theorie's new Daily Driver. 1993 BB Base Model Build

[theorie]

So....how about an update. Well, I'm currently with not one, but TWO non-running RX-7s. ..here's the story.

When I bought the black car, I knew it had an issue and wasn't running right. Everything I diagnosed pointed to bad injectors. I swapped the primary injectors and the car still wouldn't run right. Then I thought it might be the ignition system causing a problem on one rotor. Swapped all the ignition system (with the ignition system off my silver car) and even ohm'ed out the wiring harness. Everything was fine.

Finally I caved and did a compression test...bad results - the front rotor was making very, very low compression. I also noticed that the oil system was getting pressurized, so I realized the problem may be one/multiple side seals on one rotor. I hoped they were only "stuck" since the car sat for so long (and previously was running rich due to leaky primary injectors), so I gave the old "steam cleaning" method a go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e46zbcJ8Hg

Well, unfortunately that didn't help...even after the "steam cleaning" the motor was having starting problems and barely idled.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-H_XJwseOc

So I guessed the motor had bad side seals and decided to pull it. I've been super busy with work and decided it would be easier to ship the motor to IR Performance to pull it apart and do a rebuild.

Rich (GoodfellaFD3S) got the motor and cracked it open. He quickly found the problem: all of the side seals on the front rotor's front-most face were broken. Here's why: when I rebuilt the motor for the previous owner, he provided me with a set of new (used) irons that had been previously ported by another shop. I inspected them and thought they were good to use, but it turns out the front iron was just ever-so-slightly over ported and it was causing the side seals to catch/chip and eventually break.

I bought a new (used) set of ported irons from IRP and they even cleaned up the ports for me. Here's a shot that Rich sent me:


Hopefully I get the motor back soon because I hate having 2 non-running FDs. lol