87 TII, TECgt, T04-R....DGRR '09 build!

[FC3S Murray]

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.

[dregg100]

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?

[classicauto]

Originally Posted by TehMonkay

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

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

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.

Originally Posted by TitaniumTT

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

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...

Originally Posted by FC3Smurray

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.

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

Originally Posted by Dregg100

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?

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

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 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.

[TitaniumTT]

Originally Posted by classicauto

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.

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.

Originally Posted by classicauto

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

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

[classicauto]

Carnage carnage carnage.

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



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:



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



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

[dregg100]

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?

[classicauto]

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

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

[FC3S Murray]

crazy seal break!

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

[classicauto]

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!!!?!?!

[stylEmon]

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.

[Barry Bordes]

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

[classicauto]

Barry, I'll get some pics for you

[classicauto]

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.


same housing, different view showing the waterjacket mods I did (bulb head dremel on a drill press and lots of time )



Heres the housing that contained the blast It is untouched, exactly as it came out of the engine.


We see the typical sort of marks but nothing drastic, neither housing has any cracking in the boss area at least.


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.

[TitaniumTT]

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

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.

[classicauto]

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.....