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Re-opening in 2020! Welcome to the home for lost rotaries. If you're just reading through this thread, I hope you enjoy my trials and tribulations with these wonderful vehicles and their (mostly) spinning triangle power plants. Some background: What started as a interest over a decade ago has morphed into a disease - to the point that at one point I quit my normal job, rented some shop space and worked on these cars as my primary focus. Like most good things, reality kicked in and I quickly returned to my long standing career- turns out benefits are worth the suffering. Almost. In 2014, I decided to build a shop and with the help of my equally crazy brother, we built a 30x48x14 shop to house our hobbies. Since then, I've been busy continuing to work on these cars as a hobby and my brother has been busy being married with children*. Last year I realized my stress level was getting out of hand and reduced, well everything. Including my contributions here. I've since taken a new job (10x better and less stress!) and again, refocused on what I want to be doing. So you might see less of other people's cars, but there will always be a project that sneaks in from time to time- but it's time to have some fun and build some cool cars. Enjoy! Original Post ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Here are some recent projects:  Site prep for the new shop.  A decently priced 99 Miata I picked up, my brother bought it after we got it through emission.   My FD.  Got a great deal on some RPF1's.   REW reassembly for Pineapple:   46k Touring that got the REW above.  65k S4 Sport with a Stage 2 street port, oil mods, full suspension,    04 RX8 with 76k in for a new Pineapple Renesis.  Rob loves his torch.   05 RX8 with 46k in for a reman:   Bare REW to full long block in 6 hours:     94 R2 in for a vmount and single turbo swap.   How the shop looks as of last:  New toy.  /shop part Now for a personal project: I finally bought a White 94 Touring yesterday. I've wanted one for years and way too good of a deal came up. It's a bit rougher then I wanted, but it will clean up nicely.  
the spyder fucked around with this message at 02:09 on Dec 23, 2019 |
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Aug 2, 2013 00:08
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You're back! I was thinking about your old thread just the other day. Whose REPU is that?
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Aug 2, 2013 00:33
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Oh, yeah, the Miata totally has a sweet Boss Frog roll bar and an engine that drinks oil now.
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Aug 2, 2013 01:11
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Commodore_64 posted:and an engine that drinks oil now.
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Aug 2, 2013 01:19
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Seat Safety Switch posted:Whose REPU is that? Googled "REPU", avoided asking the same question.
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Aug 2, 2013 01:35
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I love your car and I love this thread.
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Aug 2, 2013 01:38
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The REPU is Rob@ Pineapple Racing daily driver. 13B with a RX8 trans. Pretty neat little truck. Needs a 20b though.
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Aug 2, 2013 19:47
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the spyder posted:The REPU is Rob@ Pineapple Racing daily driver. 13B with a RX8 trans. Pretty neat little truck. Needs a 20b though. Especially since his plate is 3 rotor.
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Aug 2, 2013 19:49
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Back to the 94. This came up just a few days ago with a blown engine (coolant seals) and tons of mods. A friend of mine saw it first and called. I messaged him and was able to work a deal. He wants some parts, I want the chassis- we will sell what ever we don't want. It's got 74k and looked straight in the photos. I took Wednesday off and road tripped it to Redmond WA (from Oregon) to pickup the car. Sadly, my saying of "There is no such thing as a straight FD" was yet again proved accurate. After 5 minutes, we knew it was a respray. After 15, we found the front end had been replaced and both rear QP's were replaced. The passenger done terribly. All the other work was done amazing, if it were not for the seam sealer and one uncovered weld, I would never have known. It must have happened young in it's life to have someone put that much $$$ in to getting it back together right. Our old trusty 304k truck made the 500 mile trip flawlessly.  Some before pics.  It came with some free trailmix bars! Sweeeeeeet.    It's got some dings in the drivers QP.  Vinyl stickers peeling off...  Interior and engine bay de-wired.  No more gauges and boost controller.  Oh hai electrical fire... Wonder when this happened.   It came with a TON of parts. (Except the Auto Bahn's, those are mine).   Wait.... this is the drivers side...  The passenger side....  Oh god. Bondo and rust, my favorite things!  Why is the there a lip sticking out?  Oh god, are those self tappers holding the bottom of the QP on?  The tires it came with are from 06.  Coolant was apparent on both midpipe and exhaust... Must be toast inside.  I'm tempted to keep my VS-XX's... I had them forsale and the one person really interested hasn't had time to look at them.   So this fall, I will be pulling the rear passenger QP off and fixing that fuckery. Hopefully it drives straight, haha. the spyder fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Aug 2, 2013 |
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Aug 2, 2013 20:05
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I'm really looking forward to this thread. I know almost nothing about rotaries except they are a spinning apex seal joke. Maybe I can learn something new here. I've got a secret crush on some of those cars, just don't tell my Mopar centric family!
