http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/mazda/

 Mark Suspinski

 Nothing new there. I saw it at the 2005 Tokyo Motor show.

 How's the Tracy EFI p-port engine coming?

 Paul Lamar



What's new in the above is that they delivered it to a customer.


So we bought a vacuum pump and pulled down a vacuum in the water jacket.  No
sooner had we started the vaccuum pump, than coolant started pouring down
the line and into the pump - lickety split.  After much nashing of teeth, we
drained all the oil out of the pump and filled it with clean oil.  We also
tried blowing the coolant out of the block by pressurising from the other
end of the block -- not a drop.  We lifted and dropped the tail.  Not a
drop.  We hooked up the vaccuum pump, and immediately started drawing
coolant into the pump again.  Once more from the beginning, draining the
contaminated oil out of the pump, and trying again to find where the coolant
might be & drain it.  Again, we could not get coolant to come out.  Again,
we hooked up the pump, and again sucked large quantities of coolant into the
pump.

After 7 or 8 go-rounds, we stopped getting coolant out every time we pulled
a vaccuum.  We pumped the water jacket down to an indicated vacuum of 24"
hg.  I used a mechanics stethascope and listened all around the leaking
PPort.  After quite a while, I found the tiniest of hisses at the 7-o'clock
position.  We prepped the area and mixed up some proseal, thinning it to the
consistency of motor oil.  We applied it all around the PPort, focusing on
the 7 o'clock position.  We did not see any visible sign of anything getting
sucked in.  We finished by applying some thicker proseal all around the
PPort and left it to sit for 20 minutes with the pump still going.  After 20
minutes, we disconnected the pump and left it to cure.

We'll be going out tomorrow to see if it did any good.  We'll pull a vacuum
again and see if the hissing is still there (can't imagine it will be).  The
real test will be when we run the engine again.  After a few cycles of heat
soaking it and letting it cool, (as well as pressurizing the water jacket)
we shall see if the leak returns.

I would have felt better about it if I'd seen a little puckering at the
7'oclock position to indicate something had gotten sucked in.  But perhaps
that is not to be expected -- what leak there was had to be very small
indeed to make such a tiny hiss under that much vacuum.

Mark  (Rocky mtn high)


I assumed you knew where the coolant drain was on the block :)
The good news is you were able to pull 24".

Paul Lamar