so, i got the motor apart yesterday, and there was a stuck apex seal... stuck as in it was hard to dig out, and there were at least 2 corner seal springs missing, but other than that the seals were ok... whatever caused this damaged my rotor, housing, and front iron....

 

Look carefully at that side of that rotor.

Something got sucked into the engine if all of the seals are intact.

 

Seen it before. The wire type corner spring worked its way out through the hole in the corner seal.

Were the rubber plugs missing? Probably a good idea to go with the later RX-8 or NF01 (20B/FD) type springs here.

They look like this.

 

yeah the plugs werent put back in when the PO rebuilt it. i plan on going with the later springs. i just didnt think that a lil piece of wire would cause a groove like that...

 

I've installed new plugs and found them to be missing upon teardown, on an extend ported (intake opening NOT advanced) 13B that saw 9000+rpm on occasion. So they may have been installed but just disappeared.

I don't bother with them anymore. That engine didn't seem to care that the plugs were missing.

I've also had problems with the FD style corner seal springs getting stuck in the Atkins style apex seals. I don't really have a solution for that one yet.

 

well they were gone lol... there werent any inside there...

and really? are they getting stuck inside the spring like the gap isnt wide enough? i may have to rethink my source lol

 

anyways, theres no way to have these "milled" down and be safe is there?

 

The place where the Mazda 2- and 3-piece seal has its angled junction is well inside the corner seal. The aftermarket seals with a long corner piece have the joint somewhat in the corner seal spring area.

It's not really a "problem" (hell, there's thousands of engines out there with this kind of seal and FD corner springs...) but it's not something I really like, you know?

 

well, thats understandable lol.. but after this im definitely going with the FD corner springs haha