I just opened up a 13B (S4) that a guy sold to me cause it had leaking water seals. I took the rear cover off, anticipating that the bad seals were right there cause as I turned the crank pulley and looked in the exhaust port at the rotors, I could see antifreeze on the rear rotor. Anyway, I took the rear cover off, and the seals were dislogded. My question is about the corner seals. 2 of the 3 corner seal plugs are missing from the side of the rotor that faces the rear cover. What effect will that have on the engine if it was driven like that? Has anyone ever taken apart an engine and not had corner seal plugs? I know they are cheap to replace, but I was curious if it is normal to find an engine like this. Do the burn away or something? It only has 59,000 miles on it and nothing else seems to be wrong so far.

 

happens all the time man, I ve yet to take a rotary apart that had them all..

 

just to clarify ... we are talking about corner seal plugs, right? i mean, yeah, i saw the title, but then you also mentioned the engine having "seals dislodged" and that a whole different crate of apples. if we are talking about the plugs (they look like little, rubber "pac-man-thingies" ) then, i know several guys that built engines and chose to omit them from the buildup ... they are not ABSOLUTELY necessary for engine function. i believe all they do is help smoothen the idle. just don't ask me how they do it ...

hope this helps

 

Yeah, the pac man things. (Nice analogy) I noticed that a couple were missing. The seals that were dislodged were the water seals. I'm going to replace all the water seals cause it was making white smoke when it ran.

 

Really the only purpose of them in my view is keeping combustion gases from getting under the seals and springs. I don't use them in my engines and I do note more carbon build up, but doesn't cause bad things to happen unless you prolong your idling. Carbon self-removes in engines that see a lot of WOT. They probably do help with keeping gases in there respective chambers better also.

 

My Quasi-Evil Engine ('83 engine, allegedly 60k mi) had all of the plugs present and accounted for when I tore it down the first time.

23k later, every single one of 'em was gone.

Some engine builders on this forum have mentioned that they don't bother putting them in when they build an engine. The plug style corner seals are superior, but the rubber plugs aren't that necessary...

 

Cool, thanks. I thought they were to help seat the apex seals or something. I'll probably put them in just cause they are $1.50 each and I only need two.