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Amazing project man, would love to own something like this. Interior looks like a nice place to be as well
What power are you hoping for?
We're hoping for at least 300bhp, anything aboves a bonus, but the rollers will tell i guess, It's not run since late 2006, so its going to get a couple of oil changes as soon as its running to get any old gunk and crap out, we'd have liked to strip it really, but its all extra time and money having said that it ran nicely prior to being abandoned. Definately going to get fuelling etc checked when its running.
turbo is a 4x4 cosworth front end. if using a 4x4 manifold you will need a 4x4 actuator and rod. also the bracket.
kool project.
ive 'reshaped' for want of a better word the bracket, just applied some serious vice and kept tweaking it until the rod was in the right place
Moves nice and smooth now, do you by any chance know what pressure the wastegate should be set to before it starts to move. I cant find much info on it, at the moment ive got it just starting to open at around 7psi.
Got a few other bits done today, converted the fuel pump for a return line, as the mazda pressure regulator is located inside the tank and runs a syphon to keep the two tanks balanced.
Found out the hard way the last couple of days that cheapy ebay pipe flaring tools like these:
are dogshite.
so after several failed attempts to make a decent flared end that i'd trust my life to, the towel was thrown in and shelled out for a proper tool...
Works a million times better and easily does single and double flares even on the original steel piping.
much better, still had to use the crappy one for the two 1/4 pipes from the master cylinder to the ABS unit which was a struggle and required a couple of failed attempts resulting in the pipes being bent at angles other than 90 degrees.... this wreaked havoc with my OCD, but wasn't kicking me in the head enough to warrant going out for an extra roll of pipe.
Got some clips on order, so should be able to neaten things up and replace the old white clips which are just there to space the pipes temporarily.
Once i'd filled the header and bled everything I noticed a leak from one of the 1/4 pipes into the ABS unit, this was caused by the die scraping the pipe as it was forming the flare, i just annealed the flare with a blowtorch and nipped it up again which made it soft enough to get a good seal
Re-bled the system and got it leak free, needs another bleeding session with the pedal when theres two of us as theres a little bit of squish and i can hear air bubbles in the pipework somewhere, which i cant seem to clear with the vacuum bleeder. It will be nice to get the pipes clipped back and neatened up so we can knock another job off the seemingly neverending list
Next job is to get the cossie bottom pulley in the lathe and machine the front 'V' section off so i can weld on a plate to screw the ribbed AC pulley and trigger wheel on, as we need this in place to position some mounts for the AC pump, and also so that we can get the shelf above the rads for the battery and some of the wiring to go across.
Few more pics of how things are going, we're still chipping away at the ton of smaller jobs that need doing.
Crank pulley faced off in the lathe to remove the now unneeded front 'v' pulley for PAS pump. Currently away being measured up at the local water jet cutters to have a plate made up with three holes at the correct centres to bolt to the cossie pulley and another four holes to attach the Mazda trigger wheel and A/C pulley to the plate, we can then get the battery tray bolted in above all this which will serve as a good place to run some of the pipes and wiring.
Rare shot of the fine craftsman Titch exhibiting some of his skills with some garden shears on another bit of jap plastic that has been deemed unnecessary.
Inlet manifold refitted and some of the pipework in, the induction pipe is all coming back out once we have a bottom pulley and battery tray in, heater pipes etc are all a little long for the moment until they get clipped into their final routing. We're thinking along the lines of making a strut brace with some thin flat bar along the back to clip heater hose and turbo oil feed to keep things looking neat
Stock cossie intercooler mounted so we can have a measure up for boost hoses, it will probably end up with a new intercooler later on once its been running a while and is ready for new bumpers, that way we can match the new cooler to the grille. oil coolers are back in, and have hoses up to the take off plate.
