Apex Seal Go Bye Bye!
 

Well, I was on my way to work this morning driving my SA. Just a typical morning like every day. Got up at 4:45 am to get ready for work. Went out and fired up the SA at 5:15 am. Let her warm up a little like I always do before I head out. Left for work at 5:30. I got about halway to work when the engine started lumping like a dead miss. No warnings, just started shaking. 5:45 am, turned around and headed back home limping. I pulled in the driveway at almost 6:00 am. I knew what had happened. So I said "screw it", and started pulling the engine. I wasn't going to make to work on time anyway, so the engine was coming out TODAY. I finished about 7:45 am. Not too bad. About 1 1/2 hours from running hot engine, to out sitting on the lift. Well damn. Turned the engine over while looking in the exhaust ports, and guess what? Just as I thought. There was an Apex seal out off the rear rotor. Looks like it gouged thinks up pretty good on it's swift exit. I decided to take a couple pics, so with that being said.........

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...BlownApex5.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...BlownApex3.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...BlownApex4.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...BlownApex2.jpg

And of course the "missing" Apex seal.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...BlownApex1.jpg


You got a hate it when that happens.........:wallbash:

That sucks, Sam. :( I have a spare rotor from my old SA that you could have, but it is a front one. :( I lost the rear apex on my old SA too. Pretty sure I have a spare 12A housing too, but I think that it has too much chrome flake to be worth using.

Thanks Kent. It sucks the big one, but I brought her back from the dead once before, and I will again. I can't bitch too much. I paid $150 for the engine and trans, and I put almost 10k miles and almost 9 months on her. I guess I'll try to hit Stu up on one of those many 12As he has lying around (hint hint) :D. We can rebuild her.......We can make her stronger......Faster........

A blown apex seal could not have happened in better hands. Nice recovery Sam!

WTF that blows but like yah said you got yah monies worth from her

I just hate that I have using her for my DD to work. I guess I'll have to blow the dust off the Beemer and drive her till I get a new organ for the SA. I loved the early morning romps to work. I usually pass the same clown almost every day in his widebody Eclipse. He stopped me at work one day and asked if that 280 had a straight six in it. I laughed when I told him that his Eclipse had been getting its doors blown off every day by a 1.1L Rotary :D. He didn't seem very amused.......

how manny KM or miles on it? a NA engine should last a very long time.

I pulled this engine from a cancer patient almost a year ago. I don't have a clue on how many miles were on it. I do know that the engine did not run for almot 4 years before I got it. I have beat on this engine for alomst 9 months. I'm not complaining.

sam if yah wanna pick up those housings let me know. you can have them for cost man!

Thanks Ben. I'm going to try and con Stu out of one of those 12As he has. Two we know were running when pulled. One had a coolant leak, and the other was leaking oil. I would like to build a big street port, or a hlaf bridge, but I just want to get her back on the road for now. I was wanting to wait till this coming winter to build a bad ass N/A for the SA just to see how she would hold up to the Turbo FB. We'll see how this week goes, then I'll decide.

Why did your apex seal let go? Do you often rev high? What kind of oil do you use? Do you premix or OMP? Do you have a trick ignition system?

etc.

I'm trying to understand what leads to apex seal failure in a NA engine. Especially since I've owned several rotaries and never lost an apex seal.

I have been driving this car pretty hard since I put her on the road. I think she was just worn out. I was hoping that the engine would have lasted till this winter, but O'well. I will be tearing this one down to see whats salvagable. I didn't have any warnings whatsoever that it was going to let go. It was just like flipping a switch when it went. No clue. Car was running just fine, then started missing.

Same with my SA, bliffle. Everything was stock. Just going along not driving hard or anything. Power dropped big time all of a sudden and started running poorly. For a minute, I thought that I had just ran out of gas. I coasted into a gas station, refilled..still bad. Checked for sparked, disconnected wires/hoses, but everything else was okay. Typically the apex seals just wear well beyond their limit until they reach a point where they are simply too thin and either fall out, break, or crack. For some reason, the rear rotor likes to go 1st. Some blame the shutter valve, but my car didn't have one.

Even though I was running on half of an engine, I could still drive fine (no power at all, though). No smoke or anything..idle was rough..but you could drive it. It would top out at like 55 mph and would take a long time to even get up to that speed. But I would like to see a piston engine be drivable if it lost half of its pistons/rods.. :D

Yeah, got your message :) Let me know when you have any free time, can run up ther and help ya install it. Only thing I know is we gotta swap some engine parts around between the two.

Call you in a few

Shit you will be back on the road buy dinner time sam. Must be nice to have killer local support.:icon_tup:

The support you get is directly proportionate to the support you give. Help others out in need when you can and with what you've got, then it's money in the bank when you need it. The help just comes your way. Drive past a broken down motorist and laugh, you'll be stuck on the side of the road one day too.

