Today, we are going to tear down something just a little bit different. We're not going to find any spun bearings, no damaged crankshafts, no bent rods, no piston nuggets, no damaged push rods, or valve train issues because this engine doesn't have any of that stuff. This is the rotary engine out of a 2004 Mazda RX-8, a series 1 RX-8 engine. It's out of a manual transmission, so it makes 238 horsepower and 159 foot-lbs of torque. I was close but not all the way there. This is a Bear Keg that was sitting in my brother's garage for I can't remember when. That's how long it was there, and it's time for it to come apart. I have done a rotary engine on this channel, but it's been several years, and I figured why not revisit something from the past. This time, it's going to be a little bit easier because this engine is rather

sparsely equipped. I do my best to keep my opinions out of these videos. I try to keep them strictly about tearing down blown-up engines with the occasional terrible dad joke, but in the past, I may have slipped. I've made some low blows, some passing jokes about how unreliable Subaru can be, the ownership experience of a European car, and the driving experience of a Japanese car. I'm sorry, I had to get that out. It's not even my quote anyway. Regardless, there is only one true king for unreliability as far as engines are concerned, and that would be the Rotary engine. Now, that sounds really harsh, but that's really not the way I mean it. The fact is that I was growing up in a Mazda dealership. I wasn't raised in a Mazda dealership, but my dad is a retired Mazda Master Tech, and I can't count high enough to count the number of these engines that I've seen him replace. I don't even know if he can. That doesn't look good. I also have seen so many of

these cars with bad engines in this line of work. I run a full-service salvage yard. Here, I am offered RX8s with bad engines. Well, not so much anymore, but for a while there, it was like one a month. I even have some of them here. That being the case, it's not always the engine's fault. I may talk a lot of crap on these engines; they may have their problems, but the problem really is the people that bought RX8s specifically. They treated them like a Honda Civic: lots of short trips, never letting them rev out on the highway, not premixing. These are all things that bad RX8 owners do. Don't short trip them, always premix, always let them rev out at least once every so often. If you don't do that, well, you're not going to have a good time. This particular engine, I don't have any story with. I don't know miles, there's no VIN tag on it. This was a core that was returned to my brother after he sold a

good engine. I don't know why my brother charged a core, but it's here now. I have to give him all these parts back, so I don't expect there to be too many parts being thrown across the shop. Tearing down one of these engines is really not that difficult. It's small, it's compact, there's really not much to it. However, putting one back together, that's good. Well, there's not very many people that can do that correctly. But to take this thing apart, you need a few tools that you wouldn't normally need. I like to use this weighted 19 mm socket for The Eccentric shaft bolt, a hammer, a bigger hammer, a bigger hammer, a sawsaw, and of course, an air chisel for the flywheel nut. Well, one thing that is like normal, we need to see if this thing turns over, so let's try. Come back here. Okay, so it doesn't really want to turn over. I don't really want it. Oh, hey, look, it's fine now. We fixed it. I can hear some compression and feel

some see if we can get a full revolution out of it. I don't know, guys. There we go. So, it doesn't seem to have very good compression. Let's put a ratchet on it so I can turn it over faster. It may have a tight spot. Also, appears to have some water coming out of it, so there's a good chance that we're going to find a little rust. That is really unfortunate. I really wish this was stored inside. Now, my brother had it in his garage for a long time, but before that, who knows. Now, we'll pull the four spark plugs. Spark plugs. So, I have them arranged with leading and trailing. They don't look terrible. They look really new, to be honest with you. These are much different plugs than you would normally find in the piston engine. Usually, you won't find stuff that's super smashed or destroyed, although occasionally, if something lets go just the right point inside the engine, you'll see some damage to a plug. The next thing I'd like to do is start

stripping the front of the engine. We just got a few brackets and then the water pump. See, is there any coolant that's going to come out? Just a little. Look at that water pump. I don't know if I can show that side. You can look at that side, but don't look at that either. It's fine. This looks like a Mazda water pump. I don't think it's ever been replaced. Clearly set with some coolant in it. There's some corrosion on the impeller, but overall, it looks like a good water pump. Now, because I got this from my brother, I need to make sure there's no oil in it. Because the last time my brother said there was no oil in something, I carried an RX8 transmission up a ladder while it was puking transmission fluid down my leg and totally missed the tan. There isn't much oil in here. While this thing's draining, we're going to see if it turns over any different without spark plugs in.

