Thread: Engine destruction caused by bearing failure.

This is copied over from the rx8OC so the names might not make sense but still this is what I found on my latest teardown . BTW engine had 53K on it and died while the owner was driving it.

Ok so many know I recently purchased Waveydavey's RX8 which was thought to have a dead rear stationary gear. When it arrived I turned the engine over for about 2 seconds and quickly realised it was a bit more than that. Well I finished stripping the engine today and this is what I found.

The first indication something big had gone wrong was when I looked in the oil pan and found chunks of copper. All that glaze is copper.



Its in the front cover as well


When I took the rear cover off I thought I found the problem. The bearing is junk but the gear does not look too bad.

These bits sound be in the bearing not round the e-shaft.


I gave a quick looks and thought it does not look to bad.


O but wait no its not, I then got the the front bearing.

It has slipped and cut the bearing in two. The whole stationary gear is junk.


O and this is what its done to the e-shaft.

Yep that's junk as well.


So what I thought was all the damage, how wrong I was.


Just for fun I tried to remove the bearing from them, the rear came out fine and the gear looks fine, the front did not, the bearing just folded over itself and my 12ton press could not get it out.



I then looked at the side housings, the rear and rear side of the intermediate were fine but the front side O dear.
I struggled to catch them on camera but here we go.
Where the bits of bearing have been dragged round.



And more


O but wait there is more, the front rotor has scoring as well.



The front rotor may be reusable in a test or development engine if all the groves have not been damaged, the rear looks fine.
The rotor bearings are junk as well, you can see all the copper soaked oil.

Cleaned you can see the damage.


Copper covered.

and again bearing is junk.


So in summary, all bearings are junk, one stationary gear is junk and one is questionable. The E-shaft is junk, 2 side housings are junk at the moment but I might have a practice with them and hand lap, then use them in a dev engine. One rotor could be junk but not sure yet. What's worse is I am going to have to drain all the oil out the oil coolers and flush the system through to make sure there is no more copper when the new engine goes in. Glad I brought Keljon's spare engine, now just need to get it.

I never witnessed ANYTHING close to that on a renny.

The owner was bringing this over to mine when it gave up, apparently it had been misfiring badly for about 50 miles! Obviously it wouldn't start and there wasn't anything I could do for it at home so he got it recovered home. RAC mistakenly diagnosed that the Eccentric Shaft Position Sensor was dead. The previous owner left it with a mechanic, who was not a rotary expert and tried to start it, flooding it very badly. A few weeks later me and another RX8OC member went over to the previous owner's house with the intention of compression testing it to see if it was dead.

After clearing the immensely flooded motor we ended up tow starting it and it ran very badly. There was oil starting to leak between the rear iron and the bell-housing so we thought it was rear bearing failure and broke the bad news to the previous owner. Little did we know just how badly ruined it was. It's amazing that it even turned over!

Rotary engines, 60% of the time they run 100% of the time
That engine is pure junk now btw.

Indeed except unbelievably the rotor housing escaped totally untouched and look almost new, One rotor is defiantly usable after a new bearing and the other I am not sure about. The side housings I use a practice for my evil plans Eshaft, both stationary gears and oil pump is all junk with no use atm.

Lmk if you need any good spares! I have 2 housings, all sideplates and an eshaft in perfect conditions that i have no use for atm

Ouch. That is some damage. Any history on the service of this motor? The oil coolers are definitely going to need a good flushing for sure.

Not sure about from new but a guy from the RX8 Owners club in the UK bought it about 6 months and 6,000 miles ago. It's got about 55k on it and the car itself looked very nice and clean and tidy, drove well up until it developed a misfire and threw up a CEL. See my post above for the rest of the story!

Some pictures of my old engine:

http://rx7.cz/gallery/?Qwd=./Fabrizio&Qiv=thumbs&Qis=M

MAO, was that engine well maintained? Was it run without oil?