Just and update for whomever is following.

I have a small oil leak, presumably from the front cover, it is small so its hard to see where its coming from. I know I should have run a thing layer of RTV instead of that metal gasket even though its not recommended. I Have run the motor for a little over an hour in my driveway (mostly idle with some no load low RPM tuning). The motor has been starting in a few seconds instead of minutes. Total compression has come up from 53 psi to 90 psi on the front rotor, and 90 psi to 93 psi on the rear rotor. I do understand that this is an improper compression test for a rotary, but some data is better than none. I have some black smoke coming out of the turbo when I bring the revs up, not sure if its the turbo (10-15 years old and sitting in my attic for the past 5 years) or way the turbo is plumbed. I already have a 0.030 restrictor on the oil feed line and the 10AN drain is relatively straight into the front cover. I may install the Precision 76mm turbo from my mustang on the engine to see if it also smoke. I have 16 days vacation coming up so I should be getting everything dialed in by then.

I would get the turbo heated up well before you freak about the smoke. 😊The seals will often reseat after a few cycles. I had one that did that...and a few good dyno pulls and it stopped 😊

Black smoke is fuel. If you have not broken in the motor and tuned it, then you can't start trying to troubleshoot a problem that might not exist after break in and tuning...

Update on the car. I have been driving the car around, after the car is warmed up I start burning a lot of smoke from the turbo and exhaust. I found that the turbo is leaking so much oil into the downpipe that I have oil dripping on the ground from the connection between the downpipe and mid-pipe. I blew in the turbo drain and felt the air moving through the engine and out of the breather so it should not be a crankcase pressure or flow problem. I decided to put the much newer PT-76 turbo I had on the REW engine. The dimension of the turbo are nearly the same and was a direct fit in its current configuration. I should have it up and running again and should not be getting oil moving into the exhaust housing. The larger center section on this turbo helps me clock it straight up and down instead of a 15 degree angle. Here are some pics of the difference of size between the 66mm and 76mm turbos. The 76mm also has a undivided .96 a/r, while the 66mm had a .81 a/r. Still not in boost yet, I want to have everything just right.

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Lets talk about backfiring.

Been driving the car around everyday for 15-30 minutes to break the motor in. Keeping the revs below 4K for the most part, no boost yet (turbo is too big, will be going back to the 66mm once its repaired). About 50% of the time I let off the gas, shift gears, and push the throttle about 50% I get a pop (backfire) out of the exhaust. If I try and make a much smoother transition and keep the throttle to about 25% and the revs lower, I usually don't get a pop. A/F is in the 14's, I am running 2" primaries, a 3" inch down-pipe, 3" off-road mid-pipe, and OEM catback. Also the car has a medium streetport (template from Pineapple).

Is the backfiring pretty much expected given the exhaust and porting? Or is this something I can tune out of the car? The car is running well and I would hate to change all the setting around to get rid of the backfire to find out that its a lost cause. If it can be tuned out, does anyone know the best Adaptronic strategy for keeping the motor from loading up during shifts?

Any information would be appreciated.

Update - Looking back at this post from years ago, the problem was timing too retarded...

The backfiring is the tune and no CAT You are likely loading up on deceleration and when you give it gas it lights off the excess in the muffler

A better tune and proper decel strategy will stop most of that

Hi I have been watching over your thread, and come to rise with these few questions. I assume you resolved them but you never explained how.

The renny front cover, you mentioned removing bolts, and a bolt hole not lining up. What did you do to resolve this?

As far as the gasket and the seal, which or what did you decide on?

If you could respond with answers to these problems you encountered it would be great!

There are 4 studs that come out of the REW front iron that are used to hold the front cover/water pump onto the motor. One of those studs had to be removed in order to seat the front cover. You could probably have a machine shop put threads into the correct spot on the front iron and use a bolt to give you an OEM finish (it might interfered with the threads of engine thru bolts). The other misaligned bolt doesn't seem to have any easy way to sink a thread into the iron due to lack of material.

I simply did not use either of these attachment points because there are at least 8-10 other bolts/nuts holding the front cover/water pump on, and I haven't had a leak yet using this method. I am using the stock OEM metal crush gasket for both the water pump and front cover, I originally thought that I had a small oil leak in the front cover, but it turned out to be related to the oil drain line. I would probably put a very thin layer of hylomar on the metal gasket prior to closing next time for a little insurance. I also left out the front cover o-ring because the gasket appeared to seal everything fine without it.