I somehow massively underestimated how many bends we needed to get to the intercooler and back to the throttle body, so i need to pick a few up this week. We also need to do some pretty fancy tight-space-shit to get off the turbo and around the underside of the alternator. Luckily titch has got himself a decent discount on the hoses as they aint cheap when you start adding in the price of hose bands
I was undecided on whether to keep the cat functional, there has to be something that looks like a cat present for the MOT. Thats all ours will do now, as when i had a look down it there was a fair sized crack through the material, so i set about the rest of it with a big fuck-off masonry drill and a hammer and chisel, i'm not sure of the health implications of smashing up a catalytic converter, but it was therapeutic nonetheless, and has done away with all the evils of modern day environmentally friendly motoring, and with any luck replaced them with noisy flame spitting goodness
Just 1 thing
You don't need a cat on that engine as the mot emissions would go on the age of the engine! I'm a mot tester and have an escos booked in this week that has a 2wd engine so doesn't need a cat test
Just 1 thing
You don't need a cat on that engine as the mot emissions would go on the age of the engine! I'm a mot tester and have an escos booked in this week that has a 2wd engine so doesn't need a cat test
Do you not still need to see a cat in the exhaust as part of the test if the car you are testing would have had one fitted from the factory? My MOT tester seemed to think that since the RX had it as standard there still needed to be one there, but did mention testing to the spec for the 2wd engine, and that the cat just needed to be present, but not functional
Whichever way we should be ok on it anyway, Have you spotted any glaring errors from an MOT testing point of view? Would be nice to get them out of the way before the day
Awaiting the crank pulley spacer coming back and a strut brace making up, but not being short of a few jobs, we have still been able to crack on and get some more work done, so there has been plenty going on. made a shelf/tray which bolts to the conveniently large seams at the front of the engine bay out of some 1.5mm sheet with rectangular box section tacked under it to give it some support. This is going to hold the battery, coil etc, and give us a place to neatly clip down the wiring loom.
With a route for cables now established it was time to start putting in some of the wiring. i began with the starter and fusebox cables going straight across the edge of the shelf close to front of the engine, then did engine and chassis grounds. the starter was an easy win, just needing the original wire from the starter relay cutting down and the appropriate ring connector crimping on. Once the larger cables had been run across the front to the battery i could get some split cable sleeving on it to start feeding the stuff in that i need to keep from the mazda loom.
Armed with the Mazda wiring diagram, a stanley knife and enough caffeine to kill a small child, i set to it, and ended up with this
The plan was simply to de-wire all the terminals i dont need from the ecu plugs, keeping the few i need. This was a pretty tedious job made much worse by the jap bastards using some form of horrid rubbery silicone shit to seal the gland into the ecu box.
Afraid i missed taking a ton of pictures throughout the wiring, possibly due to excessive caffeine intake, but ended up something like this, at this point the wiring was pretty much complete aside from the yellow oil pressure switch wire being connected to the engine and the mazda temperature and crank sensor being mounted. I still hadnt the balls to connect the battery up at this point
Bits mounted where i wanted them. I wanted a special brew sponsored ignition coil, but as it was only early afternoon, i didnt really want to look like an alcoholic skip dweller buying a can of spesh from the shop, not only that, i couldnt have downed one before lunch, even for the cause. So i settled for one of the many energy drink tins in the garage bin
Once i had sleeved everything up, it was time to get brave and apply some voltage, i used a bench supply to start with to limit current to about 3A.
All was looking good, so i connected the battery up.
Actually almost did a little wee with excitement when i realised it all works again after i attacked the guage cluster with pliers and a soldering iron
everything on the car still works, had a little panic at one point thinking i'd buggered the indicators somehow, but soon realised i had just forgotton to plug in the flasher relay when i put the dash back
Something that doesnt work though: fuel pump, i suppose it was a bit optimistic to think that it might work after being stood for so long. i tried running it through with electrical cleaner and got this awful shit out
but no amount of tapping, blowing through with compressed air, oiling and swearing was bringing it back to life. it was for the bin.
Being the inqisitive type, i ragged it open to have a look anyway
That would be the problem then.... it was seized absolutely solid, another item to add to the 'to buy' list
Final bits for this week were a couple of those feel good jobs that are easy, but have a big effect
give the seats and dashboard a good cleaning down, now that we have power on and can get the windows up it should stay clean in there, the most impressive Ł600 car interior ive seen
Peeled the foam off the front wings that had been hiding it for so long. Went at the dull headlamp lenses with some 2500 wet and dry and then machine polished them, refitted the bumper, and gave it a quick hosing down.
