EvilDmen's RX8 231 Project.

[EvilDmen]

Well, since my accident on the 01/01/15 (RIP Rhonda)



And then the subsequent ongoing problems with the insurance company trying to claim off the council. I was not able to buy another 5th gen, I wanted a rust free, unmodified, low mileage red top and they were way out of my price range with the claim ongoing.

So I bought myself a 1l Yaris with a dead clutch for £100 and got that back on the road as a run around while I assessed my situation.

I started looking through all the cars that I wanted and very quickly got very sad due to limited funds. This is when I made the happy accident of leaving my actual budget in a search whilst looking at RWD Rotaries. (I've had an RX7 in the past.) I found many, many RX8s for very low prices with low compression or dead engines.

All my old rotary paranoias came screaming back to me! SHATTERED ROTOR TIPS! SPUN STATIONARY GEAR BEARINGS! WATER SEAL FAILURES! And then it hit me! Water seal failures leave the engines intact inside and I always wanted to work one.

I carefully went through the dead RX8s and found one with all the symptoms of what I wanted.
60000 miles, no rust and very good bodywork.



She started and ran, still sounding smooth, so I knew the tips hadn't jumped and chewed the internals to bits.
My brother and I towed her home after handing over very little money.

Let the disassembly commence!
Out with the Air box, Battery, Strut brace, Inlet manifold and Cat.



Next out came the coil packs, alternator and unhooked the A/C pump exposing the 1.3l Rotary heart. It's that tiny thing nestled down under the bulkhead.



We left it there for the day ready for the next step.

[semicolin]

I've heard nothing but negative reviews on these cars, probably just a Honda bias though.

Looking forward to seeing how you get on

[Andreika609]

It is very popular to put a k series engines in these now why not to try ?

[prahunt]

Rotary FTW
Shame they get such a bad rep. When they're on song their amazing.

I prefer the 7's styling, but you can pick these 8's up so cheap these days.
Keep this up to date with how you get on. Nothing like a good engine build

[ek9sid]

I had a 231 before I got the lude. Managed to rack up 100k miles on it without an engine rebuild. And was still running strong when I sold it. Had the typical rust around the 3rd brake light and all 4 arches but at that point I wasn't too fussed as it was a little bit of bubbling. No broken paint and it was used as my daily.

Great handling cars although will kick it's bum out unexpectedly when wet (and I remember getting wheel spin - well, traction control kicking in - in 6th gear on a motorway going up a very slight incline in rain/sleet conditions )

[craig_jdm]

Alot of Japanese tuners say they might be one of the best handling cars you can get if you sort the suspension right there are alot of fast ones in Japan

[EvilDmen]

So we undid the gearbox bolts, removed the starter, hooked up the engine crane and very slowly took out the engine mounts.



But before we could get it out I had to drill the anti-tamper plates on the ECU to be able to get the loom out.

SUCCESS!





Got it onto the bench and drained the coolant and oil. On inspection the oil was clean and no signs of bearing swarf and after removing the exhaust manifold and spark plugs I could see all six Rotor tips right where they were supposed to be and even sounding like they were giving good compression. At this point I was grinning because it looked like it was going to be a repair within budget!

Off came the sump and again no sign of bearing failure. And here is where the problems started.
The flywheel didn't have what I would call the normal configuration of 6 to 8 retaining bolts, but 1 huge 54mm nut.

This brought a halt to the project while we sourced a socket. While it was on the way I found lots of people having problems getting this nut off. Some even giving up on a build. I looked through the workshop manual and found that it is torqued in the factory to between 450 and 600 ft/lb!!!?!?! With Locktite!!!

We secured the flywheel, got the socket on the 2ft breaker bar with a 4ft scaffold pole.



My brother hangs his whole weight of it and...
Nothing! He just hangs there! He bounces on it and SNAP the head of the breaker bar has sheared!

He has another bar so we try again... SNAP the socket shatters! I was too shocked to take pictures of this.
So I order an impact socket this time.

On my next day off we try again. Again my brother hangs his weight off it and nothing. I decide to climb onto his back...
SQUEEEEEEEEE CRACK!!!

[EvilDmen]

I've heard nothing but negative reviews on these cars, probably just a Honda bias though.

Looking forward to seeing how you get on

Rotary FTW
Shame they get such a bad rep. When they're on song their amazing.

I prefer the 7's styling, but you can pick these 8's up so cheap these days.
Keep this up to date with how you get on. Nothing like a good engine build

Unfortunately they get bad rep because a lot of owners have no idea how to look after them.
Low oil and the apex seals chatter in the housings and shatter or the rotor and stationary bearings eat the eccentric shaft. And if you're very unlucky it will do both!
Low water and they overheat popping the water seals.
If the coil packs aren't replaced every 30000 miles they can fail and generate poor spark, leaving unburnt fuel in the rotor housings causing excessive apex seal wear and fuel igniting in the cat, which then shatters, blocks then sets on fire.

I've 8s get to 200000 miles on the same engine when maintained properly.

There's not a day that I haven't missed the rotary scream since I had a 7!

[gb-lude]

o dear....

love these cars.. actually been thinking about buying one at some point..
Why didn't you heat the crap out of it?

[EvilDmen]

And so the strip down starts!

Removed the stationary gears and found the rear bearing like this.



The front was just as bad. The rotor bearings looked untouched though. The eccentric shaft looked scored but was perfectly smooth and round and when measured it was smack bang in the middle of tolerance.



The housings were reusable and again within spec.





No cracking around the spark plug holes, there's faint lip in the middle of the housings as expected for a series 1 engine, the flash makes it look much worse than it is. You can hardly feel it.

An now the expected water seal failure point.



You can see where the water was getting into the exhaust and vica versa.

At this point I decided that I'm going to replace the apex seals as well as the water seals and stationary gear bearing. All in all the damage was not bad at all.

Yes, I was waiting by the door waiting for the courier just like in the Memes!