lol. good luck

Damn dude, are you sure you never pissed off any gypsies or anything? :rofl:
At least you're staying positive about it. Good luck with this one.

Thanks guys. Before I'd say I might have pissed off gypsies - just because the failures were random. But its actually satisfying to have a "regular" failure.....at least, one that can be explained to an extent.

Newer laptops can be a bitch with that stuff, thats why i bought an older thinkpad with a serial port.

Damn Joe, sorry to hear that. WTF is up with our luck? Are we just cursed? Did we burn down city hall and rape the mayors wife in a former life? Maybe torture some animals or sell kids into prostitution? I don't get it.

At least you're in good spirits about the thing. I tend to look at "failures" as a way to learn and make things stronger. So I'm glad to hear you're not giving up. I think most people would have by this point. After my motor blew, and after we pulled apart the donor and saw the clusterfuck ahead of us I just started blurting out everything that we needed to do and the parts that I needed to buy, A very good friend who helped out alot looked @ me and said, "jeez Bri, you just don't know when to quit do you."
Without even thinking I responded with, "Nope, and it's a strength that most don't have."

Looks like you have that strength too Joe. Good luck and we demand pics of the carnage

Ah this is no sweat for you now bro. Sucks but it does bring a sense of excitement. I just found a crack on my rear iron AND I TOO am excited about this new little hic-up.

It is nice to know that your blow out was from a simple brain fart and NOT some unknown mechanical bad joo-joo failure. Much better luck 4 you given your past head aches. :)

I have come to the realization that this is what comes with DIY high HP rotary tuning/building. Deal with it or go home. :)

Good luck with this build bro.

damnit joe, you are not aloud to blow anymore engines!! maybe when you put the NRS ceramics in that will be good luck for you and it will be a long laster!!(is that even a word?)

good to see you are too down about it. so what do you think caused it? no water at 20 psi?

Yea I flip flopped between buying an old refurbished dell with a serial port vs. the one I have now.....the cost was the same for new vs. refurbished so I went the route I did (it has XP though, no vista for me) but sometimes shit happens....I *think* i've got it figured out though with registry fixes and a few little things that my friend did that I do not understand at all :lol:

Damn Joe, sorry to hear that. WTF is up with our luck? Are we just cursed? Did we burn down city hall and rape the mayors wife in a former life? Maybe torture some animals or sell kids into prostitution? I don't get it.

Yea I was reading your thread yesterday and caught some wind of an overheat or something? I have no idea what it is, I think maybe if you're the type to never give up, life gets pissed off and throws all kinds of crap your way. But I'm sure you'd agree that rotary failures do not equal life failures - and in life I'm a very lucky man.

And you shall see pics of the carnage for sure. Just have to get at 'er...


Cracked iron! Dayum, thats new territory for me. I'm more of a chipped seal and or completely missing seal guy :lol: But I hear ya, thanks for the kind words.

Thats what I told the car when I put in the TECgt!! :) But like I said I'm alot happier about this type of failure then the previous ones. And on the note of the ceramics.......

I just measured up all my housings this morning that I'm using on the build (used, but almost new) and I found a couple of things thats making me lean away from playing my ceramic seal card. One housing has a *TINY* little sliver of a crack just starting around thespark plug boss....and the other housing has a nick in the compression section from the blown engine in florida last year. They will work fine (I've had both inside engines already) but I don't want to waste my ceraimc seal on a housing that won't bed into the seal fully. Apparently, thats what happens - the housings break into the seal, not the other way around like normally :lol:

And I don't currently have the bread for OEM housings so I think I'll just stick some more OEM seals back in this and save them for another build. This engine lasted a while on my shitty tuning and with a lot of BAD things happening to it. If I get the rest of the season out of another OEM seal engine with a solid tune - I'll be happy.

The failure I think was yes, mostly attributed to lack of water. I think though, that I damaged something when I got my car running at full boost/RPM when I got back from the road trip though. After that night of tuning I was driving back and noticed a little bit of a miss when cruising. I thought it was plugs (and they were shot.....) but they didn't make the miss go away. And after that, I'd ran it out at full song maybe half a dozen more times before it popped......maybe I'd cracked something, and then it completely fell out later on. But, lets count:

I tuned some (not much) boost aroudn here
We tuned all around the dragon
I tuned on the way to and from florida
Tuned once around here
Tuned twice around here (when I think I damaged something)

And you know what my tuning is like masin! *floors car, takes off, engine floods with 9.00:1AFR* Repeat, and the same happens, but this time 500rpm later :lol: I'd cleared it up about 90% around here, but still - thats alot of stress to put on the thing. There's probably 4 tanks of fuel used just hammering it trying to sort out the fuel......