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Aug 2, 2013 20:49
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mafoose posted:Rotary already? Rotary soon, fellow stalker. Waiting on those sweet lifts and cold weather.
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Aug 2, 2013 20:56
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I wanted to tear more in to the white FD today, but my wife's mini cooper s decided to blow a strut mount.  *Edit- I did buy a quart of PT-Chaste White PPG today.
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Aug 3, 2013 05:12
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Shop lesson of the day: Hire a builder.  I can't pick up a hammer in my right hand anymore... it's covered in blisters.
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Aug 5, 2013 00:43
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I just wanna say that if I lived anywhere near you I would be owning an FD. Half the battle of owning a quirky car is knowing a good mechanic that can fix them, and I know for a fact there are none around here
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Aug 5, 2013 00:49
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So I had more energy then I thought... Tore in to the white FD again. I finally cranked it over... oh god it sounded like a giant bilge pump. At this point, the engine is a fricken paper weight. More scortched electronics. No idea where it came from yet.  Let's see... No vacuum caps, no orings on the primary or secondary injectors, and OMP removed- no noticeable premix in the tank... ugg.  Apart.  Truck full of parts.  Check out the 4" downpipe.  Where I left it for the night.  Vac caps zip tied on are totally a appropriate cap... jebus.  Yes that's plumbing strap holding the mid pipe up.  While taking the exhaust off I noticed a kink and a broken seam... Shoot me. Son of a $@#@$%@$#%   South Florida Performance T4 manifold- huge compared to what I see today.  Yay the fins look ok!  \The good news: It looks like a ACT clutch kit- The bad news: Anyone need a boat anchor?
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Aug 5, 2013 05:43
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requesting junk rotor to use as housing decoration.
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Aug 5, 2013 13:35
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the spyder posted:Anyone need a boat anchor? Goons always want rotor paperwights.
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Aug 5, 2013 16:18
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I'm so happy you're back! I've been following (and lurking) your posts for years and was just thinking about them the other day. Glad to see you back and posting 
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Aug 5, 2013 17:54
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I would gladly take a rotor paperweight 
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Aug 5, 2013 17:56
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Here's the deal with rotors and housings. I can get them, but cleaning and shipping are time killers for me right now when I have 100 projects going. So how about once a month I will give a rotor and housing away? I'll make a post and it's first come-first serve.
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Aug 5, 2013 18:10
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I'll take a paperweight! Whereabouts in Oregon are you?
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Aug 5, 2013 22:56
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I work in downtown, but live just south on 99e.
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Aug 5, 2013 23:08
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the spyder posted:I work in downtown, but live just south on 99e. Just follow the trail of apex seals. 
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Aug 6, 2013 00:12
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Condolences on the new project. That's going to be a bit of work. Cars like this, abused, are what give rotaries such a bad name.
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Aug 6, 2013 00:19
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How much do you think it would cost to get that white one back on the road and looking good? Also, given how cheaply RX-8s can be found, are they a better buy than an FD? I see tons of RX-8s with ~100k miles for around $7,000
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Aug 6, 2013 00:35
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Sockington posted:Just follow the trail of apex seals. More like blown coolant pumps. Thanks BMW.
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Aug 6, 2013 00:52
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oRenj9 posted:How much do you think it would cost to get that white one back on the road and looking good? Also, given how cheaply RX-8s can be found, are they a better buy than an FD? I see tons of RX-8s with ~100k miles for around $7,000 If a customer brought it to me and wanted it perfect: $15-20k. A basic rebuild/fuckeries fixed: $7-10k How much am I going to put in to it? $1500 + $7k in parts I already have. I would rather have a FD than a RX8 any day of the week. The Renesis barely will last 100k due to inherent design issues. Cost cutting and such by Mazda has made it a car I am not sure I will ever own. The handling is great, the styling meh, and the powerplant a joke.
