Brettus NA power project 11
 

This is Silver .... my latest RX8 purchase
Bought it mainly because I liked the mirrors :p: ... originally I intended to part it out as engine was tired but after driving it for a while I just couldn't do it.
Engine was .... functional. High 70s on rear rotor high 50s on front. I tried a decarb with ATF but no improvement . Interestingly .......... even though it has bad compression I never had any trouble at all starting it . Proving once again that all you need is a fast starter , good battery and good coils for starting a low comp engine.
Anyway , I wanted to try some porting ideas so this car will get a rebuilt /ported engine.
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...9b0ffec587.jpg

Spent today getting the old engine out :
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...014fba9a9e.jpg
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...b718f4fb51.jpg
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...a97e58cdda.jpg

New engine ready for dressing : Large Primary port , extended APV ports , Outer exhaust ports earlier and removed carbon catcher step, siamese ports stock with carbon catcher removed. Siamese port sleeve modified for higher flow.
The idea behind this engine is to improve the VDI helmholtz effect for a higher peak hrspers.
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...72d1fedc85.jpg


XTD clutch , I had a suspicion an XTD clutch had been fitted and it turned out true
These clutches have exploded for a few people I've heard of around the world and this one looks like it is on the road to an explosive failure as well , note the cracking on the pressure plate :
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...b10a4fdc54.jpg

yeah, I’m not sure that many people fully recognize the APV as being an extension of a 2-stage oversized secondary port and the assessing it as such on how you shape them both to compliment each other in that regard


https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...a8ff69881.jpeg



compared to Cockeyed-san’s herky-jerky hard angle attempt on how not to do it in the pic below, really have to wonder what some people are thinking when they come up with this kind of stuff. Maybe he spent too much time watching and reading Transformer manga or something :dunno:

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...86fc752b1.jpeg


but as I mentioned previously, all that is moot if the intake manifold is not aligned to it as well … because without that piece of the puzzle you got nothing.
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Looking forward to seeing results!

I think it is awesome that you are putting ideas into metal. This is not an idea I have seen elsewhere.

Its hard to do only one change at a time with these engines due to cost/time for each change, I wish that was the case with this build, is my only comment at this time.

Other than, thanks for posting up the things you do, they are always interesting and informative.

Thanks.
Other than the primary port change ..... all the other changes I have done before and seen positive results from. So this engine is an attempt at combining some old ideas with one new one, essentially.

I think initial testing will involve some roll racing vs Bluey, which I already know has good performance. If it can't "gap" Bluey then there is no point doing a dyno or any further testing.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...5b9dd9e326.jpg

Outer plates. Secondary ports virtually untouched. APV ports extended inwards- timing unchanged . Exhaust ports extended for earlier opening.

you’ll probably need a magnaflux kit to find that small of a gap
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That's like a couple of school buses .....right ? :D:

Kudos for your relentless creativity, experimentation, and documentation of the platform we love, which benefits our community. :icon_tup:

^^ as stated in post #2 regarding the “many” … if you think I’m just being mean, debbie downer, whatever nonsense you want to make up to justify yourselves; no, I’m just sad and frustrated of the blindness to see, the deafness to hear, and those too crippled to come into the light of the truth that is right before them yet is neither known nor perceived …
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Quoted from another thread talking about this build after I mentioned how I'd be porting it.
I'm guessing from the subsequent remarks, that you were looking forward to being a.............. "Debbie downer"!

Agreed

Not sure if this is a common thing but seeing as the old engine seemed to be running hotter than I would have expected, I checked the thermostat vs another one I had on hand. Found it was definitely not opening as far as it should.
I suspect it's been running hot for a long time as all the rubber components on top of the engine have gone hard. Vacuum tubes, injector o rings etc so hard they broke on disassembly!

That's one of the things I had in mind about some of the cars/engines I've seen myself... these town driven cars that would sit at +100C hours on end surely don't get to enjoy the 82-83C that highway cruisers have for lunch. Even with low mileage, town driven cars had engine bays as crumbly as a biscuit. Or perhaps they had low mileage but lots of cold/hot cycles exactly because they got 5-10km on a cycle.

