Waiting on parts so focused some more attention on the interior. Bought some dry ice at the supermarket and removed the sound deadening in the driver and passenger floor pan. Went pretty smoothly. Need to be patient and give the ice time to freeze the material.

Still need to do the trunk but ran out of time and energy.

 

Ahh the old dry ice trick.. car is coming along nicely. Can't wait to see it back on the track.

 

Thanks! I'm eager to finally get this thing running finally. Took years for me to build momentum.
Given your location, you might know the PO...

 

Yep, I think I've known Magnus since 2006ish, raced with him even in Lemons.. we're both in NASA. The shop that built his car also built mine. I have some older pics of our cars next to each other somewhere, from 2014 at cal speedway.

I remember driving your car when it was still a TT car and had most of its interior in place. Probably with the same suspension you're running now, was a great setup. I suspect it's a clone of mine at this point, which isn't exactly street-able anymore. The Tilton flywheel and clutch you have in that car is amazing... That's one of the few pieces I'm missing.

 

Cool. Wonder if I ever met you. I lived in SD around 2006/2007. He didn't have the 8 yet when I was there.

The Tilton clutch is an odd looking thing. Especially the flywheel. Looking forward to experiencing it.

 

At that time, I had a black FD R1, a silver GSL-SE, or a red GSL-SE. I was still in the rotary community at that time. He got the rx8 around 2009ish if I recall correctly.

 

Cool. I had and still have my red FD R1


Anyway… Parts started arriving.

Every race car needs tow hooks or straps. Found some good ones at Pegasus Auto Racing pegasusautoracing.com for $21 each.

Needed to order some bolts that fit the stock RX8 tow hook receivers which are an M20-2.5 thread pitch. The bolts were hard to find. Ordered them from BoltsandNuts.com. That was the cheapest vendor I found.

After a few minutes screwing around, tow straps are installed. +5 HP for red.

 

Speaking of HP, the engine has arrived! It looks pretty clean externally. The blue reman tag has what looks to me like a date of 01/23.

Going to remove the intake manifold and try to have a look at the internals via the intake and exhaust ports to try and ascertain condition.

Need to order some gaskets to reassemble, hoses etc. Also 2 EGT sensors, oil temp banjo bolts.

 

belmetric.com has those M20x2.5 bolts up to 12.9 grade

not sure why I’m having so much trouble with your pms, the last one went to my spam box for some odd reason. I’ll get that info to you along with my email address. Been caught up on some personal things and not on the forums much lately.
.

 

No worries Team. Life often interrupts hobbies.

I had forgotten about belmetric... After checking their site, they don't seem to have M20. Not many places carry such a big bolt so it can be hard to find - at a reasonably price. Cheapest I found was Boltsandnuts. $20 shipped for a pack of 4. Other places were as much as $10 each.

Engine update
After removing the intake manifold and ancillaries, I decided that I will not be installing this engine as received. The valves on the intake manifold were completely gunked up with oil. The intake ports had some oily residue as well - more than I expected for an engine that might have been built in 01/23 per the blue reman tag. I don't want to take on work of installing the engine as is to find out it is a dud so I dropped it off at my engine builder to disassemble with the hope that this will give me the parts we need to build 1 good running engine.

The car came with a rebuild kit so I'm basically just paying for labor to measure, clean and assemble the engine.

 

https://belmetric.com/search-results...ery%5D=m20x2.5


.

 

Thanks. I guess I only looked at 8.8...

Engine Update
The used engine I bought is a good enough parts donor to add to the good parts of the original engine to make a complete engine. The housings were a bit more worn but the irons and other parts are good.

 

Coming back to this, after wire brushing the surface rust off, I treated the area with POR15 metal ready rust converter then painted. Yesterday, I applied the DEI floor and tunnel shield to the area. Difficult area to apply this stuff given all the rounded contours. I had to trim the stuff into small patches to get it to fit reasonably. Looks a little like a stitched together Frankenstein monster but it’s effective.

At this point, I'm just waiting for the engine to be assembled so I can start putting humpty back together again. If I get bored, I might install my seat and harnesses.

 

The engine is assembled!

Engine recap

• The original engine was freshly rebuilt but ran poorly. The experienced engine builder fell ill (RIP) during the build and enlisted an inexperienced bud to finish it up.
• Previously, the disassembly had identified the following problems:
  • Rotors swapped front to rear
  • All 3 irons were worn at the combustion chamber with a big enough gap that a 20 thou feeler could be slid through
  • Oil pump had some wear
  • Housing were in good shape
• The irons were not available new at Mazda Motorsports so I bought a used engine off ebay.
• Disassembling the ebay engine revealed typical wear for a 50k mile engine but it had good irons and other usable parts.
• We used the irons and oil pump off the ebay engine with the housings and rotating assembly from the original engine.

