Project FD RX7 Restomod: Part 19 – Assembling the 13B REW

13B engine assembly front torrington bearingThe front counter weight torrington bearing was put in place.

13B REW RX-7 Rotary front counter weightThen we installed the front counter weight onto the e-shaft.  The front and rear counter weights were balanced to our lightened rotors, which we removed 0.638lb from each rotor.  This totals a 1.276lb weight reduction from our rotating assembly before removing weight from the counterweights.

FD RX-7 Oil Pump GearThe 13B oil pump gear is so small in diameter compared to traditional piston engine cars.  But these simple engines tend to not have problems with oil starvation or a lack of oil volume.

13B REW Rotary RX-7 oil pump gear and chainWe bolted the oil pump to the front iron, and installed the oil pump chain to the e-shaft.

13B REW Rotary RX-7 front coverThen we installed the front cover and bolted it to the block.  Abel added shims to the Front Oil Pressure Regulator to increase the oil pressure, which is important for reliability in high rpm and high power engines.

9 comments

  1. Is the blurred out images of the port, really NSFW, or just a proprietary secret?

    Otherwise, love the assembly porn!

    1. Lol I figured it must be some JDM mosaic NSFW material too.

      Great documentation. Can’t wait to see further progress.

  2. When researching components for my RX-8 engine rebuild a lot of people recommended avoiding Atkins solid corner seals because all else being equal, you’ll see lower compression compared to an OEM corner seal. In this case is the added strength a worthy tradeoff for the compression because you can add a bit more boost to make up for it or are you just not seeing a compression loss on the RX-7 version of the seal?

    1. Dylan,

      I have had experience with both. You only crack corner seals if you have an incorrect tuneup. Oem for everything and stay away from Atkins. Their coolant jackets and apex seal springs are not oem and will cause problems in your build. See my thread on rx7 club titled Warped Apex Seal Teardown.

          1. Atkins does not recommend lapped side housings in general. From their website:

            Side housings have a nitrided surface, which is a heat treating process that diffuses nitrogen into the surface of a metal to create a case hardened surface.
            When you lap a side housing you remove this nitrided surface.
            We do not offer this service nor do we condone it.
            When this nitrided surface is removed excessive wear can occur when using any seal that comes into contact with the side housing, including Mazda corner seals and Atkins Solid Corner Seals.
            It can also cause excessive wear to the side seals and oil rings when they come into contact with raw side housings with no nitrided surface.

    2. According to Abel, the Atkins solid corner seals will improve compression over stock, and stock corner seals start to see limitations at certain power levels where solid corner seals become far more necessary and beneficial.

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