Hey guys -

Long time no see . So I'm getting back going full-bore on the RX-7...some back story first!

Bought the car in October 2004 with about 68,000 miles. It had a Mazda reman in it when I bought it that had just been installed - guy I bought it from bought it cheap with a blown engine, put in the reman, and made a few bucks flipping it. He did a great job and car was in top shape. I started upgrading things and got a little greedy power-wise and popped that engine due to me being dumb .

So in June 2005 or so I started at a new job and had to drive my car to go on service calls - yes, I was actually driving all over town doing calls in my FD. It did great, was my daily and did fine until as stated I blew the motor. That was around May 2007, not sure of the mileage but I THINK I was still under 100k at that time. I know I was racking up some mileage for sure. I'm guessing 90k or so.

Did a pretty stock rebuild, no porting, all stock internals, etc. Got it up and going good and have never had issues with that engine. Shortly after that I bought my first daily driver and at that point the FD became a weekend fun car. 2010 was the first year I went to Deal's Gap Rotary Rally and it's been every year but 3 since - one year there was no rally due to COVID and 2 years I went in my RX-8.

So....2023 I took it to DGRR, had a great time. After I got home I went for a drive and heard the tell-tale whine of a bad turbo. Pulled the intakes off and the primary turbo had obviously eaten something, banged up compressor blades. At that point (around May 2023) it really just got parked. I'm also planning on repainting the car myself, bought paint gun, paint, etc. and just lost motivation.

In the mean time I also got into being a Turo host - we are renting out my wife's Honda Odyssey and I bought a second Honda Odyssey just for Turo. With me working at home now and us living 2 miles from the Pensacola airport it has worked out great and been a great money maker. That has eaten up a lot of my time and attention away from the FD for sure.

So....shortly after I diagnosed the bad turbo I decided to go ahead and go single turbo with a Turblown 8374 kit. I drove @estevan62274 's car with that turbo and was AMAZED at the response and the power it made. Ordered it June 2023 and received it March 2024 so about 9 months waiting for it. After the kit sat in my garage a while I decided to finally get moving on the process - sent the downpipe off to get Jet-Hot coated, got a spare lower intake manifold ceramic coated by them at the same time (both look amazing) and that took a few months to get done.

Yesterday was FINALLY the day to get things started. Got some friends over, pulled the engine, and broke it all down. Odometer on the car is now 141,399. I drove it about 3 weeks ago to make sure everything was generally OK with the car and it ran great. The bearings in my Pineapple idler pulley died and it squealed something crazy on first start. But it's good to know it's all running properly as a baseline before breaking it all down.

So...what did everything look like after around 50.000 miles and 17 years? Amazing. Bearings have just the tiniest bit of copper showing, side seals were all free moving and still felt tight and great, water passages were clean and in great shape, just everything looks perfect. The car ran about 12psi of boost for most of that time with a jump to 14psi within the last few years. Every time the car went out there were full throttle runs so it was run hard. Goes to show a good tune can go a long way.

Few pictures.....

 

Big question I have right now is I would like to do some level of a street port on the engine but I don't want to compromise too much low end. Any thoughts or recommendations?

Dale

 

Good luck with your project Dale.
i have personally went with just ported exhaust and kept the intake stock so i wouldnt compromise the low end. Car is extremely responsive drives and idles like a stock fd (if not better) and i am very pleased with the outcome. I highly recommend it

 

I will concede I feel like I'm over-ported. To do it over, I'd go back to a mild intake port (smooth idle under 1k), and I wouldn't touch the rotors other than to balance the rotating assembly.

 

Good luck with the build Dale! Glad to see you diving back into it. On the porting, IDK, I guess it depends mostly on what your priorities are. My FD is running stock 13B-REW intake & exhaust ports, Cosmo LIM/UIM, GM 90mm DBW throttle and a BW SXE364.5, 1.0 A/R turbine housing, so that should be similar to your EFR 8374 (i.e., similar sized compressor & turbine wheels, etc). Once I got the DBW tuning done, it idles great, has fast & responsive spool up and a wide power band right up to redline. Top end would likely be better if it were ported, but it's fine for my needs as-is. On my S5T2 FC, I did a pretty large street port on the intake & exhaust when I built it, and it's running a BNR stage 3 turbo for the S5T2. Getting a nice idle on that thing was a challenge - just has to idle a little higher than stock, but the porting really opened up the top end.

 

Good stuff Dale… when you drove my car it was stock ported @15.5 psi.
I’d say keep it Stockport and do a little clean up on them.
My current setup is a large street port and I actually prefer the stock port over this one for a semi-daily driver.
Also I highly recommend porting the wastegate.
Tito’s car,(brand new, stock port EFR 8374iwg) would overboost to 20psi that’s not good for 93 pump.
So port the wastegate now before you install it… good Sir!!

Steve

 

I also have the ported exhaust and stock intake and my engine has a fat power band. Starts and idles fine.

Glad to see you getting back to your car. Side hustles are great, Uber paid for my engine and turbo kit..lol.

What are you doing for fuel injectors?

Xaiver recommended me 550 pri and 1700 sec for better transition and tunning.