Ok first this is coming from a Z person, I own a 280z and a 300zx but I am currently working for Mazda making remanufactured Rotary motors. I have had the pleasure of being trained the last few months on rebuilding the motor under the master builder(I call him TT or Yoshii for short) from mazda. They flew him in from the hiroshima plant to train us on how to build it and gave us the specialty tools to do so. Anyways I have a new respect for the rotary, its flawed but only becuase most owners dont know they really want you to drive it fast(high rpms). Here are a few pics I thought I would share with you.....
Sorry for the quality, I used TT's camera.









TT(Yoshi), he has been bulding the rx-7/8 motors for 15 years now, I made him pose and hold a rotor for me :p

 

Very cool. Thanks for sharing.

 

Anyone holding a rotor giving a thumbs up while smiling is always sexy no matter what the gender.

 

Awesome. Pure awesome.

 

Cool, thanks. I'm happy to hear Mazda is training you guys well!

 

Yeah they are training us very well, they used to outsource the rebulds to a company in SC but they didn't like there consistancy or product and decided to try there hands at it. After a year or two we will also rebuild transmission but for now we are focusing on 13B's. BTW some advice to all you owners, premium gas is a must and dont be afraid to high rev it at all, theruild upe is a lot of carbon build up on the side seals(no compression) and the corner seals are also a bitch to get out of the cores due to the carbon build up which is more then likely due to slow city cruising....open her up, she likes it. I figure most of the owners that are causing those issues are probably not familiar with the rotary unlike a rx8 forum by just fyi.

 

Thanks a lot. I hope you stick around and share what you're learning. Most everyone here knows to rev the **** out of these engines but we're true rotorheads and love learning more and more about these engines. There's also a few genuine rotory experts here that you might enjoy reading. Thanks again.

 

Thanks for the info! It would be nice to see some pics of the carbon buildup.

 

So what is the verdict on synthetic oil?! Sorry, just had to ask

 

whats so special ab that car ..? we have one exactly like it at charlie obaugh in stanton.

 

nothing special about that car, although for the first few weeks we had a rx8 there for the employees to test drive, it actually had no vin# at all on that one and I found that pretty cool. They borrowed that rx8 in the photo from a dealer nearby for a press confrence the other day there and a group photo its nothing special. I just made the guy(tt) take a photo next to it since he made the motor inside it, kinda cool imo. As for synthetic, I dont know, I just tear down and rebuild, personally I would just go with non synthetic since carbon is you major problem, seriously we have rotors that are solid black and there is no compression on any of the side/apex springs just about. Also I would not recommend using any engine cleaner in the way of putting it in the oil/gas like seafoam, there opinion on that stuff is the carbon just breaks off and gets lodged elsewhere which can end up being worse.

 

btw sorry for the huge pics normally I resize them but I used TT's camera for these and forgot to resize

 

Np. I'm sure most of us have broadband

 

Glad to hear Mazda is putting more effort into the rebuild quality. I had a replacement and the first one was bad. You probably got my engine to rebuild - replaced in March 08. My engine failure was catastrophic - sounded like a rotor came or something inside came apart when it failed. Have you run into any failures like that yet?

 

They have us starting on the 6 spd AT motors first, so far mostly compression failures from what I here. They sorta dumped the housing/rotor assembly prior to main assembly section on me and another person so I dont see too much from disassemble but I peak my head in every now and then on them to see what I got coming later on in the day.

 

That is so cool!

 

yeah this is awesome! That is cool to see it from the heart of the "plant"

 

Glad to have you one here. It is also nice to see that you have taken a real interest in our car. It also seems that you take a lot of pride in what you do. Maybe you will be a convert.

 

thanks for popping in here . we've been hearing about your new plant since it was announced earlier this year and just in the last day when they announced it was open. We here are WAYYYY happy that mazda has taken this on themselves and are not using that other company any more. Cool that you met Yoshii too.

I hear they are going to use that space as Tech Training for the East coast as well so people dont have to go all the way to irvine.


Thanks again for the pics and keep in touch.

oh - one question- are you only seeing RX-8 motors or will you be doing older rotaries and other non-rotary engines there?

- charlie

 

Hmmm, that's interesting. You should read this service bulletin:
http://www.finishlineperformance.com...14-08-1924.pdf

 

This is very good to hear. I was very worried if my engine blew it was gonna be by some prisoner in SC.

 

great thread..

 

Great to hear from an insider.

 

Sweet pics. I really like the first one,

 

I really like that first pic