With the water though it may have still been running - who knows. I can't fault my build though, I had sworn up and down that thing was blown 3 or 4 times before when all the fuel pump fuse crap went down.

Yeah, the short story is I was @ the dyno until 9:30 Tuesday night before DGRR pounding the snot out of the motor when she had about 700 miles on her but pulling 18-19" of vac. Thursday morning @ 10:30 ... as in leave for DGRR in 2.5 hours I went for an emmisions test. Emmisions for non OBD-II cars in CT is a 25-30 mph roll. The jackass that did the test held her in 1st gear @ 6000rpm's+ for about 4+ minutes. They popped the turbo feed oil line which started the smoke, I jumped over the counter into the bays and started screaming to shut her down. Coolant and oil temps were >230 and hit about 260 from soaking. Now she pulls ~14" vac. Warped apex seal, flattened spring, damaged housing, who knows. She still breaks the 255/40 RT-615's loose in 2nd though.

After alot of screaming from the manager telling me there's something wrong with my car for it to overheat like that, and me explaining that on the highway my t-stat doesn't open and sits @ 170-175*, you assholes don't have a fan and closed the hood, calling the owner of the company and getting a few formal apologies, it's going through insurance and they owe me a new motor as far as I'm concerned.

So I got the car home, good friend came over to help out, the peeps I was caravaning with drove to my place. We repaired the oil line, flushed the coolant, changed the oil, replaced the water pump and got on the road for DGRR @ midnight... fun times. Oh, I hadn't slept the night before either so by the time I passed out @ 4:30 friday morning I had broken my record and gone 44.5 hours strait with no sleep.. woot! /jack

So yeah, bad joo-joo I guess and life keeps throwing up blocks and we just keep charging through them.

Please do, I'm kinda curious as to what actually failed. One thing that I don't like about the water or alky injection systems is that they are totally independant of the main EMS. Is there anyway to have a switched input with the Tec? What I'm thinking is a switch that's basically high/low boost settings. Low boost = no water. High boost = water. And then have an output from the Tec control the water injection. This way you can run the maps two different ways and the Tec is always in charge of everything. Boost control outside of the EMS is somthing else that kinda doesn't give me warm and fuzzy feelings but at least that is something that can be managed with proper tuning.

Make sense? I'm whooped and not sure if this is logical.

As far as Laptops, I just bought today a new Toshiba from BestBuy for $400 soley for the 7. I was sick and tired of the Dell randomly shutting itself off and for $400 to end a headache, it's worth it. The last time it shut off I was about to turn the "ignition switch" off VIA the Motec. Had I done that and then the laptop shit the bed.... I would've had to move my desktop into the garage for the sole purpose of turning the "ignition switch" back on. Now I can't get online to DL all the programs that I need :rofl:

Das Break
 

Carnage carnage carnage.

OK so...I removed the engine + tore it down on monday. I found alot of neat things. Firstly, this guy.

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1242828460

I believe this is the what happened the night I finished tuning with the WI off. From what I can tell, this break was the miss I could feel in the engine afterwards. It still pulled great vac, and ran well with even (sounding...) pulses while cranking. Obviously it was doing SOME sealing as all the pieces were there, but there is evidence inside the break of combustion passing between my fancy new 3 piece design.

Here's another expanded view of it:

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1242828643

Then there was the actual broken seal that caused a pile of damage.

http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1242828749

Thats one of the best housing fragging's of mine yet.

There was also a chunk of seal wedged in the one remaining apex seal on that rotor. But some did escape as my T04-R's turbine is a notchey version of its former self.

Also of interest:

This engine was a jspec I tore down, and refreshed. The engine had an easy life before as there was no evidence of anyone ever actually throttling the car. So much carbon that it had almost zero compression, but only because every seal was bunged up. As such, there was alot of weird browinish staining on the housings from combustion hanging aroudn where it shouldn't - and all those marks have cleared up now. There was also strange marks around the spark plug boss's (not the typical line/stain) that have lessened, but are still there only in a more "typical" fashion then before, I'm unsure how well the jacket mod has helped.

