Im rebuilding an engine out of an s4. The car has about 200k on the chassis but this is it’s second engine (not sure on the engine miles but im guessing pretty high). Ive got everything apart and I'm replacing all of the hard seals. Im reusing the rotors but i cant seem to get the side seals out. They're stuck with carbon flush in the rotor. I don’t care about breaking the side seals because I have new ones but i need to not damage the rotors. Any advice helps.

additionally im new here and new to rotaries in general.

 

My side seals were insanely stuck as well, what worked for me, first thing try an ATF soak for a while and clean the rest of the rotor and remove apex seals and corner seals in process. Eventually after a while soaking, freeze it in the freezer, take it out and take a pick and pry up under the end of the corner seal, be careful of using the edge of the corner seal holes as a prying surface, you can beat things up that way (trust me I know), once you break the tip off each end, pry under the spring and bring it to the surface on each end, grab one end with pliers and hold it, while grabbing the other end with pliers and put the round edge of the pliers on the rotor, pulling up on the spring to break chips off of the end of the side seal, worked for me for most of my rotor, now all I have is little parts of side seals in the center of the groove to remove

 

Thanks for your response. Haven’t tried atf yet
(edit): I work at a shop and my boss let me take home 5 gallons of atf for free

 

yea it seems like the best thing to start off with, of course in my infinite wisdom I didnt do it first thinking they weren't gonna be that stuck.

 

I soaked one in laundry detergent ant that freed them up enough to break out. Ive got the front rotors soaking in atf right now so well see

 

ill have to try that and see how it works on mine they're really stuck.

 

atf worked like a dream

 

I know you got your seals out but I guess ill just say what worked for me in the end, I ended up using the method in this thread https://www.rx7club.com/2nd-generati...rotor-1006709/ but at first it still did nothing but leave a couple marks on my rotor, so I took an oxy acetylene torch on low (don't have propane or map gas) and heated it until the atf in the oil control ring grooves began to bubble, then it worked like a charm. They were actually so stuck that when they came out the carbon underneath was still dry after days soaking in ATF.

 

Yeah I used that method as well. Fortunately I didn’t have to use my mapp torch very much.