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Aug 6, 2013 00:56
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the spyder posted:The Renesis barely will last 100k due to inherent design issues. Cost cutting and such by Mazda has made it a car I am not sure I will ever own. The handling is great, the styling meh, and the powerplant a joke. Care to elaborate? Its probably things I've already heard, but I happen to be looking at one this weekend that might become my new track car.
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Aug 6, 2013 02:22
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1) Carbon. Why in gods name Mazda decided to strip the US cars of power and life is beyond me. The flash here in the states uses almost 2x the oil injection. This combined with poor maintenance leads me to 2. 2) Side seals. The "movable" sideseal grove allows carbon buildup to lock the side seals in place, causing compression loss. 3) Water seals. I don't know if it was the factory or the engineers, but I have seen more failed coolant seals then any other generation. 4) Apex seals. Smaller, thinner, and easier to chip/crack due to carbon buildup I've redone half a dozen 8's so far. All from carbon/waterseal/compression failures. Rob@ Pineapple is getting more and more Renesis in, all before 120k. Sure there will be some exceptions, but I can't believe the quality with this generation of rotary. For a company that wanted to bring the rotary back, they sure did not try hard to make it any more reliable...
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Aug 6, 2013 06:59
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My OCD kicked in tonight when I got home- I had to peel the worn vinyl off the door handles. That quickly turned in to pulling the turbo... hahaha.    More quality work...   Huge exhaust housing-this would have easily made 500hp.  I can't wait to get this back on the road...  Huge wastegate!  Ready to pull. 
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Aug 7, 2013 06:06
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Even though that car is a basket case, I am supremely jealous. White FD's are loving gorgeous Someday I'll have an FD 
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Aug 7, 2013 08:19
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More progress:    
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Aug 9, 2013 07:50
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Holy loving lol- I found out how the electrical fire started. In attempt to heat protect the wiring harness, the PO wrapped it in aluminum foil and silicon tape... On the secondary fusebox 8g wire, he wrapped aluminum tape ALL the way to the top of the terminal, connecting it to 12v power. This then charged the entire aluminum "heat wrap" and as soon as a ground was made, shorted the entire system. Amazing it did not burn to the ground. I will get a picture tomorrow.
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Aug 9, 2013 08:02
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the spyder posted:Holy loving lol- I found out how the electrical fire started. In attempt to heat protect the wiring harness, the PO wrapped it in aluminum foil and silicon tape... On the secondary fusebox 8g wire, he wrapped aluminum tape ALL the way to the top of the terminal, connecting it to 12v power. This then charged the entire aluminum "heat wrap" and as soon as a ground was made, shorted the entire system. Amazing it did not burn to the ground. I will get a picture tomorrow.  What the gently caress
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Aug 9, 2013 13:23
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the spyder posted:Holy loving lol- I found out how the electrical fire started. In attempt to heat protect the wiring harness, the PO wrapped it in aluminum foil and silicon tape... On the secondary fusebox 8g wire, he wrapped aluminum tape ALL the way to the top of the terminal, connecting it to 12v power. This then charged the entire aluminum "heat wrap" and as soon as a ground was made, shorted the entire system. Amazing it did not burn to the ground. I will get a picture tomorrow.  That is...special. Wow.
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Aug 9, 2013 14:07
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That is some next-generation PO fuckery. Are you just going to buy a whole new factory harness?
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Aug 9, 2013 14:17
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Here are some quick shots- you can really see the aluminum on the engine harness. The nice thing is, there is little to no damage- which is good, because you're looking at $1500 in NEW OEM harnesses...    
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Aug 9, 2013 19:44
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So he wrapped it with aluminum tape then covered it with electrical tape?  I'd call the dude and tell him his car took a poo poo because he's a dumbass.
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Aug 10, 2013 00:07
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I want to, there has to be more to the story then what he told us. So many things were wrong/broken/hosed then how he presented it. -No work on the car today, shop is kicking my rear end.
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Aug 11, 2013 05:44
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 16:00 |
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Aeka 2.0 made brand new FD wiring harnesses a couple years back, you might want to get in touch with him. He used all sorts of high end wires and connectors.
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Aug 11, 2013 16:27
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Zoom Zoom, motherfuckers