Well, this is an Atkins rebuild that is about two years old and it has about 20000 miles. I blew an apex seal in the rear rotor late Sunday Night.

Well, here are the pictures.

My first question is ... how do you know to align the CAS gear...this is how it was when I pulled the front cover. The FSM said the Camfered side towards the engine....camfered?


Here is the stuff in the front cover. It seems like there is a spacer missing in the order of things? There was still a spacer in the engine my finger is point to.


There is what is left of my rear rotor apex seal.


Here is the rotor tip it came out of. Not nearly as bad as I thought. IE...maybe the rotor is still good?



Here is the porting job that Atkins did. I asked for a streetport. Is that what I got?
Front housing secondaries:

Intermediate housings primaries:


The other thing that concerened me was blueing on the E-Shaft. Is that a concern?


And one last picture of my shop


All in all it wasn't that bad. I thought the housing would be chewed up bad. It really dosen't mater because I am going with new housings anyway.

James

 

DOH! It is a 91 TII.

 

Those gouges on the rotor.... I thought Atkins seals did not do damage if they blow? Otherwise, looks suspicious and maybe Atkins re-used that rotor for the rebuild.

Primaries definitely ported. Secondaries look mild...

 

How did that front bearing look just out of curiosity. Sucks on the seal/rotor btw. Time to go half bridge & 3mm

EDIT: btw, everytime i look at the avatar i start lol

 

I will have to snap some pics of the bearings.

I am so new to this. I have been rotary since '98 and pulled two engines. But never done a rebuild.

From what I heard about bearings if you see brass that is a big problem. They all look silver in color. But I will snap pics of them tomorrow.

James

 

If its all silver and no deep gouging/scratches, its all good. The bearings in my TII engine were showing all the copper.

 

Here is a shot of the corner seals...looks like it came with 3rd gen springs.

 

Any ideas why it blew? 20,000 miles isn't very much, were you detonating or something?

 

While i drove i did sometimes have knocks....completly random too. Never consistent. If I was to ponder I would say that tmic was doing no good.

That is why I had the Greddy FMIC kit going in this week...oh well.

I have no idea. It seems like the apex seal didnt let go because of knock. It just....let go.

When I first dynoed the car after break in it did like 208hp at 139 ft lbs of torque at 9psi.

The low torque always confused me.

All in all...I have no idea why it blew. But i am doing this again.

Going Haltech after this engine. Enough of the stock system.

James

 

Oh, the last run down the strip was at 13.72 running about 13-14psi. At that was with ice cold soaking the TMIC for about 15 minutes.

James

 

Was thinking the same dDuB, you would think they could do a better rebuild... And I also thought the seals were made to do no damage when they blew...

 

Hmm, just let go. That's weird.

 

When it let go I was running at 7600rpm at 12psi. No cermony it just let go within a blink of an eye. I knew instantly what happened. She was absoulutly blown. Would not even start back up.

And on the way out...the seals nicked my turbine wheel in a few spots. Hope BNR doesnt kill me on a new/used wheel. Or, they can even rebuild her! Gotta call monday.

Also, before it let go...bout 2 months piror. It was running about 90psi in the front and 89 psi in the back.

James

 

Any seal would do damage I'd think. I don't see how they could make a seal to NOT do damage, I mean it's metal and when your engine is spinning and whatever rpm it's gonna get caught on the rotor and drug across the iron or housing. Doesn't seem like you can avoid damage too easily.

 

ask pete at info@fc3racing.com any questions you have and he should be able to help you out quite a bit.

 

Huh... That's kind of low for such low mileage. Did they use low mileage or new housings? I'm still really surprised it chucked a seal only after 20k miles, and especially with that low of compression.

 

Sorry to hear that, and you say you had pinging at random times, thats not good and could easily be the reason for your motor letting go on that occasion, it was just slowly dying maybe.

Seems a bit dodgy to me if those seals you are supposed to have dont do damage which it clearly did... maybe you got ripped for the rebuild?

Good luck with getting it back on the road though!

 

I dont know what kinda housings they used in the build. On the bottom of the rotor housings there are compression numbers written in bar and at the rpm. I can't remember specfic numbers but they were all between 9.3-10.3. So, according to those numbers it had good compression when it left there. I am going to use new housings in my rebuild though.

I am not \mad at Aktins or looking to scare people away from them. There are just to many variables on why my engine let go. Most prob. lying in my engine bay.

 

well thats cool you are being cool about it and understand at those boost levels the tmic is no longer efficient and is probably the reason for the blown engine and pinging. Anyways did you say you where going to do your own rebuild or are you getting someone else to do it???

 

The plan is to do it my self using RA seals and new rotor housings.

Haltech e6x /greddy fmic/bnr 3 turbo

That is the way it stands now.

Man is is gonna be $$

James

 

yep alot of cash but when it's done it will be a beast! I want a bnr stage III like no other but I don't have the funds for that now. Good luck man.

 

Yay! Rebuilding yourself is good, and RA seals rule. That's what I put in my engine when I built them, so far so good. I've heard a lot of good things about detonating with RA seals too, they're pretty hard to break.

I wish I could've afforded brand new rotor housings, one day

 

To the person that said atkins seals dont damage when they let go,.. how could bits of iron circulating thru the rotor/ housing NOT damage anything? use common sense.

Other then that everything looks fine, there is no spacer missing, that is the thrust plate for the bearing. The porting looks decent they even polished and tapered the closing edge of the port it looks like (good reliability of the side seals), the blueing on the e-shaft is normal and is part of the induction hardening process from the factory.

You motor blew because it was knocking like you admitted, stop trying to pawn it off on poor build quality.

That is, however the neatest looking blown seal ive ever seen,.. they usually crack,.. this ones has big jagged edged chunks out of it.


If you think that rotor is reusable you need to not do your own rebuild, you obiously dont know what to look for, Id'ing perfectly fine and normal parts as suspect and an obiously trashed parts as reusable?....and yes,.. your housing is shot too.

 

Ask Kevin Landers, Rotary Resurrection. He builds engines with Atkins seals all the time and its been said that if an Atkins apex seal blows, they hardly do any damage at all.

 

There doesn't seem to be a spacer missing. That washer sits under the counterweight, and the torrington bearing sits on top of the thrust plate.

The larger chamfer on the the CAS gear goes toward the engine. If you look at each side of the gear where the e-shaft goes through, one will be cut at an angle on the edge. That side toward the engine.