So far I have been lucky, no oil or water leaks. Car has good oil pressure and water temp stays around 206 F once everything is warmed up.

Update: Wanted to do something to help the motor breathe. Bought the Singular Hood Louver Kit. Halfway through installation, I wanted to see that the car would look with just the cutouts and without the louvers.

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I drove the car around for 30 minutes and after I parked, so much heat was coming out of the passanger cutout, I proabably could have roasted a marshmellow,...

I actually like the way it looks, and don't worry about rain since I'll be parking it in the garage and not using it as a daily driver. I will eventually repaint the car once I get some other things completed, and don't wanna shoot rivets into the hood just yet.

Any thoughts?

I think it looks good, probably more practical for removing heat when idling and removing turbo heat than actually cooling the motor off. I think the best way to cool the motor down would be to duct the radiator.

I live in Ohio, so I don't like the thought of relying on weather reports. Additionally, there are some questionable areas where people might reach in and mess with the lines and such. Finally, trucks are just awful and drop crap and kick up debris all the time (this is why I cant have a nice front bumper). I would be scared of said debris flying into the bay and knocking stuff around.

If it were me I would put the louvers in, but to each their own. This is America and that is your car so do what you want.

The cut-outs should help cooling a fair amount, particularly as they are fairly large.

I recommend that you put the louvres on. As well as protecting the turbo and engine bay from flying objects and prying hands, they will help angle the outflow back into the free stream air and IMO will make the car look better.

Should you need to do it, restricting water ingress from rain is a PITA to do properly, as I've found out in planning how to use the 3 vents on the Seibon carbon bonnet that came with my car. I have to do a proper job as, being in the often-wet UK, my car is guaranteed to see heavy rain. My intercooler will be fully ducted and will drain away water fairly easily; however, I will have a vent above the corner of the engine bay behind the turbo and may end up with some general venting above my radiator.

Decided to add the louvers to the hood. I didn't like how the instructions were to attach the louvers using rivets. So since I knew I can just repaint the hood in my garage,I decided to spot weld the louvers (both pieces aluminum) into the underside of the hood. Once the hood is painted it will look much cleaner. Also havebeen getting the car into boost, but my 50mm JGS gate only has the "low" spring in it and limits me to 5 psi. The internally routed gate does make much more noise when open.



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hello all I want help I have my RX8 that will not start! the problem commancer it two months ago I had noticed that there was water on the head of the boot candle I disassemble the engine change just the seal that was damn! Here I have everything back but the engine still does not start I do not know what to do! I remind you that I change the pump Gas Powered, the starter; the candle; and the coil;

Those damn boot candles always fail on me too!

rebuild engine 13b start difficult
 

Hello I rebuild my engine rx8 but it starts very difficult and it is necessary to keep the foot on the acceleration to 2000t once remove the foot the engine stops alone and there when it is hot, started pls il need help

Been awhile since I have posted. I have been enjoying the swap, been putting miles on it when I can. Just wanted to get some thought on an issue. I recently took the throttle body off to clean it, and when I put it back on I had a slight vacuum leak. The funny thing is, the car idled much better with the small vacuum leak. I generally get a hunting idle between 750-900 RPMS and a AFR of 14 to 16 when the car is warmed up and idling. Its not bad enough to stall the car, but it is a bit annoying at times. With the small vacuum leak I had a steady 14.7 AFR with a 1000 RPM idle. Even with the vacuum leak I still had a 16 mm hg vacuum.

Now the correct way to fix this issue would be to buy Mazdaedit, set the idle speed to 1,000 then wire up an idle air control valve to the motor and tune in Adaptronics. The down side is that I would have to use the spare APV input and I would lose that for my wideband AFR sensor and would have to purchase a different AFR Sensor with digital input.

Other methods would be to give myself a permanent vacuum leak, but I am skeptical of how this would affect the MAP sensor in part throttle or just off idle. I could drill a small hole in the throttle body blades to move additional air into the engine at idle, but would the MAF just compensate for the additional air and over-enrichen? What about welding in a small nipple on the intercooler piping before the MAF and running a small silicone hose over to the UIM to give the motor a small amount of unmetered air. This would be a closed system so it shouldn't affect manifold pressure or bleed off any air when the turbo spools up.

The easiest may be to drill a small hole in the throttle body blade to give additional air to the ported 13BREW motor, which requires more idle air than the MSP. If this fails, I could simply by another used throttle body off ebay.

