[Jims5543]

Many years ago I was building a no expense spared engine for my RX7.

My goal was 500 to the wheels in a 2600 lbs car.

We knew we were going to have to do a very aggressive porting job on the engine, we debated templates and chose what was called an aggressive street port. It was the limit you could push on a street driven car.

I owned another RX7 that had 500RWHP and the port job on that was so over the top it had no power down low you have to rev the piss out of it (over 5K RPM) to make it move but man, it moved!!

My goal was to make a more street friendly version of that car. I spend years researching turbo's stand alones, injectors fuel delivery etc..

So I told you all that to tell you this.

When it came time to port the engine, we knew we were going to cut into the water jackets near the intake ports. The solution online was JB weld.

We refused to accept that, JB weld is duct tape in a tube.

I purchased some very expensive epoxy to try, I think I spent over $150 for a small can of it. We tested it alongside some other brands we purchased along with some good old JB Weld.

We put them all on a piece of metal similar to my engine internals then put them in boiling water with gas and oil in it to re-create the environment the epoxy would be forced to live in.

Everything failed except the JB. Still unconvinced even though I just saw with my own eyes the result I tracked down two of the best Rotary engine builders in the business. Both use JB Weld.

So we used it. 14 years later and about 30K miles later many track days Autocrosses and wild mountain runs with some Pelicans in their 911's, it is still holding up.

I am sad to report I did not achieve my 500RWHP goal the best we could get was 490. If any of you are familiar with rotary engine tuning, you hit a point where you say, "OK That's good I am not interested in pushing further"

JB Weld is amazing.