Good points.
I also see lots of cars with all the foam missing around the rad. no undertray , no cowl, rusty coolant etc etc . But the owners will tell me about all the stuff they bought to keep temps down like low temp thermostats and big radiators etc etc. I find it hard to keep my composure at that point ...lol For most of them, if they had just kept it stock and maintained it properly they would have saved themselves a ton of money and it would run perfectly!

Not what I would have done, but who cares? You are to be commended again for building and posting, and doing that again and again. We all learn something from your work.

Thanks ....always interested to hear others ideas.

Almost got caught out by this.
I took off the apv motor and gave the knob a few turns to check the sleeves were rotating smoothly. Noticed they weren't turning as far as they do normally so pulled the LIM off to see what was up. Eventually realised the S2 sleeves I had fitted were different to the S1 sleeves and do not work with an S1 LIM. Lucky I caught this in time as it would have had a major effect on performance.


https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...b8e8be5c16.jpg

That's funny. Team kindly sent me some barrels at n/c a couple of years ago, and we both noticed the same thing. Its also worthy to note how many small and large changes they made on the S2. Mazda tried, they really tried...:(

well it’s not like there’d be an open ear to anything I could add on how this might be best done, but clearly there’s a lack of true understanding on it. It’s just an honest, sincere assessment, but the truth is too hard for some souls to bear, hence why they often choose to dwell in the darkness of untruth rather than walk the path of illumination.
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I can't see what the point of the change was ... something to do with reliability I guess.

From what I saw, besides the larger hinge flange, it looked like the addition to the barrel was to give another "bearing" surface near the actuator arms, which seemed like a good idea to me. (The barrels are longer IIRC) Maybe they get sloppy or cock and jam after a while in the S1? Dunno...

New engine is in place .. will have to wait till after xmas before I finish it off.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...810b205fc0.jpg

Did you end up porting the sleeves to match the new APV ports? I did very similar porting where I extended the APV and matched the sleeves to the port shape. Along with slightly larger primaries, earlier side exhaust ports, cleaned all the ports all around. Reused Irons and Rotors.

I have not gotten it to a dyno yet, but I know I can pull on my friend with a 2021 brz. Which he is likely sitting around 185hp(dynojet) probably within a weight difference of 100lbs.

I may dig around and test out the virtual dyno software you used on your turbo build thread. Sadly I already started tearing apart my 80k mile stock rx8 for REW preparations, in the future this spare stock engine may be able to be swapped out with my ported engine to be compared in the same car.

unlike on the S1 intake, the S2 LIM has a pair of sensors to detect the AUX barrel open/closed position and the sensors need to detect something for that purpose

they don’t even come close to matching up wrt fitment, I can’t understand how there was any confusion about it at all.

all the ports work together in unison, you can’t just mess with one piece of the pie and not impact the others. Wrt the AUX; both the SEC and the VDI also need consideration.

RE + Genesis = Renesis

if you mess up the Genesis all you end up with is a crap result.
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Yes , although I had to do it again on the correct S1 sleeves.

Got a bit done yesterday but also managed to stub my toe and wear out my already worn out back so by the end of the day I was looking and feeling like someone on a death march!

Aside from that ...first startup might be today or tomorrow ... hopefully. I keep finding things wrong and am fixing/cleaning as I go so maybye that's being optimistic.

Engine a lot cleaner now ...... might clean up the rest of the engine bay now as well

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...f18d487f43.jpg

Saweet. Can't wait to see some roll race comparisons. Your butt dyno should be pretty dialed in at this point as well, so that will be a good secondary measure.

So far I've just been around the block . It feels ...........ok, at low rpms . Want to put a tank of gas through it and replace the manky midpipe before doing any tuning or roll racing.

Did my favorite road today, had a blast just staying under 5k rpm . Who says running an engine in has to be boring?
Put 160kms on it. Def. not getting as hot as it used to, but still hotter than I'd like (up to about 96C).It is a hot day though :FIREdevil.......26C.
I have underside of Rad filled but putting foam on sides of radiator should help.
Performance is nothing special below 5000.