Also, there is pretty well zero compression getting by my first side seal fitting job, they look minty fresh!

My EGR weld-shut job has also stood up well, although some gases are still reaching the port under the exhaust port as there is a small amount of soot in there. I'll check out what else needs to be plugged.

So, another rotor, another housing, and a few apex's and this baby will be rocking again....two more weeks tops. Busy with house construction ATM :)

that is deffinately an interesting break. i love that you stay so positive through all of this. i guess its a chance for you to learn from your mistakes and improve on them. what kind of seals are you using?

Thanks buddy, gotta stay positive. It'll work this time, plus if my memory is correct, this will be lucky number 7! So the power of 7 will be with it :lol:

I'm running OEM's. As I posted above, they'll be going back in (un broken of course) because my mint used housings didn't meet the specs needed for the ceramics and I don't want to use them without getting the full benefit. Plus, if (sorry............WHEN) this one runs well on Logan's tune, I'll feel alot less weary about sticking $1300 seals inside it :)

And yes definetly a way to improve. Always room for that in my books

crazy seal break!

Well good luck kind sir and get that bitch back together.

Thanks buddy!

I won't need the luck with it going back together, but sure could use it when its strapped on the dyno dynamics at 20psi!!!?!?! :lol:

Sucks that you had to pull the motor apart so soon. Either building rotaries really is tough, or we are ALL cursed for mod'ing them.

After I got my car running well on the stock turbo, my side seals began to "shave" off a little. It seems that I got a bad batch of side seals and oil was burning through. This was probably 3000 miles into the new motor.

So it came apart. I had the new seals treated with this special treatment that strengthens them and fills in all the inconsistencies in the metal. Then put the motor back together.

Seems like there are always serious bumps in the road for us guys trying to go all out.

Glad to see your keeping with it.

Classic, sorry to hear of your engine loss.

Do you have pictures of the housing at the spark plugs area? Which housing cooling mods did you do?

Barry

Barry, I'll get some pics for you :)

Here's the one housing that got re-used after the failure. Although its been cleaned up in this pic, you can still see a bit of the marks/swelling thats happened to it.
http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1244604401

same housing, different view showing the waterjacket mods I did (bulb head dremel on a drill press and lots of time :) )
http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1244604401


Heres the housing that contained the blast :) It is untouched, exactly as it came out of the engine.
http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1244604401

We see the typical sort of marks but nothing drastic, neither housing has any cracking in the boss area at least.
http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1244604401

Barry do these look typical for an engine that lived on the highway, and @20psi all its life?

As for the weird little "hotspot" staining that shows up all around the area, I have to mention that these housings had alot of those on them before I used them. They were very nice condition housings from a j-spec that was FULL of carbon, and low compression because of it. But the housings had funny stains all over the plae inside the (I presume) from lack of apex seals sealing against the housing due them being stuck in the rotor slots with carbon.

Most of that has gone away (95%) but what remains now is only at the spark boss area. They can't be felt, but they are visible.


BTW engine is back together, and the car runs well. Seems to really like the S4 rotors ;) Low comp might give me a little more flexibility.

Excellent pics Joe. I'm wondering if there is some way to rig a failsafe in the Tec? Something that either cuts ignition or rev limits you to 2-3000rpm. I'm working on getting that setup in the Motec where if the low sump/2-stroke warning goes off the rev limit drops significantly.

Looks like you won this rebuild race. What are we now? Tied @ 1 a piece :rofl:

Which S4 rotors are you running? TII or N/A? I've got a nice set of S4 n/a's available if you want some backups. You're only as good as your backup. :lol:

Hey brian, tied 1 all! :)

The rotors are S4 TII's...went with the whole assembly (obviously...) as when I spec'd the remaining rotor, and the replacement (S5 TII's) I found 2 of three slots on each that were just not quite up to par.

what's the compression on S4 N/A's again? 8.7?

OH forgot to mention.....

In this engine, there is one housing with jacket mods, and one without. This should provide a decent back to back to assess the effectiveness of the mod without the costly embedded temp probes that mazda used in the studies :) The rear is modded, front is stock.

