Bearing and housing wear
 

I just pulled apart my 06 rx8 6 port motor and I was wondering if Anyone has seen a bearing look like this when they pull it apart. Is it acceptable? Also there is a little flaking occurring on the edge of both housings, and I was wondering if I could expect to lose a lot of compression from these little spots. I heard some flaking is acceptable. I decided to pull the motor when the motor started consuming all my coolant and was difficult to start. The other oil bearing looked good oddly enough and I didn’t see any copper flakes in the oil.

That bearing is shot and so are your housings. You need to have your eccentric shaft checked as well, it may be out of spec judging from the looks of that bearing.

Are you planning to do the work yourself? If so, do it right the first time and you won't have any issues in the near future.

I have seen worse housing's reused but keep this in mind, it will never build compression like one would with new housings.

Aprieciate the input. I’ll take another look at that shaft. I still need to look into my reman and rebuild kit options. Where is a good place to find a reman or rebuild kit? I’ve looked at eBay and Atkins and hear some negative feedback on Atkins kits.

When I rebuilt mine last summer I purchased everything I needed through Rob at Pineapple Racing. Not only will he get you the right parts, he coach you through your project should you decide to do the work yourself. We exchanged several emails and phone calls last year, every time I talked to him he was VERY patient on the phone and most helpful.

As far as remans go, you will have to just look around online. I believe you get one for around $3200.00 but they are a crap shoot. Typically they are assembled with at least new rotor housings, sometimes even rotors and e-shafts. None of that matters though if it wasn't assembled correctly with proper clearance's.

From what I was told, the old remans from the mid - late 2000's were practically junk. If you have the money to spend, some will even buy a reman then ship it to a reputable rotarty shop for a once over.

David

Some shops even obtain the reman themselves and then upgrade it for you.

If you're looking for a reman, here is the part number:
"N3H3-02-200R-V0"

Google that with the quotes and you'll find a bunch of different dealerships selling them starting around $2900 + shipping and core.

I would reassemble it and not half ass'ed. Contact a local mazda dealer for a reman engine. Their remans have improved in quality a lot. I wouldn't hesitate in running a reman engine if you're budget is under 4k.

Those parts are shit. Any history on the engine?

Another alternative is "low mileage JDM engine". You could go that route if a lot of your internals are junk IE your irons, rotors, eshaft ect. Most of the time all three of those are reusable although you will likely need to have your irons resurfaced and nitrated.

If you can get the seller of said engine to properly compression test and document it may be a viable alternative to a pricey rebuild. These usually sell for around $1,800.00 and include the tranny and a lot of spare parts like alternator, compressor, intake, exhaust manifold...

Trust me when I tell you this, even if you do the work yourself your still going to spend 3-5k on rebuilding it yourself if you want to do it correctly. I know because I just did my 6 port last summer... If you have to buy rotors, e-shafts, new irons, expect the price to go up drastically.

Most JDM engines on eBay scare the hell out of me... they typically come with a 15 or 30 day "startup warranty" and that's it. Odds are, most of those importers have no way to run the engine long enough to warm it up for a proper compression test.

It's one of those things where, if I were a billionaire with tons of free time, I'd buy a bunch just to get some statistics on how good/bad they are.

^ This. And it's a myth that JDM engines are all in the 30k range, I have bought several 30k JDM Honda engines that looked like they had 100k on them when torn apart.

Buy a used Renesis is literally the worse thing you could do.

This. But IMO any properly built Renesis should at least have new rotors and rotor housings if you want the best possible compression and engine life. Irons can usually be resurfaced unless some catastrophic failure occurred inside there like a shattered apex seal or a lost bolt was ingested through the intake system etc. e-shafts can often be reused to unless there was severe bearing wear or metal shavings in the oil system.

The exception would be if you had the rotor apex seal slots deepened for using the taller RX7 apex seals and Iannetti ceramic aoex seals are used. These seals cause much less wear on the apex slot than steel etc. seals do and the deeper apex slots also withstand wear better than the shallow Renesis slots do because there’s more surface area to withstand the loads. So those modified rotors with high quality seals (a set of Iannetti seals are about $1300 per rotor) can often be reused for several rebuilds and they’re also much easier on the rotor housings too. Sometimes the housings on this setup can be reused, but it’s usually not recommended because even if the surface is fine there almost always cracking and other problems on the surface around the sparkplug openings. So a pro engine will almost always have new rotor housings, but maybe not if useage was light and it’s just getting a refreshing.

well on the "JDM Engine" i'll post up some pics. i just recieved my drivetrain 2 days ago. i'm tearing it down for a rebuild my seller was awesome and told me up front that it was tested with Low Compression, and sold me the package deal for 900$ Shipped.

https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...33&oe=5AEE69C9
https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...6b&oe=5AFCECEC

$900.00 for a low compression engine and trans. You are nuts.

Like plain nuts? or Honey Roasted??

When I rebuilt mine last summer, I bought new housings, all four bearings, sent the plates to Chips for resurface & nitrate and every seal and spring including cut offs were replaced. The rotors were the only ones that just got a through cleaning. Both were within OEM tolerance so no need to replace. Spent about 3-4 hours cleaning each one lol

In all I spent roughly $4,000 on just the engine alone, not included fluids, clutch replacement, hoses, cleaning supplies ect.

I was thinking about posting a thread detailing my rebuild process since I took a crap ton of pictures. Maybe it would serve useful to those who have not and are considering rebuilding one their selves. What do you guys think? I know there's already a handful available on this site...