crazy idea. (engine rebuild)
 

So I have been an eight owner for a few months and have learned a lot about my car and the wankel engine. I have recently had the idea of buying a engine with bad compression and slowly breaking it down and rebuilding it myself in my garage. I have a good amount of experience working on vehicles I have done a bunch of engine replacements on my old jeep and helped with a full rebuild on one of those engines.

I'm also interested, if the first part isn't already too crazy, in porting the engine while it's broken down I was thinking that racing beats street port templates would be a good fit but, was also considering a bridge port. I'm mostly concerned about smog, as I live in california and our smog laws are terrible here. Would porting have a negative effect on emissions.

I mostly want to do this as a learning experience and since my current engine seems to be running great I would have as much time to do things right and have a like new engine to play with.

Porting should still allow you top pass smog but it depends on how crazy you go. As for doing it yourself, well it all comes down to your ability and the amount of research you do and proper prior planning. You will also need specialized tools (Pineapple Racing, MAZDATRIX for Mazda RX7, RX8, Rotary Engine Parts and Accessories). The hardest part for a beginner would be determining what parts are reusable in the blown engine your purchase. buying a blown engine is a crap shoot, it might not have any usable parts left depending on the failure mode.

Yeah I'm definitely willing to put in research and a lot of time like I said it would be a learning project for me and as it's not a necessity I can devote as much free time as I want to it. I was really just wondering if it would be at all reasonable for me to attempt. Everyone has to start somewhere and I tend to just jump head first into things so for me this is a sort of natural step.

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A few more questions. I assume when a rebuild is done every single gasket o ring and seal is replaced so I would be needing all of them. If that is incorrect could someone tell me which ones can be left alone?

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Every seal SHOULD be replaced.

that's what I figured.

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Various people sell the rebuild kits for these motors. If your going to do this rebuild yourself i hope you realize just what kind of task your getting yourself into. Do you have the proper tools? Do you know how to properly use a micrometer? Do you have a clean place for assembly. Do you have all of the torque's you will need? Do you have all of the tolerance's? How can you decide if the housings are good or if the rotors are good to reuse. Im not trying to be a prick, im just trying to express that i hope you understand the task in it's entirety.

http://atkinsrotary.com/store/Rx8-Rebuild-Kits/

http://www.mazdatrix.com/8engine2.htm

http://www.racingbeat.com/RX8/Rebuild-Kits.html

These are just a few..

This idea is still just an idea I will make sure I know everything I need to know before I even turn a bolt. I completely understand your comment and realize it's a big task lucky for me there's a huge wealth of knowledge on these forums I can tap into in the event I decide to go through with it. I was just trying to determine weather I should even start thinking about doing it.

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