Did my favorite road again yesterday but this time didn't worry about revs (still below 7000) . After that (just under400kms) I figured that was as much running in as it needs. Compression is good, hot and cold starts excellent.
So ............started tuning.
Bearing in mind second hand housings/stock intake/stock coils/stock exhaust manifold/poor exhaust system ...... it's performing about the same as any other strong Renesis with free flowing intake/exhaust.
Although I haven't done any roll racing yet ..... from logs ....it's about the same as Bluey up to 8500rpm after which Bluey still has the edge.
Next move : fix up the manky midpipe then possibly swap over Bluey's free flow catback.

Overall I'm pleased with how it runs but from a power perspective ...... I'm expecting small improvements from where it's at now, but nothing spectacular. There is a chance it will outperform Bluey (below 8500) by a small margin and if so It will be a success as far as I'm concerned as that car has already proven itself.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...053e176cb2.png

Log Silver vs Bluey (blue line) in 2nd gear at same IAT. Note how Bluey makes more power from vertical blue line (8500rpm) onwards

Not sure ............. but possibly some scope for improvement here ? :p:

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...c1d645eada.jpg
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...77e9af1155.jpg

Looks even worse than this on the inside !

Looks like my exhaust from back in high school. My brother and I had to weld up a pipe with our welder with a broken feed switch. I had to jump wires together to feed while he welded.

So .... I tested again after fixing the horrible midpipe . Result : absolutely zero measurable difference. Damnit! Felt sure that abomination was causing some power loss but it seems not.
Want to wait till I get a chance to retest at below 20C ambient so I can get a more direct comparison to post up but the weather isn't playing nice atm.

Finally managed to get a log in Silver at same IATs as the Bluey run. Result : Silver has the better mid range , Bluey is better up top. Combined it looks like they make it to 9000rpm at the same time but I suspect Bluey will still have a slight edge with its higher redline.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...dd94b9ec71.png

Dyno . midrange rpms look really good with it fading at high rpms . Not much different to stock. The engine actually feels better than the numbers suggest because it runs so smoothly at high rpms (thanks to Brent Curren from Curren Brothers Racing for the top quality engine build!)
Hoping to get a roll race with one of the local lightly modded 8s over the weekend.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...321de75654.png

Update : Didn't mention it before but in fixing the midpipe I ended up with a louder exhaust and a rasp I didn't like . So I had another go at it ... put the old resonator I'd cut out (which I thought was knackered but as it turns out .... it wasn't) back in and redid the pipe . Result was a great sounding exhaust - not too loud and no rasp . Very happy with that now.



So yesterday, I got one roll race with a recently rebuilt 8 with boltons ( header, HKS hi-power, AEM intake , pullies ) vs Silver with just the porting and a catback.

Third gear pull from about 4500 on to redline. Jumped early and got 1/2 car start before he hit the throttle. Early on I def felt I was slowly pulling away but then he just stuck to my bumper the rest of the way to the redline.
Need to do a more controlled race from lower rpms to get a fuller picture but I suspect this engine does have a strong midrange. Higher in rpms there appears to be nothing much extra.
I roll raced the same car in Bluey recently and Bluey was equal through midrange but pulled away higher in the rpms.

Tried the setup with no catback a few days ago .... was a bit harrowing due to the extreme drone and being on the lookout for the po pos.
Result : Apart from the horrendous noise .............. made absolutely no difference.
So that's as good as it gets for this setup ..... some minor low- midrange improvement from the primary porting only. None of the porting done on the outer plates seems to have made any difference at all.
Combining the larger primary port of this engine with the small pp on Bluey's engine would give the best overall performance I believe. But the gains are too small to make it worthwhile doing another engine.

thanks for confirming that nothing changed in the last 13 years :)

https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-tec...5/#post3812532

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Was waiting for that inevitable comment. I think of it more this way ............. no-one has ever made significant gains from this engine, so when I had an idea that I knew hadn't been tried before, I thought it was worth a shot.