That totally negates the fact that i am the only real 7 owner in my area out side of some stupid ricer kids who just know turbo and sticker power. I have helped many a person out for free when i can!

It must be nice to have such a great group of guys to form such a tight community of people that will help each other out. Its hard when you're all alone and the only help you get is from people that are thousands of miles away.

Sam has always helped me when i need it and i will always help him in anyway i can!

You can't beat the SE region for it's RX-7 generosity! Sam I hope you end up with the engine that came out of the Tan One, my 84 GSL (the one with the O ring oil leak). That was always a strong engine and it should be fine inside.

He is on his way over now. The engine I have left did not have the front cover leak. Any idea what car that came out of? I am going to go back through my PMs.

Here we go, old PM:

Hi Stu, glad there were no more misadventures, those engine look great in you trunk.

You can tell which one has the oil leak (the engine that came from the tan 84 GSL) because someone tried to use epoxy or PC weld to seal the leak from the outside, a repair that was done before I got the car and discovered only after I started cleaning up the engine. This "repair" seems to have worked pretty well actually, as I mentioned I drove the tan car for about 50,000 miles, controlling the oil leak very effectively by adding an oil sealer with each oil change and using 20-50W castrol. Although it has the oil leak, I've always felt that this engine is a good bet for a rebuild because I know it's entire history and it was never abused. This engine was running fine when I parked the car when it developed carb problems (flooding).

I'm less sure about the other engine, which came from the brown 85 GSL. When I bought the car it had about 110.000 miles on it. I added about another 60,000 miles or so, so it could have 170,000 miles on it. Or else it might have been a rebuild, with probably about half that many miles. I have no idea of how it was treated by previous owners, but the brown car was completely stock, even had the cats, and there was no evidence of hot rodding. In any event the brown engine always ran fine, never had an oil leak or problem with it, and it was my daily driver, when it got retired because of an encounter with a Buick about two years ago.

Both engines were stored with ATF or mystery oil soaking the chambers and protected from the weather.

Let me know how it goes. How's the hand?



---------------

Looks like the brown GSL one :D

Sucks about the seal, but this may be a record for blown engine to rebuilt time. 90 minutes to pull it solo? Nice.

Damn Sam, it always sucks to lose an apex. Good thing you've got another car, and that it's not your first engine swap.

Like you were saying, rebuild it stronger, faster, better ;)

Jon

I'm trying to understand why apex seals go out. Of course they could just wear away, but many reports just make that unlikely in most of the cases I've read about.

I believe that you can postpone seal wearout for a long time by using a good premix, as the ordinary sump oil may be inadequate (altho it may be OK for 100k, the usual design mileage).

I believe you can avoid a Forced Rupture of the seal by avoiding excessively high overrevving, since new modes of vibration are excited by high revs. Also, high revs and high oil viscosity may combine to cause cavitation and lube breakdown so I use 10w30 synthetic sump oil and am switching to 0w30.

I'm trying to decide which 2 of my 3 FBs to keep, and my original thought was to sell the 85GSL (80k) because it's such a sweetheart (even has the new car smell still) I though I could get a decent price, but no luck. Thought I'd keep the SE but it has 175k so maybe I should sell it. then I'd drive the 83GS and keep the 85GSL in reserve for the day that the 83 gives out.

I'm not at all convinced that apex seal failure is inevitable, except with a very large number of miles and wear. Most of these cars never get a chance to go extended miles before they are abused and neglected into failure.

number one failure i believe is neglect. But since most of us are still using the original power plant we have no control of what happened before are cars landed in hand of rotor head's Once we get a hold of them and they are propally taken care of few problems arise. If you took a poll on people who have rebuilt or reman motors how long they last i bet its substantially higher than the stocker's.

I like to rebuild every engine I get so I know what's in it and can replace anything that's worn while I'm in there. I've never broken an apex seal so my aproach must be working. :)

sam if you need any help let me know, u know im not too far, but if ya need anything just let me know

I bought my Misty Blue 83 new and I'm the only one who's driven it. With 130k the engine idles without a whimper and it shows full power when needed. It's just like new, except that the shutter valve malfunctioned so I put a cork in it's air feed in the air filter box.. Oh, I replaced the transmission with an SE transmission to get the tall 5th gear and get rid of a bearing whine. it's my keeper. I figure it should go to 300k, which is probably longer than me!

I adopted the 85GSL with 49k on the meter and I suspect that it was driven seldom and treated well, but rather neglected. I've put another 35k on it without abuse or neglect, and I did deferred maintenance, brakes, shocks, etc.

My SE had 135k when I adopted it and it looked and ran terrible, poor thing. I just cleaned out all the old fluids and replaced with good stuff and replaced the sun-faded interior and repainted it. 35k later it runs like a jack rabbit, idles smoothly, never floods, and looks pretty darn good. I suspect that it was neglected a lot before I got it. But it may have had a good owner somewhere along the line, but I can't bet on anything.