A well spent morale-boosting couple of hours
Theres not an awful lot left to do now, the main job now will be to get a downpipe sorted that will, for the moment reduce down to 2.5" and join in to the mazda exhaust, meanwhile theres plenty of tidying up jobs to do with wiring and the brake pipes to clip down, also hoping to get the strut brace back soon which we will have brackets to tidy up the heater and vacuum hoses and the oil feed where they cross the top of the engine.
brilliant work, almost midengined by the look of it .looks to be simialr to the s2000 as behind front strut towers
Thanks
It was a bit of a mission to get the engine so far back in there, but it was the lesser of two evils compared to having to mess with suspension geometry, that would be a real pain in the ass lol
What a great project mate all the work you have done looks great, nice to one of these being saved and retro fitted with a new engine.
I think these should have been fitted originally with the 2.3 MPs lump instead of the wanker engine.
Whilst I appreciate the whole theory and design of the rotary engine, they certainly aren't for everyone, they are inefficient, produce masses of heat (which was great for us with the oil coolers and big rad) and probably drink more petrol than the cossie we're putting in. I think the main downfall of them is more operator errors than anything else, they drink oil and Average Joe forgets to check it every so often which ruins them. From what I get of it most issues are caused by either low oil or bad coils causing a misfire and whatever the rotary equivalent of bore washing is called.
The mps engine would have been an excellent choice for them from the factory, but chances are they would cost 5 times as much secondhand, and we would never have got the opportunity to create this particular monster
Yep, certainly feeling pretty chuffed with it so far, getting a bit excited about firing it up and doing some testing now, hoping this week we can collar a friend and enlist some tig welding skills for the downpipe and get the crank pulley back. I could probably arc weld a downpipe with stainless rods, but it would look shit unless I spent a week grinding down the welds
For the moment though there's still plenty of tidying up and pipe clipping down to do, and a couple of bits and bobs like map sensor and amal valve to screw down and plumb. Got me a couple of weeks off work now, so hopefully it will all get done and I can start thinking about which engine I can cram into the next one for myself
Well, we've got a few more hours in on the motor, and things are now looking very close to getting on the road.
We replaced the knackered fuel pump with a new Bosch 044 unit, and after several attempts on the pumps outlet banjo, we managed to get it leak free (i still dont trust it not to leak in the future, so another one is on order).
i had a few tries cranking her over, but was getting nothing, fuel injectors were all clicking and there was a stink of fuel, so it looked all good there.
I decided to open up the dash cover again and have a test around the ecu to check the ignition amp was getting a signal, which it was, anyway, long story short, i had connected the output from the ignition amp to the positive side of the coil and grounded the negative to the chassis, not realising that the amp modules output was negative .
A few adjustments to my wiring were made temporarily and then on the first turn of the key...... LIFE!!
She's a little spluttery, possibly due to the bubbles i can hear in the fuel lines, which wont seem to clear as it has literally fuck all petrol in, i tipped a full 5l can in, but its only just lifting the needle on the petrol guage, and i suspect that as its returning to the cup inside the tank there are bubbles floating around in there which are just getting sucked back in by the mazda pump in the tank. i reckon once there is enough juice there to fill it properly all the bubbles will clear from the system. The thing that im really suited with is that the guage clusters are working which was one of my biggest fears, im 100% confident that the engine management light will now fool the MOT man, the rev counter is working as it should be, fuel and temp guage both work as they should do, i could do with thumbing through the mazda schematics again and having a look at how the oil pressure indicator works, as i cant get the light to go off even if i ground the wire manually, but thats only a minor problem Really need to get some stainless welded up now for temp sensor to go into one of the coolant lines, and a downpipe, as i'm pretty sure i have successfully pissed off the entire estate with just a few seconds running lol.
Been taking it steady away for the last week or two, getting some more small jobs out of the way. Fancied tidying up the intercooler a little, so i took it back off, gave it a good cleaning and keyed up the old paint as best i could, it was actually quite difficult to do without risking damaging the delicate little fins, but i got there in the end.
I then put a couple of very thin coats of Skoda silver basecoat from some of my old leftovers, i was going to leave it at that and stick with plain silver, but got a bit of a creative urge and ended up tracing an 'RS' logo off the screen of the laptop onto some paper, and then tediously cutting it out to make a stencil.
