First DIY Rebuild Questions

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11-19-2005, 05:48 AM

SevenX

Member

Thread Starter

Join Date: Jan 2003

Location: Chicago, IL

Posts: 39

Hello everyone!

First off, thank you for taking the time to read this.

I will be obtaining a copy of the shop manual to follow step by step instructions, and am considering picking up a video to watch as well. Anyway, heres my list of questions

First, a little bit of history:

The motor is a 13BREW

It is a Gotham racing built motor that started as a mazda reman. The motor was torn down, New rotor housings, not sure about iron housings. All the gaskets were replaced per regular rebuild requirements. The rotors were milled and 3 mm mazda apex seals were put in, sides seals, corner seals, all springs and I believe even the rotor bearings were replaced. It has a gotham racing race street port ( their most aggressive). I'm not sure what corner seals were used, but I intend to find out and will post what they are soon. The motor was built for high boost applications.

The motor has a BRAND new OMP, new water pump, alternator, SS OMP lines, and was tuned VERY conservatively by Steve Kan as the car was a Chicago car, but was tuned in texas. The previous owner had some very unfortunate luck with the motor, and previous motors so Steve tuned it so that it was basically bullet proof regardless of the temps outside.

Anyway, on to the reason I'm tearing it down to begin with. After the car was driven back from texas, which

(where it was dyno and street tuned)it ran flawlessly the whole way, it was fine for a few weeks, perhaps a month I cant remember exactly. One day the previous owner was driving the car, not hard or anything, and it started to run and idle very poorly. He limped it home, and after a few calls consulting steve, and a few suggested problems fixes he ended up giving up and pulling the motor out from pure frustration with the rotary ( =( I know). The car was running on only the rear rotor. Ignition was tested, and turned out to be fine. He tested the injectors but i'm not sure how it came out.

So then the motor came into my posession. Upon inspecting the front rotor via the exhaust port, I found that there was quite a bit of carbon build up for the 2000ish miles the motor was actually ran. There were nice small chunks on the exhaust sleeve on the front rotor, but I didnt visibly see it being too bad inside the actual housing. All three apex seals are visibly in flawless condition, but of course, I can't see nearly enough to deduct them as being fine

The car was run occasionally hard, which is entirely expected anyway, so it IS possible that somthing was damaged, but I just can't imagine how (unless the motor is cursed haha) The motor was compression tested and the rear rotor had prefect compression while the front made no compression on any of the three faces. When I turn the motor over by hand I get strong pulses from the rear, but nothing from the front.

I first started by putting a decent amount of ATF in the front rotor to see if I could get any compression back. I did get a little bit, but the pulses are still pretty weak. Per my fathers advice, I also put in some of this oil he had in possession to help preserve the internals and make sure there was enough lubrication.

SO anyway, thats where I basically am right now.

My questions are basically I'd very much appreciate if anyone could give some insight/feedback on what they believe the problem could be. I spoke to FD3'sDragon (thanks again) and he suggested its possible that I could have stuck side seals, or possibly Corner seal damage although I could not answer his question as to what type of corner seals are actually in the motor.

On top of that Im wondering what I should have to prepare myself for the rebuild. I have a full assortment of tools available, and have done quite a bit to my car previously. We pulled the previous owners motor out and stuck an LS1 in there, and I have done work on my entire car minus the rear end. The hardest job i've done so far was probably throwing in an clutch/flywheel on my garage floor =D. The only work I basically havent done is rebuild a motor.

I have feeler gauges, but will be picking up a few parts on top of that starting with

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/disp...temnumber=47257

I also was considering getting the tool to measure the rotor housings to see if I needed to get them lapped, but I was assuming that with them being new rotor housings with 2k miles on them that they would be ok.(sorry for not remembering the name heh)

So what should I pick up on top of that? I did some searching in this section but couldnt really find much of a guide, unless i'm just blind heh.

I'm not sure what else to ask, so any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks!