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Ah shucks, don't worry about cluttering my thread. I am always pro information especially if it helps people out.
Originally Posted by rmvpa007
I will start a new build thread for our build so I don't clutter up Livwire's thread.
Here is a pic of the mock up in the engine bay with the single turbo for the hybrid 13bREW engine in place (where the Renesis engine mounts used to be).
If you decide to get your rotating assembly balanced, you may want to consider checking out Defined Autoworks as they're based in Ohio. If anyone has any other input on shops that offer balancing, please speak up as I intend to do so with my rebuild.
I might. Still considering it heavily. ATM its a big inconvenience. To my understanding you need the flywheel, both counterweights and rotors for balancing and I just installed my 5spd trans and twin disc w/ flywheel, so I am not freed up to balance until my car goes under the knife. If I am incorrect and the flywheel is not needed, please correct me as that saves me loads of time and effort.
Do you know if they can balance s4 rotors with s6 counterweights? I could also mentioned that you pointed me in their direction, might get you a discount if you are lucky.
I really don't know enough about the process and that's holding me back from making a good decision. Time is tied up elsewhere ATM so I can't spend hours just goggling things like I could at the start of this project, so any explanations are welcome. (New members reading the thread might learn something new as well).
There's no "considering" getting it balanced, at this level it's "do it right or GTFO ..."
Ideally you want to send both the flywheel and the clutch. My new 5.5" Tilton clutch housing needed to be adjusted, but the builder balances to a ridiculously low number.
I gave Carlos at CLR a call for my own reference but got some info that others may find useful. What it boils down to is that their price for a two-rotor balancing is $450 much the same as Defined Autoworks (can anyone else weigh in on balancing service costs from other vendors?). They can do the flywheel and clutch assembly to account for the entire rotating assembly but that comes at the addition of their shop rate of $85/hr with a guess at one hour to do so. He affirmed that the justification of doing the flywheel is highly dependent on your setup, if you’re using quality parts and don’t plan on getting on past 9400 RPM’s, you’re probably not going to gain much from doing so. Being that there can be so many variations to a build like this, I’d highly suggest you call in and lay out your goals; I agree with Team that if you’re going to lay down the kind of money to do a proper build in the first place, what’s another $600 to make sure the hunks of metal traveling at high velocity near your legs are playing nicely with each other?
On an interesting side note, it seems that CLR does some balancing work for Defined Autoworks. Depending on how much Defined charges for service fees, it might be cheaper to drive the two hours from Cleveland to drop off your parts and let them ship to CLR in Florida rather than to do so yourself. Then again, it may be a wash.
I gave Carlos at CLR a call for my own reference but got some info that others may find useful. What it boils down to is that their price for a two-rotor balancing is $450 much the same as Defined Autoworks (can anyone else weigh in on balancing service costs from other vendors?). They can do the flywheel and clutch assembly to account for the entire rotating assembly but that comes at the addition of their shop rate of $85/hr with a guess at one hour to do so. He affirmed that the justification of doing the flywheel is highly dependent on your setup, if you’re using quality parts and don’t plan on getting on past 9400 RPM’s, you’re probably not going to gain much from doing so. Being that there can be so many variations to a build like this, I’d highly suggest you call in and lay out your goals; I agree with Team that if you’re going to lay down the kind of money to do a proper build in the first place, what’s another $600 to make sure the hunks of metal traveling at high velocity near your legs are playing nicely with each other?
On an interesting side note, it seems that CLR does some balancing work for Defined Autoworks. Depending on how much Defined charges for service fees, it might be cheaper to drive the two hours from Cleveland to drop off your parts and let them ship to CLR in Florida rather than to do so yourself. Then again, it may be a wash.
I work with Carlos at CLR Motorsports, we are doing the project turbo RX8 together and plan on selling drop in kits once we have cleared all the hurdles and have a running demo car.
If you want to do it right, consider the following:
1. Carlos has perfected his proprietary technology over the past 30 years, including the balancing work he does (usually down to 2/10ths of a gram which is as close to perfect as you can get) He does all the work in house and he does it himself. If you don't know already, Carlos Lopez is one of the "gurus" of the rotary world who is happy to take the time to help out fellow rotary enthusiasts with his "no bullshit" honesty and integrity.