This is what i ended up with, i'd have rather put the cosworth logo on, but that would have been a total ballache to cut out, and my patience wouldnt stretch that far!
And with the bumper back on, almost hides all that hard work! The grill here was actually a dummy, and didn't have any holes in it to allow air through, so i had to cut each individual diamond shape out with a hammer and chisel, and then go around them all with a craft knife blade and tidy up the cut edges. It was a grueller of a job, testing my patience to the limit, but i think the end result looks a sight better than just stuffing some of that aluminium mesh in there, the number plate will now need to be relocated elsewhere, but the chances are we will end up using a stick on plate.
Got my last bit of wiring done, needed to relocate the windscreen washer reservoir to the boot, as we have completely run out of room under the bonnet now. Chopped off the connectors for the two pumps and level sensor, and then ran a new loom all the way down the passenger side sill and the two pipes needed to get water to the screen and headlamps
Hopefully the last bunch of extra cables that need to go in
Washer bottle mounted in boot, put it near the opening so its easy to refill. had to use an ugly self tapper in one of the holes so it would reach all the way through the trim and into the clip
Final job was to remove the exhaust manifold and turbo again, as it needs a couple of studs helicoiling and some heat management was desperately needed to stop any burning of boost pipes or wiring, as its seriously tight around that area.
The heat wrapping was a bit of a faff to get right, taking several attempts putting it on and taking back off trying different ways to get around the whole thing fairly uniformly. Once the water had dried off the wrapping i gave it a coat of heat resistant paint which is supposed to help bind the fibres together and stop it fraying and dropping off... time will tell i guess.
I didnt really have any intention of painting the exhaust housing silver, but my masking must have been a bit crap, and i ended up with paint on it, so i finished the rest of it off. My guess is that it wont last 5 minutes before it discolours or flakes off, but we have a blanket that will be going on there to cover it up anyway.
Tight for space down there!!!
I would have liked to get the manifold bolted back up tight again, but ive been waiting for what seems like an age for the postman to bring me an 8.3mm drill bit to go with my half a set of helicoils, so for now its going back on with just a couple of nuts holding it in the right place so that it can all be measured up tomorrow for the fittings we need for the downpipe. Doesn't actually look as though it will need anything too fancy for this really, just a couple of 90degree elbows and a little tweaking to get the angles right.
Thanks vicar
Something my friend and i agreed on right from the start of all this was that we wanted to come out of this with a quick car that is comfortable and looks and drives well, there is still a lot of tidying up to do under the bonnet, and not having the strut brace is holding me up a little now because i want to route some of the pipework across it, and possibly mount the MAP sensor and amal valves on the underside of it to keep things a bit less cramped around the strut area.
Can't wait to get this thing MOT'd and on the road, i just hope everything with the change of engine on the logbook goes smoothly, as ive heard that theres a long waiting time for VIC checks with the dvla if we have to go down that route
Not had much of an update recently, but that doesn't mean we haven't been busy finishing off some of the last jobs.
Got some stainless bits, and went about knocking up the section of downpipe we needed, we ended up just tacking all the parts together in the right place with stainless arc sticks and dropping it off to have it welded up properly, also used a bit of the old coolant pipe and a stainless boss to put the coolant temp sensor in to make the temperature guage work.
Got it heatwrapped, and fitted, i also learned of my hatred for heatwrap, i think i need to just burn my clothes now that they are ingrained with that horrid itchy shit!
Now that it could run without annoying everyone in the neighbourhood, it was time to put some fresh oil in and get it warmed up, everything actually went surprisingly smoothley, just needing a couple of hose clips nipping up on the coolant pipes, i just used ordinary 10w40 semi synthetic to try and flush out anything that might have been hanging around in the engine or coolers. i then dropped the oil again and blew out as much as i could from the coolers, after fitting a new oil filter and topping back up it was good to run for a few miles before getting another oil and filter change to a better synthetic 10w50. Im hoping a better oil will cut down on a very slight chatter coming from the distributor pulley area, the oil pressure looks ok right from the first couple of seconds after it starts, right through to warming up fully, so i'm hoping the a higher viscosity oil will just help a little.
08-07-2015, 10:09 PM
having said that it ran nicely prior to being abandoned. Definately going to get fuelling etc checked when its running.