it. Oh, there's still a very tight spot, so I think there's going to be some rust and corrosion in there. I don't really want to turn this over any further because we could be damaging sellable parts unnecessarily. The next thing I'd like to do is see if we can get this eccentric shaft bolt out. It's a big if. It's going to be fine. They're tight usually. Nope. A yeah. Next, we need to get the flywheel off. Flywheel instead of having a series of bolts in a on a flange. It has a giant nut. And you know, instead of buying the expensive socket, you could just use your air chisel. But in this case, we'll just use the right socket. And we'll lightly thread this on so when we knock this Lo, it doesn't go flying. We'll just and the Fly wheel's off. Now, they do make an adapter to bolt this engine to a traditional engine stand. I don't own one because while I do own an RX7, I don't have any rotary-powered cars. So we are

going to just tilt this up on a couple of pieces of wood so that we can get the oil pan off. This is going to be very messy. I can hear coolant in here. Oh, I see coolant coming out in massive quantities. It's fine; just don't look at it, and it won't be a problem. Lots of coolant. I have my finger over the hole. That sounds bad. Could have probably planned this just a hair better. Oh, we're leaking some oil now. That wasn't so bad. Well, we're going to kind of mitigate some of this mess with some pigm stuff. Works really well. And now we can get the oil pan off. And this is just a ring of tens. [Music] See if we can get this. These are glued really well. That didn't work, did it? See if we can get a little pry bar in there. And More Mess. Well, I don't see any glitter in here, but I would be very concerned if I did. There is some kind of sparkly-looking stuff right there, but I

don't really see anything in the pan. Looks pretty normal for one of these. Now we need to remove the [Applause] pickup. Next, we're going to tip this thing over on its belly, if you want to call it that, so we can get the front cover off and get the long bolts that hold the whole thing together removed. And I think we're going to make a bigger mess. All right, did I get them all? I think I did. Take old blue in here. Doesn't really take a lot of force to get these crack loose. Front cover is off. There's a counterweight there. There's the pump. Not much to see thus far. Now we can start removing some more parts. Straighten these flaps down. And there's the chain drive. This should slide off too. There's the oil pump. I got to get that little key out for me to get this hway AP part. We'll do that later. Set that over there. We do have a little bit of housekeeping to do. Next, we'll tackle the oil injectors and

yes, these inject oil. I don't care about vacuum lines. They should always be replaced with new. Looks like one of these has already been removed, one oil injector line. My brother probably sold it. I'm not kidding. The last time I tore one of these down several years ago, I did it with the utmost precision possible. No, I'm kidding. I kind of just blasted it apart. This time, we're going to take a little more care in how we take this apart. There is actually a sequence of tension bolt removal. They're called tension bolts, the bolts that hold everything together, the housings and the irons. So, we're going to do this in the correct disassembly order, I think. And we're leaking a lot. These are the tension bolts. This thing's probably going to make a gigantic mess. That's okay. I'm prepared for that. All right, the first thing we're going to do is try to get this front iron off. This is much easier to do on a proper stand that doesn't stop me at

all all right so I've got a gap now. Okay, well, we're just going to kind of... that did absolutely nothing for me. Oh, that's ugly in here. That's unfortunate. This is gross. That's really unfortunate that water set in this thing. Here's your side H, your housing seals. Now, when these things get in a bad accident, like, uh, they get hit really hard, and I know this from experience, so as my brother, these seals can get deformed, and the only way to fix it is to tear the whole thing down, and at that point, you're putting new Apex seals in seals. There's the front rotor. That would explain why it was so difficult to turn over. Man, I was hoping it would be nicer than this. All right, I'm going to do my best to turn this thing over. If there's a whole bunch of resistance, I'm not going to force it, but it's just... I think that rust is really a problem. You can see all that rust corrosion in the housing. That really sucks. It's really

thick in places. Let's see if we can pull this front rotor. Here's side seal. Let's take a look at this front rotor. Look at that junk. It's not really conducive to a proper running engine, but I think it's been a long time since this thing could have been considered such. Look at all that. I think most of that's probably compacted in there from me trying to turn this thing over. That's why it's always a good idea, if you think an engine might be okay, to get a bore scope in there, because that is the difference between tearing something up and not. In this case, we knew this was not a good engine. I just didn't think it was this rusty. I think this is pretty much display only at this point. Look at all that junk on there. Let's see if we can fish those Apex seals out, or at least a couple. Let's see here. Those are really in there. Let uh get a hammer here. Wow, they're just broken. I broke that. They're so carboned in.

here this thing's just in awful shape. There's a spring when they're like this. I'm not going to say you can't bring them back. I'm going to say that you shouldn't. Ah, this is a total waste of effort to do. There's where the your side seals go. Everything is kind of stuck in there from carbon and rust. That's pretty much display only at this point. See if we can get this housing off. Oh, I think I see what's going on here. Here's the front rotor housing. You can kind of see the original finish. You can also see some pretty deep scratches in there. This was a bad engine before it got a bunch of water in it, and I think these housings can be, I don't know what the process is called, saved, but I think the process is also more expensive. Yeah, that's worn pretty bad there. You can definitely feel that with your finger. I think the process is probably more expensive than necessary. I think on the older rotaries.