There was one big surprise we found during assembly............. One of the original rotors had been cut to 2mm depth!!!!!! My engine builder discovered this when he went to install the apex seals. That was undoubtedly the biggest issue with the old engine. Thankfully he had a spare C weight rotor that was 2 grams different so he swapped that out. The ebay engine had D weight rotors. The engine is officially home now and should be good to go.




I started the process of assembling the "long block" yesterday by cleaning up the intake manifolds inside and out. Used some degreaser, carb cleaner and brake parts cleaner and various brass and nylon brushes to scrub the inside and get any residue out of the manifolds. They were actually very clean but there was some oily residue internally. Externally was pretty clean too but had some buildup of dirty and grime so gave that a quick scrub. This was my first time inspecting the RX8 manifold with these odd valves. Kinda cool but odd things. Especially since they wobble around.

Also installed the 2 red injectors and the bracket with the wiring harness but didn't progress much further since I need to order up some gaskets, crush washers, new coolant hoses all around etc.

 

better tear it back down …

hadn’t been to the i-rotary site in a while and somebody pointed this out to me today, not really sure what to make of it since the dyno numbers are higher than any I’ve ever seen even with full depth RX7 Iannetti ceramic apex seals on an NA Renesis engine


https://i-rotary.com/pages/i-rotary-...namometer-test
.

 

LOL. Nope! It is getting installed as is!

Once I figure out where I'm going to race this longer term, I will check the rules to see if I can use those seals. The results in that article are impressive.

The guy building my engine (Jose Rodrigues) builds a lot of the local-ish engines for Renesis powered Formula cars. I don't think Drummond is building them anymore...

 

nope, I have the last Renesis he put together and dyno’d before retiring and selling off the house/shop.

.

 

Wow. Thanks for posting this; FWIW I tend to believe it. These are leaky engines, even the best of them.

I believe this was true for the same reasons. Better seal:

From Racing Beat site.

RX-8 - Race Tips

While undertaking development work on the RX-8 Renesis engine for SCCA T2/T3 use, we decided to introduce extra oil into the fuel to monitor the effect. To our surprise, this additional oil increased power! Further dyno testing found that by adding 10 oz. of Royal Purple 2-Stroke Oil to 6 gallons of fuel, we gained an average of 1.7 HP from 2000-9000 RPM, along with an increase in peak power of 4 HP. We validated this increase by changing back to a "non-oiled" fuel - and the power returned to the previous level. Later, we tried the same test with another brand of synthetic oil with nearly the same results.

For racing applications, the addition of a high quality synthetic oil increases power and most certainly decreases wear. The only negatives are the cost of the oil and an increase in the tendency to foul the spark plugs. (Note: We have not performed these tests on non-RX-8 engines yet, these results are unknown.)

 

I could see them being better than the factory apex seals, but my comparison point was full depth Iannetti ceramic seals, which is the same company/supplier.

the dyno for the engine he built me with Mazda seals pretty much matches the Mazda seal dyno on the webpage. And he did recommend those steel seals for the REW turbo engine, but he never mentioned the Renesis. That webpage is new within the last 6 months or so maybe. So possibly it was being kept hush-hush.
.

 

It's fascinating. Even as long in the tooth as this engine is, improvements are still being found.

 

Glad you posted that. I had read it a while ago and forgotten about it.

I need to decide whether to use the Sohn adapter that the car was equipped with. I've been reading the really long thread on the topic. Need to re-read another time. Some of the concerns / things to understand when re-reading:
- Does the gravity feed decrease effectiveness vs the pressurized supply in stock setup
- What is the usage rate? If I use the car for endurance racing, is it better to use the stock oil supply? How much usage should I expect in a 20-40 minute race?

 

When I do HPDE I will see the dipstick drop by one notch per 20-30min session, roughly. I don't know much about the sohn adapters besides there's a slight risk of no oil injection in sustained high G corners if you are running low. If you are racing only, you are likely changing your oil every event due to deterioration and fuel dilution, not sure I see much of an advantage of the sohn versus the crank case oil in that case.

 

Stock OMP feed is NOT pressurized. It is off of a drain line for the OMP shaft IIRK. It also goes through an air/oil separator in the front case. If pressurized, this would not work. It is a gravity feed, but a 100% drop, not a slope like the Sohn. If there are any problems in high G states, it would come from this difference in my view.

 

Thanks @kevink0000 and
​​​​@SparklingFresca

will keep that in mind when I re-read the thread.


In other news, got a big box of parts from Mazda Motorsports. Hoses, gaskets, crush washers, new coolant tank some other stuff. Can start putting everything back on to the block.


Also received my low temp Mishimoto thermostat. I’m not ready to eliminate the thermostat completely. I’ve found it helpful to have one on my Spec Miata. Did a comparison of the 3 thermostats here:
https://www.rx8club.com/series-i-tec...4/#post4997080

 

Actually, @kevink0000 can you clarify what you mean by drain line and gravity feed? Here's a pic of the engine where the OMP attaches. I don't see any feed line going to the OMP. The oil flows from the front cover to the OMP via that hold there afaik...