100K - Engine rebuild or Re-man
 

Hi Guys,
I made this thread because I just hit 100k on my 8. Even though my car is running great, i don't really want to wait for a catastrophic failure.

My 8 is a weekend terrorizer and my track mule.

My inquiry is about Re-man vs rebuild. I've read that most of the S1 re-mans suck and I'm wondering if any S2 owners have done a swap yet. I vaguely remember a post that S2 re-mans were rebuilt a lot better.

I know there very few that even got up to 100k...

An S2 engine swap is not feasible (search). And the condition of your internals will decide whether a rebuild or a reman from someone else is the best choice.

Catastrophic failure isn't the thing you need to worry about. Popping an apex seal or something sudden like that is pretty equally unlikely at 10,000mi or 100,000mi.

What you need to worry about is gradual compression loss, which is best avoided with preventative maintenance (at any age). Keeping a spare engine around is a reasonable idea though, so you'll probably want a rebuild from a reputable shop, rather than Mazda. It may be cheaper too.

And at 100,000 miles it is unlikely that your engine internals would be reusable in a rebuild. You would probably need new housings at least and probably new housings and irons. So a reman would make more sense financially.

I am all over my preventative maintenance. :)

I'm really more worried about remans, because i've heard the horror stories of S1 remans below at low low mileage and they're low standards/tolerance during reman/rebuild.

I faintly remember, Maybe ASH, saying the S2 remans quality was better for some reason. Just can't find that thread.... if I'm even remembering right.

Something about old S1 short blocks quality was bad, but Mazda later changed or "tightened" quality standard and further improved standards for S2 remans.... idk maybe it was just a dream I had. haha

You are misinformed. The S1 remans and S2 remans are made in the same plant. The S2 is a more reliable engine by far (damn near rock solid actually as far as rotaries go) but due to significant engineering changes to the engine. Reman quality on the S2's has never really been discussed because not many S2 guys have suffered from engine failures. Actually very few S2 guys have actually had to get new engines. I know of two personally and both were R3's that were tracked and had cat failures so the engine failed but not by fault of the engine itself. There was one other that I recall from what a buddy who works as a tech but it failed to due to something really weird like a broken spark plug or something that really had nothing to do with the engine itself.

While Mazda remans can be less than reliable, that is not always the case and it fairly rare actually. but that depends on what you consider reliable. Only in the rotary world is 100,000 miles a great achievement. Early on the Mazda remans were subcontracted out to Cat and the quality of those was subpar so that contract was cancelled and Mazda built their own reman plant. The current plant does the S1 and S2 engines as well as transmissions and stuff or other models.

My first Mazda reman lasted 74.000 miles before it suffered from a loss of compression, my second lasted only 30,000 before a failed coolant seal led me to pull it and replace it with a rebuild from Pineapple Racing. That said, I would trust a Mazda reman over many shop rebuilds. Pineapple was good to me, I have over 20,000 turbocharged miles on it currently and compression is solid.

Thanks for information 9k!

Maybe I'll buy and store an engine.

See how many miles I can rack up on this baby!