I don't expect to have Apex seal problems with any of them, but I sometimes worry about that SE. But I hate to sell an SE just because I'm worried the apex seal MAY go at some indefinite time.

And if I lose a seal I am NOT going to overhaul it because I really don't want to overhaul an engine at this time of my life (after all, I've got spare RX-7s!) and any purchased overhaul/R&R is expensive and I don't know a good mechanic. I just want to drive my cars at this point.

That's funny.

Sam and Stu, that engine from the brown one was running fine when pulled and it has NO oil or water leaks. If you want you might just have a plug and go there, you guys could have it in his car and running by midnight.

Then take your time building a real race engine with the cores!

I love you Ray.......Well, not really.......But you guys are my heroes. Most people that know me personally, know that I'll try to help anyone I can. That's probably why everyone loves me :D. I retrieved the engine from Stu about 1:30 pm today. He had to run back home to get his flywheel tool. We need to swap flywheels between the engines. The engine from Ray looks pretty good, but the clutch is toast. I have a dang near new clutch on the other engine, but its a 215mm. The engine from Ray is 225 mm. No local parts places has a 225 mm in stock. The plan is to have the SA back running before midnight. I already have everything swapped over from the old engine. Just waiting on Stu to get back with the flywheel tool and were golden!

You can use a 215mm disc on a 225mm flywheel. There is just a 5mm gap around the outside. It's not ideal but far better than using the wrong flywheel for the rotating assembly, as you know.

hey sam,

you think maybe us reving the carp out of that thing and doing donuts in my back yard could have anything to do with this??? Sorry to hear about your loss but hey at least it did not happen in the turbo car. if you need help let me know, im extremely busy at work right now but give it a shot if you need a hand. Good luck

later
robby

Am I the only one here to conclude that overrevving a rotary will lead to apex seal failure?

This is the second report I've read in the last ten minutes that says a seal failed after repeated overreving.

he almost has it in and running i just talked to him :) DONT FLOG THE PISS OUT OF THIS ONE!

Damn hot rodders. Here's Stu headed out the parking lot:


https://i32.tinypic.com/263wyls.jpg

Crazy ass cats man craaaaazy

what side skirts are on your SA?

any suggestions with were to get a speed steering kit??

hells yeah, i'm glad to know of other people within reasonable driving distance in north carolina that work on rotaries, most of the guys around here that own 7s with the exception of two pretty cool guys just own 7s for the hell of it and know nothing about it... so there's really not that much help :P

where did stu do that one-tire fire? i wanted to do one at the OGTA meet, but i didnt want to be too wild for you old fellas.

Yeah, why is there only one tire burning????? Is your rear end busted? lol Mine ALWAYS fries both tires!!! I suppose my engine is the next to go! lol I don't have one other rotor head local to me up here to help me out.......... :( No fellow 7 owner to wake all the neighbors up in the middle of the night....... :)

Its the one wheel peel :D

Oh and I run a worn out drum rear end. I have a GSL rear in the garage, just lazy to get it together.

We ended up working on it for the rest of the day and some night. I left about 1am, and the car was buttoned up nicely. Could not get it to start from the MMO and whatnot in the chambers.

No, it's just obvious. The higher you rev the more stress and wear are placed on the seals. Not to mention the fact the seals start to chatter above 7400rpm. It's even worse on an old engine that may have worn apex seals and excessive clearance between the seal and rotor.

Stu. Thanks for the help man. I still couldn't get her to fire off after you left. The plugs are still getting soaked from all the MMO and ATF that the engine had been soaking in for God knows how long. The engine sounds like it has great compression, but MMO and ATF doesn't burn straight out the bottle. I know Ray had good intentions soaking the engine to keep it from seazing. The engine will just have to be cleared out which will take time. I know it will fire once the MMO, ATF/ fuel ratio gets more to the air/ fuel ratio. As fas as the old engine goes, I took a chance on it. I honestly didn't expect it to last as long as it did. Some of you guys think that these engines will last forever. I don't think any 20+ year old engine that has been beaten and abused will last. Even the mighty Rotary :D.

You've got to get that spark back Sam. You might want to chase the MMo/ATF with some Sea Foam.

And Then!:

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/h...th_May3073.jpg

I hear ya Ray. I'll break bad with some Ether later. That SeaFoam doesn't burn straight out the bottle either. At some piont I have to get the engine "dry" inside. Then she should "bust off".

take the exhaust off sam and crank that bitch

We had the spark plugs out and spun the motor over that way for around an hour, after we tried to crank her over with the plugs in. The whole steering linkage and inside fender was covered!

So the drum rear ends were not possitraction then??? :)