March 3, 2004: Tracy's new Renesis engine arrived , personally delivered by Bruce Turrentine of East Coast Rotary. Of course, nothing ever goes as expected. When Bruce assembled the engine, he used a 3rd gen 13B e-shaft which according to the information available, met all the requirements for the four port Renesis. (Remember, Mazda has published virtually no technical data on this engine). All was well until the engine was completely assembled, when Bruce realized the E-shaft seemed to be too short! The front pulley would only engage about 60% of its bore when bolted in place. So... he ordered a real Renesis e-shaft to be shipped overnight to Shady Bend on Friday. It arrived, and after dinner, the break down and reassembly began. There were dumbfounded looks all around when the Renesis shaft turned out to be exactly the same length as the 13B shaft.

A mad frenzy then ensued to determine what was going on. Skipping all the head scratching and calculations, the bottom line is that Mazda decided that 60% engagement was acceptable. The whole exercise looked like a Chinese fire drill except for one small detail we noticed during the head-scratching. The front main bearing oil hole on the Renesis shaft was moved about .150" forward. This resulted in a mismatch between the oil hole and the main bearing oil groove. Using the original 13B shaft may have resulted in insufficient oil to this bearing.

Laura has been waiting to use this line a long time so she summarized the episode as: Bruce was shafted and Tracy got the shaft!