what you guys are saying about the small guys that tend to do thier own work wanting to take more time and do it right. I guess since its just a one man operation and there isnt anyone else to blame, all the work thats put out is a direct reflection of them so they take more of a personal approach to do things right. That just gets lost when you have a big operation.



The thing thats even worse is the fact that these builders are blaming something else and not covering these engines. Maybe before the internet and forums you might could get away with this crap but those days are long gone.....now business have to do things the right way or else the entire world will know about it.....which is a good thing.



BTW - Seeing those pics sure does make me feel better about some of the used housings I used in my engine. I was worried about them cause they werent brand new looking but compared to these housings mine were like brand new haha



I cant believe they charge people money for that ****



STEPHEN

I think both BDC and SPO pretty much hit it on the head about the state of corp. rotary rebuilds. It's the compromises that this guys make in the presute of the oh mighty dollar that ultimitly bites them in the butt. You almost can't blame them. There pressed for time and all they want to do is bang your motor out as fast as humanly possable so they can move on to the next.

If you realy want your motor to come out good, when all is said and done, it will come down to three things. 1.Time, 2.Resources & 3. Personal involvement. The more of each of these things your willing to invest the better the final outcome will be. I'm a crazy perfectionist that's why I can't even imagine trusting someone else with one of my rotary babies. It like leaving your kids with MIcheal Jackson for the weekend and wondering why they got raped. https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...R#>/unsure.png

PK797 NYC

My E-mail from May 2002 from Rob 2 Pinapple (Amazing how "chatty" he is BEFORE he gets yor $$$$). Try to get him on the line when you have a problem!!!! Any I digress:

The Email:



John, we are working on more info for the website.

Thanks for the input! The difference between the 2yr

vs. 5yr is the 2yr is a quality replacement rebuild.

The 5yr has in addition to the new rotor housings,

apex seals, bearings, oil rings/o rings, spngs etc of

the 2yr: spark plug eye brows machined for ease of

alt. plug use(like cold race plugs), new corner seals,

side seals, cryo treated oil control rings/bearings,

stage 1 oil mods, port cleanup, applying of thermal

barrier to the plug hole(to help prevent cracking).

These are the big highlights. We are not sending out

the apex seals for cryo. We would also want to send

the rotor housings so the benefits of longer life

could be realized. If only one half is done, we feel

the other will just be the weak link. We are trying to

balance keeping the cost down with increasing life.

The cryo process is not cheap! Worth every cent, but

doing the compression side would add greatly to the

base cost. Since most people are being more careful

these days with money keeping the base cost to the

minimum. We do cryo complete engines from time to time

for those who want the best longest life, most

powerful engine we can build. To do all the parts of

the engine adds $600 to the cost. I hope this was not

too long, but you seemed interested in the details. Rob





Ok. Here is a port clean-up: Maybe I missed the point of what a "clean-up entails? Sorry for the quality of the pics, my lighting sicks

these are my housings after <5000 miles. What is causing the "chatter"?

https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...IR#>/angry.png



banzai, thats horrible. no wonder your **** dyno'd so poorly, I dunno what else to say. The chatter marks are quite prominent, did they use new seals and springs in the rebuild? The porting, what the **** https://www.nopistons.com/forums/pub...1047683561.gif