I’ll just add that even that amount; which bhp is at the flywheel not the rear wheels, was accomplished by a pro rotary race engine builder with a lifetime of experience. And it came at the expense of of even shorter side seal life and also over many engine builds tested on an engine dyno.

otherwise welcome to my world going back to 2006 when I first put forward the idea that an engine without intake-exhaust overlap had no real possibility of exhaust pulse tuning. You think I’m giving you crap compared to all the posts I’ve endured over this engine since then? You can’t see that afar off to either know or perceive the truth of all those scorners who since came and went. Yet a few are still here, like yourself. :suspect:

but what you’re overlooking more than anything is that it’s your incorrect perception about how this engine works that’s misleading you into expensive, yet fruitless ventures. As much as you’ll hate the idea of accepting that it was me who put it forward, until you fully grasp and understand all that was detailed about what makes a Renesis different per the hybrid GSLE-Renesis theory posts then you’ll always be on the wrong path and ending up on dead-end streets.

but keep believing that the only way to find out is to try it when in fact how sound the understanding is behind the idea is what makes the difference. Every time I failed at something on this engine it was for that very reason. Yet people here still refuse to accept or see it that way. Ok, continue digging deep holes and ditches for the fun of it then. :)
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I'll just add that not much innovation ever happens by sitting on ones arse and just believing everything other people tell you. This was a different idea as was the PP exhaust . Both ideas had a small positive effect so I learned something. Maybe that will be useful maybe it wont.

yeah, some people who can’t recognize the obvious always have to find out the hard way, others think they’re smarter than they really are, some are just too bullheaded to either know or be shown any better, and some are just plain dumb.

check this group out:



again, it’s always the understanding behind the idea that matters most.
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And some get pleasure from rubbishing other peoples efforts ..............

Thanks for the inspirational video BTW.

if that were true then why would I be sharing the information and advising people not to go there in the first place; since 2010 btw? A house that works against itself cannot stand, but will instead fall upon itself.

you refuse to accept it because of who it came from, and nothing would pleasure you more than to prove it wrong. It’s not my ego that is in contention between us, but your own. Because I admitted from the beginning that it didn’t come from me, but from someone greater than us both. I can admit to that and you never will.

Which clarifies the point beyond all measure. Not just on this petty situation, but the same regarding the Creator and Father of us all. It’s him and his power that has you in derision, not his lowly and powerless servant.

Again, it’s all about the understanding; the chart below is what you’re trying to improve upon. That’s a pretty lofty goal to raise those percentages by such crude methods. Especially when the proper understanding is lacking. A person can’t get to that understanding when they’re in complete denial of it though, i.e. loving darkness rather than the light.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rx8...af62c020a.jpeg

No, the truth does not abode in such a person, but only darkness, and how great that darkness is. Yet the truth is the only thing that can save them from their own ignorance of it. This deception within their self cannot be overcome their own except the highest power reveal it to them. That person has to come to that truth first before any other can become known and perceived. Yet they often will still choose to deny that one and set their own fate.
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The truth is ........ your record on this forum is here for all to see.

A lot of biblical references on a car forum.

Some is Biblical, but, and very regrettably, most is from the Book of Team.

I agree 100% . Biblical quotes don't belong on a car forum or pretty much any forum that isn't a religious one ...fullstop !

I would say the same about the pride, vanity, and arrogance that drives a man’s ego to his own ultimate failure, but you won’t any more deny yourself of that than I will deny myself of the other. Unlike Kevin, I won’t take a knee to either this world or the deceivers born of it.

Take heed to this: the one thing nobody ever calls me is “lukewarm”, and the one thing they never say of me is, “his salt has no savor”. Having the ear to perceive what isn’t said is perhaps better than the ear that only hears.

Or perhaps you intend to sail around the world ten times to prove it’s round and not flat because somebody knowledgeable said so? What do you think you know that was not learned or taught to you in some way, shape, or form by someone … or even something else?

A wise man doesn’t have to put his hand on a hot stove to prove it will burn him, but don’t take my word for it; go jump off a high building to prove you can’t fly either. :suspect: Because that’s pretty much what all your words and thoughts here amount to; you singing like a bird about a flight of fancy, then jumping and falling to the ground.

Just as I’ve done many times. My issue isn’t that you fell to the ground, but that you fail to recognize or acknowledge why you fell to the ground.
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Maybe, but they'd certainly call you a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.