Some pics(camera phone) from mazda reman to share...
 

Sorry these are camera phone shots...
Our test vehicle, 04 AT. Boss threw his wheels on it. I should get my hands on this every now and then, he wants miles piled on it and I said I dont mind paying the premium gas prices.
http://www.photodump.org/stored24/0812081004.jpg
This is a shot of a random/average intermediate housing. They all come in with a little carbon on outside of where the rotor runs. Also the exhaust ports on the wall have carbon built up on it pretty solid, we have to file carbon out.
http://www.photodump.org/stored24/0812080852.jpg
Me/coworker have been working on this, these were actually sent through the ultra sonic parts washer, we have to then soda blast the rest of the carbon off of them.
http://www.photodump.org/stored24/0812080828.jpg
Dont worry this is actually one that I found to be prett bad, that carbon on the inside of the rotor housing.
http://www.photodump.org/stored24/0812080822a.jpg
This is a typical rotor out of a engine, its not suppose to be all black, thats carbon. The springs are usually compacted in and not compressing......aka no compression and a failed motor.
http://www.photodump.org/stored24/0812080822.jpg
Maybe this helps a little with the oil question, oil isn't that huge of a deal we use 5w-20, its the carbon build up thats causing low compression. And like many of you stated on the work orders, it either lacks power, stalls or rough idle and the result is the carbon build up. I am guessing someone said there is a service bulletine on cleaning the motor, use it if there is. Sometimes it may just be a failed inner gasket though, that tends to happen in hot climates, all I can say is it happens. We are now seeing the motors straight from the dealers, we first recieved all of williams techs motors needing rebuiulds inventory but we went through those so now I can see what we actually get rather then the ones they threw aside and not wanted to build.

Now for a few quick facts....
The reason we started up is that williams tech doesn't leak test(as much) and they dont even start the motors before they ship them out and the quality was bad. Dealers would say they spent the time to install them and they wouldn't run. We now leak test the entire motor then we run a dyno to check oil pressure/temp. We also now inject gasket sealant that they started using. There motors are not bad, just that they occasionally sent out ones that wont run since they didn't have a way to test them.

Cool pics. Thanks!

Wow.. thanks for sharing!

thats coooooool

Now thats cool :)

Neat. Thanks for the inside scoop!

Cool, can I get some of this gasket sealant?

There HAS got to be a simpler way for Mazda to devise a manner to prevent carbon from building up on the rotary.

Those look like burnt toast.

IIRC, this was also the fatal flaw of Mazda's first side port exhaust many years ago. This is what I like about using FP+ in my premix. Wish I had more info about it, but Jax's idea of this cyclohexanone dissolving carbon into a graphite lubricant sounds pretty cool.

I really appreciate you sharing all your info with us. Very, very interesting stuff! :)

Nice info I really like th pics of all the rotors....

If the rotor pyramid is still in the works, would you mind taking a picture of it with a proper camera?

Looking for new desktop wallpaper.

Thanks in advance!

wow, carbon build-up everywhere!

are you guys actually gonna just clean all those rotors up and reuse them all again in the reman motors?

and note to self: run the car harder everyday to keep the carbon buildup down :)

Hey Mazda, if my basic suggestion does lead to a better mousetrap, can you do the right thing and maybe pay be royalties or something?

I'll be watching out for a teflon coated rotar.

thats cool

love that pic...

I'll take that lonely one on top off of your hands...

Somehow this wouldn't look neat using pistons and camshafts... it's almost art like. :smoker:

I want to take a real pic when we complete the rotor stacking but we fixed the soda blaster soda blaster so its a matter of whether or not the parts washer gets behind which he has.
We will reuse the rotors that pass inspection first but they will get soda blasted to the point of no carbon on them, I will shoot a pic of a clean one for you though to show you how clean they get. We will also paint teflon on them oursefls but for now the first 400 motors have brand new rotors until the paint booth is built. I honestly wonder if they are going to bother with reusing them at this point, they probably need to hire another person if they want that to happen. I am suppose to official move into control of the parts boss monday but I told him I will believe when I see it, I have still been ocassionally doing parts but I am the assist every position person. I am still the only one there to have worked in every position which is good since I can do it all but bad for the parts guy. We spent the last 2 days checking in 20 crates of 13b parts, I swear I stacked about 2000 new rotors friday alone. We also had to check in about 150 motors from william techs inventory. There was suppose to be 2 parts people but they will dump it all on me, hopefully I can get some OT out of this down the road.

Awesome pictures, thanks Z!!

Wow, so you do coat them with Teflon?

I swear that was a random guess on my part.

Hey, thanks so much for this thread. It gives me a much better of the maintenance battle that I am fighting with me engine and the build up of carbon. I try to run engine cleaner through it once in a while, then I run it on the highway for a couple of long trips a year to use the leaner mixture to help carry the carbon away. With a little luck, I have many years of use before I need your services :) . It's all very helpful though.

I cant agree with running cleaner in it BTW, only because its not something mazda says to do, just wanted to state that. As I said before sometimes all the cleaner does is loosen the carbon and can just move it to another location that can make it run worse. All I can say is someone mentioned a bulletine on cleaning it, follow that. Before anyone jumps on the comments please realize I represent mazda since I work for the company and I have been warned early on to be carefull with everything I ever say about the company since I represent it and what I say is what mazda says.....blah blah blah.

On a side note our production line boss drove our AT rx8 with our rebuild in it from VA to PA and back over the weekend. No leaks and he didn't have to add any oil to it. He claims he got 25mpg on the drive, it was kinda nice to hear everything went well. We had the japan engineers choose a motor that was borderline pass, it had high compression #'s for the rear but low 8's in the front, all is well so far.