2. He also does rotor lightening, clearancing, scalloping, 3 mm apex seal grooves, porting and cooling mods.
3. Do you need all of the above services which run around $2200 for the complete rotating assembly? Probably not if you are mainly using the engine for street applications. Those services combined are primarily for race engines that need to be able to last and live happily at 10000 RPM for long periods of time. Of course if you want a ***** out street car that you can take to the track and beat on it all day long, then yes it would be advisable to go all out
4. At a minimum what i am doing with the motors for the project turbo RX8 is clearancing the rotors, using the 3 mm apex seals, balancing the rotors and counter-weights (without the clutch) and doing the water jacket modifications to the housings (to improve cooling) and oil pressure regulator modification (to increase oil pressure). I am also porting the primary intakes slightly leaving the secondaries alone. (big enough).
Our objective is to build a kit as economically as possible that will be both easy to install and durable enough to produce just enough horsepower to not destroy the RX8 transmission (for the time being), but once it lets go and we replace the transmission with an RX7 tranny, we can increase the boost upwards of 500 HP (on pump gas) without any adverse effects on the engine. For the time being we are going to keep it under 400 HP ~ 360-380 ideally which is double the stock HP and the max the RX8 transmission can handle.
Of course we are going to have the full package available including the JDM engines rebuilt with all the internal mods done, mounting adaptor, adaptronic piggy back computer already programmed and mapped to the engine, fuel mods, custom intake and exhaust, with or without the RX7 transmissions etc. So we anticipate having several different kits available from the minimum needed to do the swap (assuming you have all the other parts already) to drop in and go maximum HP kits.
We also will have turn key cars for sale with all the work already done to them or you can bring us your car and we do the conversions.
Without even having finished the kit yet, we already are starting to get orders, so if you don't want to wait, you might want to get in touch with Carlos or me (Richard) and discuss your options so you are at the top of the list when we start cranking these bad boys out.
I just finished filming the mods Carlos is doing to the turbo to accept a larger turbine and compressor wheel, the irons we are using are being lapped right now and we are going to be stacking up the engine and moving forward with the install in the next couple of weeks.
I will start a new build thread probably today or tomorrow when I have some time, but you can catch all the details on the website under project cars or on my you tube channel.
I just read this whole thread as I am considering doing the same thing myself. Thank you OP and advisers for answering most, if not all, of my questions. I also just watch the videos of Carlos talking about the conversion and pending kit. I am impressed with his knowledge and innovations. I will be a future customer for one or your kits, after I buy the new house that is.
Thank you all for being extremely helpful and not flaming.
On a side note, Ive had this B&M replica shifter machined two times now and its a PITA. The issue seems to be the vertical clearance inside of the shifter housing. I'm going to have it machined again, however so much material has come off the inside roof of the shifter housing that im afraid a hole will be created if any more comes off. We will see though. I am not sure how others have had success, but it seems like this is going to fail. I will report back when it gets machined again.
Dumb and hopefully easy question, it looks like the rx7 and rx8 alternator may be interchangeable. Is that the case? Any major disadvantage to using the fd alt instead?
Well things have been pretty slow in my build, but I will show the progress as of now.
I did a little mockup a few weeks ago because I was bored and in the mood to work on cars.
I finally got around to ordering most of the stuff I needed to port. So for the last two weeks I found a little time here and there to get most of the porting done. Turns out getting the inside of all the runners is difficult with a large electric die grinder, so I have to borrow a dremel flex extension to reach in those tight areas. I also have not cut the eyebrows in the rotor housings to accommodate the semi-bridge port.
I put a couple of hours into each with 1 micron sand paper. I am going to leave it at that. The housings may look a little bad, but it is just stains. I ran over most of the spots that look iffy with the dial indicator and with the exception of the wear on the bottom of the iron faces, there is no miscellaneous wear. I suspect the engine sat longer than it should have.
On another note, I am looking into that custom FD gilmer drive from NZ. I have corresponded with them and in an effort to keep my AC (instead of the power steering pump) I need to let them know the length of the pulley. Does anyone know if I should be mocking up with the fd bracket and compressor? Or does the Rx8 bracket and compressor fit?
Thanks again in advance, all the help/advice is really going a long way in terms of getting the parts ironed out.
I'm using one for my alternator pulley...I machined the pulleys down to take a 3/4" wide belt....gives lots of grip and gets rid of most of the whine from the 1.5" wide pulleys
Sounds like problem for the builder then I suppose if everything was plug and play things would be too easy.
On another note I bought the RB oil filter bypass block, thinking it would come with holes drilled for AN fittings. Needles to say I am surprised and have not been able to dig up much on the subject of where to run oil lines to and from to properly mount up the oil filter. The most I found was on Rx7club, mentioning that location probably didn't matter. Am I thinking of mounting it after the oil coolers to feed the turbo nice cool, clean oil.
07-22-2015, 04:07 PM
