Vk304

Bad news, i think all the irons are beyond repair, cracks in one of the bridge ports, and center of a iron I suspect the water was getting in here... maybe? There is some pitting in the face of the iron around here And lots of substantial wear, i can catch a fingernail on a lot of it, makes me wonder why they are so deeply grooved and the alloy housings are mint...? Anyways, on the lookout for decent s4 s5 irons now, i may get away with one of them but id rather some mint ones for peace of mind and they are surface coated so any lapping or machining would remove that i believe... correct me if im wrong ... Well i gotta say, im not really surprised, but i am disappointed in the old 'built' engine with less than 5k kms

So i pulled the thing apart, good news all the bearings look fine and the rotors as well as all apex seals etc. and alloy housings look to be in good condition...

Yea we will see, just need to get a 54mm socket now and i can split it

Hope its not too bad but yea should be cool to see what its like, when it got real bad it sounded like 1 rotor was going and lots of backfiring and water pushing out of the radiator, did a compression test but nothing really stood out there, if its cracked there does that mean buy a new one or is there a way to save it?

Well this ran with a misfire upon entering boost since i got it, now its really started being undriveable, i checked tps, coils, all the things that could cause that miss and came up with nothing definitive, it always smoked a bit but i thought this was as a result of being rotary and then i noticed the oil looked cloudy on the dipstick, changed it for fresh oil and filter.. The oil looked like this after 10min run time and smells kinda like coolant, time to rebuild, im guessing a water seal let go or something... I should be sad about this or something but im actually looking forward how a rotary engine looks inside, especially a 'worked' one.

Welded up all the emissions and unused ports, this got rid of about 5 plates and gaskets as well as 3 or 4 hoses with bolts in them, sprayed in high temp black, should tidy things up a bit

So im having a bit of a tidy up now, removed the turbo/intake area... happy to report none of that was leaking at the flange again so thats promising, decided to give throttle body an inspection, the tps was real sluggish to return and on further investigation not in spec in terms of resistance readings, some wd40 and compressed air cleaned out what ever gunk was holding it up and it now returns quickly... The ohm readings at closed throttle were off, and i needed to adjust the screw and bend the bracket slightly as i had run out of adjustment screw.. 1k ohm at idle, 5kohm ohm WOT. Im assuming some wear happened or someone bent bracketry previously to cause it to be misaligned... a lot has been deleted off this unit, including cold start functions, secondary throttle blades and linkages, but it should all work good now... i aint forking out $300+ for a new tps... Its now in spec and im going to clean/weld up some unused ports on the intake and throttle body to prevent unnecessary leaks, at the moment everything is blocked off with plates, gaskets and hoses with bolts shoved in them... a little agricultural, tig should sort that out when i get argon tomorrow...

Rear shock, needs a new top hat, im assuming this is just factory stuff, hit me up if you have one!

Heard they are good, cheers will keep them in mind...

Have also been mucking around in the engine bay, i fixed a bunch of split hoses, put the strut brace back on that came with the spares for this car, cleaned up lots of areas, some paint, cleaned the wheels inside and out, put new tyres on the back took it for a drive and its running good, bit of a miss when it first goes into boost at low revs but im working on sorting that, still lights the tyres up in the dry pretty easily, but they are only 225s on the back ... Hooked up the boost gauge lighting to power so i can read it, and tidied some wiring away, i still need to buy parts for it, but these jobs all help, definitely will have to sort out some paint but i want to get all the parts on and working and warrantable before i do anything like that so excuse the mismatched colours and that haha

My chassis rails were a bit pushed in, and most likely would have failed a wof, so i took it to blairs panel repairs, he did an awesome job and even fixed the pinch weld areas that were also bent up, and undercoated it all for a great price and all done in a day, couldnt ask for more really, one less thing to fix on the road to a warrant ..

Yea i currently have a surge tank and pump occupying the other side haha so thats not an option, but ill get around to doing it properly soon

Yes i have a maxfab 3.5 resonator in the front, cheers, if thats not enough i might have to run 2 resonators

Needs a better muffler, anyone know a brand that will shut this thing up for sure ? Adrenalin r, boiler, other? 3.5 inch too big to ask of a muffler to be quiet for a wof? I want to be able to run this on the street but not have a massive amount of exhaust backpressure, Link to discussion above...

On the other side of the dorito box i put in a new fuel filter, new plugs, lots of black stuff in old filter... Lifted the front up 20mm to bring it back to cert height, removed some spacers that would be illegal? And replaced the front brake pad hardware as one was missing, and the kit came with the car...

Yea ay, was one of the majors to fix, no im good thanks lol

Cleaned everything up, high temp silicone the exhaust manifold as the mount surface was straight, and the gasket in good condition, nuts were loose when i took it off so maybe it was that causing a leak but it wont leak now, and wrapped exhaust in heat wrap as well as turbo, now just muffler, got some muffler ss wool coming for that and ill do some modification to it to hopefully quieten it down a bit.

Been chasing what i thought was an exhaust leak from my down pipe/ turbo vband, turns out the manifold had a decent sized leak, pretty easy fix and should be all sealed up tomorrow, with a resonator and the muffler its still bloody loud though, have tried plugging the exhaust tip with increasingly small pipes for wof but no luck... So im looking at repacking or getting a bigger muffler now

Exhaust mostly done, still borderline too loud so have to put a plug in the tip :/ but i dont think anything that doesnt impede flow would quiten it enough with this exhaust size, i can live with that for wof, and installed wideband using while covering some exposed vents that i dont have interior trim for anyways and mounted hand controller so i can read temp etc. Got new plugs coming and filled it up with gull98/oil mix , also did some bits like removing gfb small secondary blow off valve and securing some things better.

Yes my thoughts too and they work fine but not the same mounts

Mx5 work, just needed a bita fabrication, the wiring unfortunately had to be done because car from the 80s, but not a hard mod

Haha thats an idea, one or 2 would show up surely

Spent today welding up the 3.5 inch exhaust, got to the diff end, will have to finish muffler up and full weld in couple days, maxfab kit is pretty good quality for 800 or so $ for everything inc resonator vbands, shipping etc. Trying to keep it all flush to bottom of car, the diff area is only place it has to dip down a bit but im happy with it ..

Going hard on this car, motor frames done, welded and painted They are wired in with fuse and relay because original wiring diddnt work

Couldnt find rx7 headlight motors for what i wanted to spend on them (not 450-500+$) so i got some mazda miata ones and set about modifying them, basically cut the bracket right back and weld some legs on it to attach to body, extend the arms a bit, my prototype proved successful, it goes up and down, lands flush with fenders... motors for NA mx5 are probably easier to find in the future if one dies. Have set up a wiring system that works, and just need to clean everything up and copy and paste onto the other side, this car is already stripped out and hacked up in places so its definitely not a resto... so im only worried about functionality here. A pic of the ecu system, and i will clean this area up a little for reliability... And im exited about the stainless exhaust kit i got from maxfab, 3.5 inch with resonator, bends, reducer for turbo outlet, vbands, etc and eventually a muffler when i can decide how to go about that, but for now should be one of the biggest steps to getting this on the road again..