About motor:
Died at 139,610 miles
Horribly failed compression test
Wont hold idle
Hard hot and eventually, cold starts

The motor starts if I keep the battery jumped and crank enough, but it will not hold idle at all anymore. It revs smoothly throughout the range in neutral, definitely a lot of power loss under load. It slowly died... Like over the course of 5 or 6 months, starting with random stalls, then hard hot starts.

My question is, with my current mileage, despite the motor seeming like it just needs seals, would it be worth it to rebuild?

 

Engines and transmissions, buy factory-rebuilt. You want the rebuild to be done by someone who's been doing it every day for years and knows all the little details to look for. You don't want your engine rebuilt by someone who mostly does brakes and oil changes.

 

wtf? A factory reman would be the last engine i'd buy. Talk to Mazmart, BHR, Pineapple Racing, and a few others first. You'll get a much better engine for your money than a mazda re-man.

With that mileage, you'll likely spend as much to rebuild it (the right way) as you would to get a standard reman from Mazmart.

 

Factory rebuilds are crap, I have had two of them. Go ask the FD guys how they feel about their factory remans as well.

Go with a reputable builder like Pineapple Racing, Mazdatrix, Atkins, BHR, Rotary Resurrection, Rotary Inspired Performance, or Mazmart. With rotaries there are no guarantees with rebuilds and you are lucky if you get 50k out of a reman unless new major parts are used. I got 74k out of my first Mazda reman and 30k out of my second one.

 

thanks for filling in more builders. I was tired of thinking.

 

I always forget a few.

 

Yeah i was thinking, "Who else do i want to list? Damnit, i don't want to go back to the vendor list and I can't remember. Eff it, i'll just put 'and others',"

 

Sorry, I thought the choice was between a factory rebuild or a local shop rebuild. A custom tuner rebuild is the best possible option, yes, but you won't get a factory warranty that way, if that sort of thing matters to you.