A few words of encouragement toward purchasing a used rotary engine.

This past weekend I went to look in a local Pick-Your-Part self serve auto
wrecker for a rotary engine. Every couple months PYP has a 4 day 1/2 off
sale, and this was the time. About 15 years ago I would see maybe 30 early
rx7 sitting in there, usually undamaged. Not so today. There were two rx7
this past weekend, an 85 with a 12a, and an 89 13b.
Both cars had been in there perhaps 3 weeks, without any major parts
removed. I was hoping to find an 84-85 rx7 13b because I wanted the rotor
housings for my rx8 engine, as this year has the seal grooves on the
housings like the rx8. I settled for the 89, and after 2.5 hours had the
engine sitting on the ground under the car. Being it was, the end of the
day, I left it for the next morning when I returned to strip it down to the
bare block. After loading it on my two wheel hand truk, I took it to the
payment window where they sold it to me as a "short block" because they
could see there were no heads:)

The cost of the engine was $60 plus $35 core charge and tax.

The engine turned over easily by hand with the flexplate. Back at the
garage, I did compression tests:
bump test: 105 psi front and rear.
thumb test top plug holes: no uneven pulses
static compression: 115psi front and rear.

The 89-91 engines use 9.7 compression ratio.
I tested my 04 rx8 engine and the results were identical.

I brought PYP some dead subaru engine remains to get my core charge back.

Ed Carver

Heck stick it in the airplane and fly it :)
Not worth over hauling. It won't get any better than that.

Paul Lamar


I know, but I have to P port it first. The money I made from selling the
parts off of the rx8 engine paid for this engine too. I will just need to
get the big O-rings; and just why are those things so expensive?

I'm going to line up the 6 rotor housings I now have on the table and drill
the P ports in them.

I rarely walk into Pick Your Part without seeing an rx or two. I was just
never aware how valuable the rotors and housings are on these things.
Otherwise, I would have made a living out of it.

Ed Carver

I got a perfectly good, free turbo rotary RX7 car, from a guy trying to get a cracked
rubber intake manifold elbow diagnosed and fixed for a year or so. I paid him $300
to keep the car and took just the engine. When I took the top of the manifold parts
off the crack became highly visible and obviously that was the problem.

The problem is; most mechanics are scared of it. Especially outside the urban areas.
This was prior to wide spread use of google. Of course I am not sure
the guy would know about goggle even now.

Get the O-rings from Creavey. They are cheaper and better than stock.
http://www.rotaryeng.net/O-ring-size2.html
http://www.creavey.com/

Paul Lamar