Nars GSL-SE the 'White Comet'

[scarsofcarma]

15x7's with fresh Falken Ziex 912's... not a performance tire by any means but they still feel worlds better than old bald tires! This fb is good enough to go hit up the backroads on the regular now.

[scarsofcarma]

I went for a spirited drive through the mountains last night, and today I noticed the sound of a dragging brake from the right rear. Upon inspection there's nothing wrong with the brakes at all, its my rear-axle wheel bearing that has too much play... allowing the axle shaft to actually put pressure on the pads under lateral load in left hand turns. So I ordered bearings for it, should be able to fix that on Monday.

[scarsofcarma]

So I changed the oil today after about 2 months and 2k miles. I burned through an extra 4 quarts during that time which was starting to get bothersome. My oil pan drips a bit but not enough to leave a puddle on the ground every morning. It also smokes a bit on startup, but that's not unusual for a rotary.

I was starting to wonder why I was burning so much oil and today I finally figured it out. I noticed the control rod for the mechanical Oil Metering Pump was being held up in the mostly open position by a section of engine wiring harness held up by a misaligned bracket. That means my car was always feeding mid-to-full-throttle levels of oil through the oil injectors at all times, even at idle. No wonder I was burning so much oil, and that also explains why my plugs were getting so oil fouled before.

Examining the oil itself revealed a lot of metal particles, which isn't all that unusual on the first couple oil changes on a fresh rebuild ...but still if I still see that much metal in the oil on the next oil change I will be a little worried.

I was running Valvoline VR1, but now I am stepping it up to the real deal Idemitsu synthetic rotary racing oil w/ premix. I decided to disconnect the oil metering pump altogether and see how much oil I use by premixing instead.

I premixed my bridgeported 12A in my other FB so it's not all that new to me. I remember it burned less oil then this GSL-SE was up until now so premixing should help this 13B burn less oil as well. (And I damn well hope so at $10 a quart)

[scarsofcarma]

So as I've been saying, the FB was in need of better lighting. I searched through the junkyard and found some pretty decent halogen foglights on a Z28 Camaro that featured aimable brackets. (And just in case, I also grabbed another set of brackets off another Camaro)

Then I went about mocking up how I was going to mount them on the car, which took a while... but I think this design works well. I'm using both sets of brackets, two of which I had to hammer flat. It's very solidly mounted, bolted directly to the aluminum bumper and also the bumper support bracket. I designed it so that if the bumper does get jammed in on its shocks for whatever reason, the brackets connecting it to the bumper support will separate and not damage the foglights or the brackets. (In theory anyway...)

I bought new bulbs for em, along with new headlights and aimed them up against the side of Walmart after it got dark. Should work way better now, but I still want to add in some high powered auxiliary lights to throw light further down the road.

[Whizbang]

good work thus far! can't wait to get my GSLSE up and about for some fun runs down Calistoga or Skaggs.

[scarsofcarma]

So like i said a few days ago, I needed to replace a wheel bearing today. It's actually a rather arduous process on an FB. Funny how the rear axle kinda looks like a rotor if you look at it like this...



After you remove the axle-shafts you have to loosen the bearing retainer beside the wheel bearing via air-chisel before you can remove it with a hydraulic press. It's quite a tedious chore let me tell you... because after every minute of chiseling you need to sharpen the chisel. It took me approximately 20 minutes of time per axle to loosen the retainers.



After pressing off the wheel bearing from the passenger side axle (the noisy one) this is what I saw...



I am holding the bearing spacer in this pic, which has formed a sharp knife-like edge where once it was flat... you can see the damage it did to the actual wheel bearing lying flat in the picture. It was literally cutting a groove into the ball bearing(s) cage after the bearing seized. And when it seized, the bearings inner race spun on the axle shaft also wearing a groove into it, ruining the axle shaft in the process.

Thankfully I had a spare axle at home with two good axle shafts in it... but that meant I had to spend more time getting yet another retainer off... argh... I don't look forward to doing this again someday.

[scarsofcarma]

[scarsofcarma]

Soo... apparently I started to have a coolant leak about a week ago. I noticed the low coolant light come on a couple times and I finally tracked it down to the water pump housing where it connects to the front iron. Here's a pic of when I started work on it a few days ago.



You'll see I marked the source of the leak here on the water pump housing with a white circle.



Now when Johnny Tsunami and I finished putting this engine together before we put in the car, we opted to use Right Stuff liquid gasket in place of a normal gasket.



Until now it held up fine, but I think I know what caused the leak. Mazda uses a pair of copper washers as spacers in between the water pump housing and the front iron to equalize the tension on the gasket. If you don't use a gasket, and use RTV instead, you really should remove these spacers. Otherwise, the water pump housing won't mate totally flush with the front iron and eventually you'll get a leak. Here's a pic with the water pump housing removed, with the spacers I mentioned circled in white.



Now rather then reassemble this again with RTV and take my chances, I opted to cut my own gaskets out of some high quality, blue rubberized FelPro gasket material. You can see the blue gasket material here for the waterpump itself, the housing, and also the water neck/thermostat cover.




I also decided to put on heavy-duty gold-plated battery terminals and some thicker gauge wire for my extra grounding cables.



I use Zerex G05 Antifreeze (which I recommend for an older import car) and distilled water. After burping the coolant system for a while and a test driving it temps are back to normal.

[Rotary#10]

Nice work, Nar !

[Whizbang]

any chance you can take a pic of the cabin fuse box cover?

[scarsofcarma]

Originally Posted by Rotary#10

Nice work, Nar !

Thanks

Originally Posted by Whizbang

any chance you can take a pic of the cabin fuse box cover?

[scarsofcarma]

So I've decided to abandon the GSL-SE 13B engine and swap to this...



I found this 12A engine in a pull yard a few month's ago in an earlier-model FB that was apparently junked because its differential exploded. This 12A has obviously been rebuilt, and the irons are painted the same Mazda blue that my other 12A was in my RX3. A sign from the rotary gods??? ...Of course it is!

As far as I can tell this 12A isn't ported, so I am going to pull it apart to be sure it's worth using and bridgeport it. I'll be using a Weber with this manifold... (Thanks Whizbang!)



And once this 12A is ready it's going to be mounted to this FC subframe custom-fitted to my FB. Along with FC rack-and-pinion steering, front suspension/struts, and 4-piston brakes.

[Whizbang]

woo! ill lend a hand with the swappage!

[scarsofcarma]

Originally Posted by Whizbang

woo! ill lend a hand with the swappage!

I'd appreciate any help you had to offer. Just curious, with your car did you choose to go with the 12A transmission because of the better ratio's? Or did you consider adapting a stronger 13B transmission on it?

Some more pics of the 12A



200whp is my goal with this 12A on a streetable tune. I don't think a 12A could easily do much better then that, but a 13B could. I know the most powerful bridgeported 13B I ever heard of made 355hp! 0_0 *

[Whizbang]

truth be told the 12a and the 13b transmissions are both M-type. there is no difference in durability. Not until you move up to the R type (turbo transmission) Mine is the 12a case, with miata gears. Which was in my old rally car for a couple years without issue.