Only other relavent cooling mod on this engine that was present before and still now is the Mazmart Remedy waterpump + pineapple racing idler pulley.....

hey man you cant take pics 2 years in the past! i call BS!!!


glad to hear you got the car back together.

:) You know me and my time machine, we're real tight!

My camera display's broken so I can't:

See what I'm photog'in
Adjust any menu options (like dates :lol:)
preview pics so i just atke lots of them

:)

The carnage spree continues!!!
 

But not where you'd expect it.

In fact, in the very last place, in the very last situation you'd expect it to.

Arrived at Defined. Changed the wastegate spring to a 10psi unit.

Attached the dyno dyanmics to the beast, got her running, started tuning.

15 minutes in, cars sitting there **IDLING** transmission in **NEUTRAL**

All of a sudden we hear this 'ping' sound and the car stalls. Logan goes to restart it, and puts the clutch in. Fires right up. Lets out the clutch, stalls

The transmission is now internally fused in fifth gear :lol: You can shift it, but it does nothing :rofl:

swapped in one they had in storage, just got back now. We'll pick up where we left off tomorrow :)

seriously bro is this somekinda test of wills, balls, or wallet size? feck :lol:

FC = Fucking Cars :banghead:

That has to be the wierdest oddest failure that I have ever heard of........ seriously Joe, were you some sort of deranged degenerate that would sneak into peoples bedrooms and pee in thier ear while they sleep, then drug and rape millions of virgins while insulting every race, ethnicity, minority, person other than yourself while at the same time selling the tears of your victims as vitamin water to unsuspecting yuppies while ruining their lives and infecting the elderly with AIDS? I can't think of any other reason for your luck.... seriously dude?

Crack the tranny open. I wanna see!

Well, i'd love to crack the trans open and see what got botched, but....

I picked up an engine (comitatus on the other forum, HBP plates, both front and rear thick casting, housings, rotors seals etc) so thats occupying my hatch along with my clothes and some tools....

So I don't have any room to haul it home, so its staying with Logan.

I'm going to bet that a the #5 shift fork is probablhy jammed though....

However, see I installed a new Mtrix short shirter when I put in that new tranny, and having never tried it on another tranny, I didn't know how it felt. Trans shifted *OK* smooth etc, but 5th was sometimes tough to engage, and sometimes reverse was also tough. Masin can comment on the feel of the tranny, he's driven my car. I didn't think there was anything majorly wrong thouhg.

But after trying out the car with this low mileage trans (came from logans dad, he pulled it from a 35,000mile TII that had some kind of body damage?) it shifts *MUCH* better. Of course, i won't get too complacent haha


anyways, today we made out GREAT. car ran like a top. Makes about 270hwp on wastegate srping (10psi) and boy is it a rocket even at that. 13psi= about 340whp........but wer'e still working the higher boost settings out. Tomorrow we'll clean up a couple spots I found that were rough on the way back to the hotel, and finish up the 14-15psi setting, and shoot for kill mode @ 20psi! :):)

As far as the power (will post graphs later) Its a little low, sure. But you know what? I really don't give flying pig fuck haha. Car feels strong, hauls ass, and runs like a swiss watch. Logan's got everything nice and conservative, I couldn't ask for anything more. But we'll see what happens when the turbo actually starts to breathe (over 15psi) so I may just hit that 400 mark yet.

OH AND:

4000rpm on wastegate = 180whp :)
Full boost by 4000-4200..........*near* stock porting, S4 rotors, and a 1.00 divided hotside on the T04-R. Might seem laggy to you brian - Mr. Spoolin :) - but very acceptable, and much better then most people on the intrawebz will tell you it is ;)

w00t for LONG black patches, and smiles from ear to ear!

Glad it's working out for you man. Sounds like fun :driving:.

wastegate pressure 10psi
http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1245005682

low boost 14psi
http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1245005682

high boost 19psi
http://rotarycarclub.com/rotary_foru...1&d=1245005682

we cleaned up the two lower boost settings today and were able to get it much more dialed in. Yesterday @270whp the car was inside the garage due to weeather and choking on its own fumes. Tuning outside today got everything alot more dialed in, runs like a champ! The 410hp run was a little too much for the clutch though and slipped which is why its all broken up and so close to the other run. I'll have to stay off the +15psi until I can afford a better clutch, but I'd like to destroy this one first since I'll be able to now finally :drool5: :)

Have to say Im very impressed with Defined autoworks. Given also that we only had a few runs at the higher psi logan couldn't be sure its 100% up there, so when the day comes i'm tired of what I have and I toss in the 6 puck i'll be sure to have him touch it up despite the distance - well worth the travel, at least for me as an electromotive guy who knows enough to say its worth a real pro figuring out ;)

:rofl: Check over my Avatar :001_005:

Nicely nicely done Joe. Awesome numbers, despite how hig in the revs you need to be ;) I should be on the dyno wednesday in non-sequential..... I'll post some graphs.... I think I was right around that too.