Any constructive criticism would be great.

Update: I drilled a small hole (1/8") in the throttle body blade. Mounted the new throttle body and reset ECU and it made no difference in drive ability or idle speed.

Realizing that that you cant un-drill the throttle body blade, I upped the hole size to 9/64" and there was no difference in drive ability or idle speed.

I enlarged the hole to 5/32" and now the car idles at 1000 RPM and may only momentarily drop to 950. After 15 minutes of idling in the driveway the RPM could not drop down to the 900 RPM the ECU was commanding (verified in Adaptronics). Air/fuel was between 14.5 and 15 most of the time as the computer was relearning the idle trims. The hole stops the throttle body from being able to trim the air down to 750-800 where I was getting a lot of idle hunting. The additional air also seems to help the car trim the fuel down to a narrower range since there is no hunting. I will keep everyone posted on how this all plays out, but my hope is to help someone else be able to deal with these issues and not have to spend money on ECU flash software, or in my case getting a different wide band unit and having to install a idle valve.

http://vid15.photobucket.com/albums/...pswgvw68nl.mp4

Link above is a video of the car idling since I drilled the hole in the throttle body, pretty smooooth.

Maybe you should try a bit more fuel 😎 I've never had an REW except totally stock ports that would idle anywhere near Stoich

I've got her idling at 13.5 now, the extra fuel will hopefully keep EGTs down at extended idling events. I am looking at buying a patch harness and moving the ECU/Adaptronics to inside of the passenger compartment. I am worried about getting the electronics wet if I get caught in a rain storm, and would also like to move everything from behind the radiator in order to give the best airflow through the engine compartment. There is also the heat that is generated under the hood from the turbo, all of the piping, and the engine itself. I have seen the argument that lengthening the harness will cause havoc on the sensors. With a patch harness, I could always remove the harness and go back to factory if the computer goes haywire. Has anyone had any success extending the factory harness by 6 feet or so? I do realize that this would entail cutting and soldering like 100 wires.

Any input would be great?

e car


I personally would make a sealed box for the ECU or use the stock box and make sure it's sealed up before I extended the entire ECU harness to the interior of the car.
Some of the shielded wires.....crank trigger especially will not be easy to keep a clean signal with the extra length and connections

The other option would be to rewire the Adaptronic to a standalone type harness and put it inside the car.....most of the important connectors would be OK then. Most of the stock ECU stuff left wouldn't be important stuff and not a worry

I have been doing a good job of monitoring my water temp as I have been driving around lately. The temps are almost always between 203-210, and that with outside temps of 75. But with summer coming up and a wastegate spring change in the furture, I have been doing some work to try and get the temps down. I have a thermostat coming that opens up at 169 and I am also working on changing my FMIC configuration to get more air to the radiator. I have yet to fabricate the brackets to hold the IC in place, but here is what I'm looking at right now. I will be able to monitor both air temp and coolant temp on the adaptronics and will likely be trading some air temp for some water.

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anyone else have any experience with this intercooler setup?

"anyone else have any experience with this intercooler setup?"

Yes, check Gregs build thread strokercharged95gt. He is running our turbo kit and has his intercooler positioned like this. We offer it as an option with our kit which utilizes a extra thick version of our aluminum undertray for rigidity and has two large cutouts to promote good airflow.

Btw, we offer the extra rigid undertray separately, let me know if I can help!

I ran about the same size core in that position. It works OK for a street car but if you are going to be on it hard it doesn't work without dividing the airflow from the front to get more through the intercooler. ( and that was with it well sealed up so all the ir either went through the rad or the intercooler

I went back to a huge front mount that was sealed and had better results with only about a 3 degree increase in cooolant temps

That core is a bit small for anything but light use

My best results have been from going to E50 fuel...that cooled things down a lot. Surprising just how much lowering the EGT's will have on overall temps

Thanks for the suggestions, I will get this back on the road and monitor my water temps and IAT and see what comes of all this. If IATs become a problem, I may look at some type of water injection through my BHR throttle body adapter. I've had good success running water/meth on my 11:1 compression turbo ford engine.

A good summary.

That position is cr@p compared to the alternatives. It only 'works' on a street car because the intercooler starts off cold and there is a little bit of cooling from airflow at the rear. Under sustained power an intercooler there will quickly become hot and useless.

Your intercooler looks too small.

You already have hood ducts, so a bigger FMIC and good ducting for everything in front of the rad should sort you out.