Got the rest of what I should need for the coolant system.
Got the rest of what I should need for the coolant system.
Water lines are plumbed. Need to make a bracket for the filler. Next up is oil cooler lines.
What size are the cooling lines -10/-12? Never having worked on rotaries, they look small. I love the cleanliness of them.
Sean
In reply to smokeysevin :
They're -16, which is what the pump is designed to work with
Front suspension full refresh and back together. Waiting on a couple bits before the body goes back on.
oil cooler lines are done. Front brake lines replaced with -03AN PTFE lines. Body going back on - body work and paint is next.
Things are coming together.
Got lubed up - I swear by this stuff at this point.
I got a "Fresh" hood, which had really bad paint over paint that was also bad. 15 minutes with the RO sander and she's prepped for some maths.
Hopefully this will alleviate air pressure issues stemming from the new coolant system positioning. Next up is ducting in the rad/oil cooler and wiring in the fans.
Fans are in, radiator inlet is fully shrouded and new harnesses is installed. Just small bits before Ascutney 
hillclimb this weekend.
Just have to finish installing the lexan in the rear hatch and she's ready to go in the trailer for Mt. Ascutney
Ascutney results! Got the P3 class win. I red lighted my last run, which is a 10-second penalty. My goal was a 1:55, so unofficially I got it.
I did the red light thing on my last run. Then I just did a fam run up the hill. I hope Paul Malko gets his staging lights working so we can control how deep we line up or at the very least make it consistent. I know I have had a red light because I was staged differently.
Congrats guys!
In reply to KevinGale :
I couldn't see the light due to glare so I tried to listen for the beeps, which is damn near impossible.
Okemo hillclimb was last weekend. Car was feeling great and earned another class victory. I ran 2 seconds off my PR there, which given the degrading road I'm quite happy with.
I was dealing with disappearing water throughout the event so I got the car home and put a pressure tester on the coolant system.
30 minutes later it looked like this
No bueno.
This engine is going on 4 years old now and has been fed only the finest hot suppers every time it fires, so it didn't owe me anything.
Luckily I have 5 weeks until the next hillclimb, which should be ample time to reseal the engine - though I've never done this myself so there will be a learning curve.
Just in case, I've also sourced a backup engine with stock porting.
In reply to DaveEstey :
Owning a race car seems to mean always learning new things.
It's funny how it just all stacks up over time. I can recall way back when I first started working on the old modified with Ray Gonthier. I hardly knew which end of a wrench to use. I still mostly feel like I know next to nothing given that I'm aware of how much there is to know.
But now I don't think twice about jumping into some new mechanical thing. For example I installed the new car lift in the garage myself. I'd never done that before but after some quick research I was pretty confident I could figure it all out. Mechanical, Electrical, figuring out the location and installing the anchor bolts. It went smoothly. Many and maybe even most of the people we race with wouldn't consider it a big deal. But average every day people are just totally amazed that I could do it myself. There is just too big a gap between their skills and what is needed to imagine it. The skills stack up over time.
Before you open it up I suggest wander around it with a stethoscope and you should hear where the source is, then go from there. Hopefully nothing is warped from high heat/lack of coolant (water) and its more of a basic clean, re-assemble. Worst case ontario I would get the plates re-ground potentially, which would also correct some wear.
Your engine is 5 years old actually, the one I built for me is 4 years old.
one of its 1st starts... so its slightly over 5 years now :)
Well it drove itself into the shop after starting with zero issues. It has always been a good starting engine when given a properly sized battery.
One hour later it looked like this.
I'd like to thank YesterDave for making so many things come apart easily.
Nothing scary so far. Engine oil was nice and clean. Waiting on my 1/2" drive to 3/4" drive adapter so I can bust off the rear eccentric shaft nut and get to work.
Not the cause of my water loss, but still not good.
Strangely enough it still started like a champ and I set a new high mark in the speed trap at Okemo.
That isn't awful. Should clean up nicely. Make sure your apex seal to slot clearance is no more than .0025", and up your premix.
My rotor housings would look like that after a while with Atkins seals and 120:1. I bumped it up to 50-60:1 and the problem went away.
Looking forward to seeing and reading about the rebuild
New housings are being purchased as we speak. These are FD housings with a cermet coating - the same coating used in the 787b engine. I'll need to port them a little more, but happy to have found some good ones.
In reply to Knurled. :
Pete is right - thats not that bad I need to get photos of the rx8 motor recently torn down 105k original engine and has tons of chatter marks and flaking well into the center, it had about 40-50psi compression but it started and ran like a champ! just slow as all hell.
Considering these were used housings to begin with I think they made a good run, probably a great candidate for a re-surface if you want to go nuts about it as I don't see any cracks at the spark plugs or gouges but if you got clean FD housings around might as well go that route.
I wonder if any iron is cracked, you may need to dig around the seal area with a pick or something or maybe magnaflux it if you want to go nuts as long as they aren't too warped getting them re-surfaced should be easy.
In reply to fidelity101 :
aw man you should see how badly my rotor housings are cracked around the plug holes.
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