where the housings are harder to find. Uh, that might be more of a wise idea, but I think again between that and the condition of this. We're looking at just some cool desk art, which this is not mine to sell. It's my brother's, so that'll be up to him. All right, see if we can turn this over. It all okay. Well, does turn, which means the other rotor moves freely. So maybe we won't see the amount of uh rust in the uh other housing, but I don't know. I just got it stuck. I think we're going to find the same amount of moisture. All right, see if we can get this apart again. I think we're we have a problem just because of how I have this setup on wood. And there's the other iron, the rear iron I should say. So I suppose it's possible that this moisture is from one of the these SE seals being bad. Could be coolant uh, but I I tend to think it was just stored improperly before my brother got it. And these this is full of junk so

let's see if we can slide this rotor out. Watch that eccentric shaft. Oh, it just shot an apex seal out. So, this one is in much better shape, still not good. And this will come out, and there's the eccentric shaft. And that's all that's left is to separate the middle iron from the rear housing, and we're completely apart. It's that simple. All these seals. See if we can clean this up at all. This housing is not good, but it's a lot better because there's a lot less moisture in this one. All right, I'm going to take a minute and clean everything up so that we can take a look at everything up close. Let's start at the front. Here is the front iron. These are where the intake and exhaust ports are. This is what gets ported. There's your middle iron, and there's quite a bit of corrosion. I don't know if this is something that people resurface. I don't know how bad it has to be before they're

quote unquote trash. I'm sure there's some experts that will chime in. I am certainly not an expert. I don't build these engines. There's the front rotor, super corroded. Really unfortunate this engine got stored this way. And moving on to the front rotor housing, definitely has a bunch of wear. Any of those grooves, any of this stuff leads to loss of compression, which is no good. Now, I don't see horrific damage like it swallowed something. I have seen that in the past, but the moisture really did a number. I might be able to wipe that away, but it doesn't matter. Those grooves in the center are pretty deep onto the center iron. You can definitely see there's kind of a water line there. It's really wish people wouldn't store stuff outside, but I can't really control that. Wasn't my brother. This has been in his garage for years. Not a ton of damage on this outside of the corrosion. Let's look at the other side. This side's much better. Still, still

some corrosion, also some damage there, and the rear housing looks better. Still not great. It's hard to say what the initial failure was before it got flooded because it's all pretty evenly worn to me. The rear rotor is a little bit better. It actually kicked out an apex seal. The springs still have some spring there. There's another apex seal. The side seals see how they bounce back. That's good. When they're stuck, that's bad. That's carbon or, in this case, rust pouring out. A little oil, it's fine, but I still don't think I would use any of this stuff. Maybe that. Maybe the irons might be salvageable. There's the rear iron. Here's the crank. I mean the cam. I mean the eccentric shaft. I'm only kidding, guys, but it is an eccentric shaft. This appears to be in pretty good shape. I don't see any major damage to this, although I don't really know that I've ever seen one of these have a major problem. And here's our oil pump gears. No major damage here. This was not

an engine I plan to tear down for this week's video. I just happened to be at my brother's house. I was picking up something with my truck, and I decided to grab it since we've been talking about it for the last several years, and he only lives 15 minutes away. It doesn't matter. I decided to put this in the front of the line because there are a whole shot full of engines here, and I just decided I wanted to do something way different than I normally do. There's no piston rings, none of that stuff, no blown head gaskets, cracked cylinder heads, but there will be more of that in the coming weeks. I know this was a short video, and I probably owe you guys some time. I'll make up for it in the next few weeks, but that's only because this engine was so bare. This engine was essentially a bare keg. I got to pretty much start on this halfway through. If this engine was fully loaded with all the accessories, this video would be a lot longer. Now what happened

to this thing. Why was it full of moisture? Well, I think it was stored outside, at least at some point before my brother got it. I know it's been in his garage since my brother's had a garage. That being said, I don't know what the actual condition was prior to the moisture because the rust and corrosion hides a lot, but you can definitely tell it wasn't perfect. It definitely was a tired engine. I can't even guess how many miles were on it because I've seen these engines bad at 30,000 miles, and I've also seen them last 115,000, 120,000 miles. And I know some of you have probably gotten them to last much longer than that. The problem with these engines really is that people treat them like every other car. And if you own one of these now, these cars are old enough where pretty much enthusiasts own them. And in that case, they can be pretty good for those people. Although my brother is an enthusiast, and he has a three-rotor.

Cosmo that blew up, that's a bad point. Regardless, this was pretty fun. I enjoy taking something like this apart because it is so different. I can't sell you any parts out of this; it belongs to my brother. But if you'd like to buy any parts out of anything I've torn down in the past, or if you need parts off of this RX8 or the other red RX8 that's here, you can go to importapart.com and check out our inventory. Been uploading our parts cars just about every single week. If you don't see what you're looking for, you can send out a part request form, which sends us an email of exactly what it is you're chasing. If you find what you like on our website and you add it to your cart, if you use the code IDOCARDS, you can save 10% off of anything that you can add to your cart. And yes, that is an RX7; that is my 1985 Mazda RX7 GS. I've had that car longer than I've

owned any other car in my life. I bought that car out of a building in South North City in 20 7, and it's not done yet. I'll get to it someday. I really hope you enjoyed this video. As always, I love all the comments, all the feedback, and even the criticism. I love it all, and I'll catch you on the next one.

ROTARY! Mazda Rx-8 13B Renesis JUNK Engine Teardown. Series 1 6-Port Disassembly. Is It All SCRAP?

Scripts