So what are the new plans for Comi's old motor? I thought he lost a housing and a rotor the last time it went loose?

As far as the clutch goes, what are you running now, and what are you looking to get? I gotta tell ya, I love my exedy twin disc

Can't wait to see some graphs from kill mode. What are you going to do about the meth/water??

Nicely said ;)

Kill mode graph is up - 410whp :)

Boost hits a little slower getting up to 19, its there by 4200. On wastegate its there by about 3700rpm.

My clutch now is an ACT heavy duty with street disc. Drives like stock. But I think though that because I didn't have this S4 flywheel machined, I'm breaking up near the top. It held 330ft/lbs last year on the mustang dyno....so boo for oversight.

I'd love to go with a twin, but it might be a while before I get the funds for it. Thats the plan though as - really - you can't beat a twin. Hold a bazillion foot/lbs with a pedal slightly heavier then now? Sign me up.


As for the WI - its on. I just left it on the whole time. Spraying 375cc/min now. Starts aroudn 5psi. Keeps AIT nice a calm, you basically never see it rise up once you get into boost no matter how long you pull on it. Obviously, depends on ambient temp as far as where that point is, but its usually about 5-8C above.

As for Luke's old engine, I'm going to be using bits and piece here and there. His housings are actually OK, one has a tiny mark that won't effect much, the other is minty. The rotors will likely be milled to 3mm for use with the ceramic seals, and the whole rotating assembly will actually be used for that engine. He has new rotor bearings, stat gear bearings etc so that stuff is good.

The irons are gems for sure, but I don't know if I'll use them in this car. I've had a HBP before, its great and all, but I like my streetports.

I honestly don't know where those will end up - but they are FLAWLESS, and both front and rear are the thick casting units.

Hahaha, I was just looking at some pics on facebook BDC had commented on in an album and began to browse through this photo album and thought to myself "All this.... seems very familiar," and then I read about the slipping clutch and going 6 puck and a T04-R and then....... (hur hur dur!) this HAS to be classicauto :rofl:

OUTSTANDING MAN!! I am very happy for you and only wish problem free times for a very long time.

yay!!!

LOL feel free to add me, I ahve a bunch of friends on there from the forum :)

thanks bro, me toO!!! :lol:

yay indeed! soo much fun scooting around in this thing.

First few times I did a 2nd-4th pull I would let off and be all paranoid about little sounds etc. thinking i've popped another engine :lol: but the thign just keeps tickin'. Not to get too far ahead tho, its only been a few days haha

can't wait for updates on your monster!

I feel you about the paranoia with all those interesting sounds you "think" you hear while redlining. My asshole is always the size of a decimal point at redline until I start to see some safe pattern with my data logs. :)

Nicely done! I likey.... I'll give you the full story in my build thread so I don't jack..... we accidentally hit my kill mode today and she made 346 RWHP @ 4800 RPM, yes, 4800 RPM............ then we ran out of fuel... a few spikes to 20psi too which scared the living crap out of me.

Yeah, me loves me twin.... I just don't want to know what it's going to cost when it's time to repace the disc's :rofl: The disc's are fairly cheap, it's the machining of the 4 surfaces (plus the lands) that are going to suck large moose balls.... like canadian moose balls. Not those pussy things we have down here ;)


Very cool and yes, pun intended. I need to figure out a way to log ambient temps. My AIT's seem to hover around 5-10*F above ambient.... unless I shut her down and don't pop the hood, then she soaks, and soaks bad.

Nice score. I'm thinking kinda along the same lines as you I'm sure, I kept my old irons and plan on having them ported - mildly, lapped, and re-nitrated then mayber ceremet coated and use them along with some new housings for the next motor. I think the primaries on mine now are a little too large. The idle suffers some. Trying to work it out with the software but I like mild porting as well