ABoley

Hey guys, I bought an RX8 about a year ago, a few months after buying it, the coolant gasket blew out on me while getting up to speed on a highway. Had only been driving for about 5 minutes to get to the highway at that point, so I don't think I overheated the car, but am not sure what the temp was.
I pulled the engine and rebuilt it over the summer and have driven about 8k miles on the rebuild and my coolant gasket on rotor 2 just failed again. I installed temp gauges to make sure I don't overheat the engine to avoid breaking the gasket, so I know the coolant temp was only 170 F when the gasket broke. I have made sure to never overheat the engine since rebuilding it cuz I didn't want to pull it again for a while, so I know I've never had the coolant temp over 212 F.
The engine was replaced by Mazda at 110k miles, then I rebuilt it at 170k, and it's now at 178k.
My question is, is there something I messed up in the rebuild that would cause the coolant gasket to break so early without overheating it? Or might this be due to warped rotor housings or something?

Thanks!
Andrew

Loki

iTrader: (1)

Did you reuse the potentially overheated housings?

ABoley

Yep, did reuse the housings through the rebuild. Reused everything, and didn't have any of it machined cuz I was tryna save on some money for the rebuild.
Would I need new housings altogether then? Or would machining them back to spec prevent it from happening in the future?

Loki

iTrader: (1)

There's no real bringing back to spec. It depends on the specific damage. It did run for some time without problems, so while bad big parts are my best guess, there could be other things in play here. New or known good housings are going to be your best bet, but to be honest buying an engine from Mazda or a professional rebuilder, while more expensive, will give you more reliability. Anyone can disassemble and reassemble a rotary, but the difference is in how long before you need to do it again.

ABoley

Thanks dude!