Has anyone whos done a rebuild with RA apex seals ( both the super seals and normal ones), has had them on there motor for more then 30,000 miles? Did you run into any problems with them? Also would you guys recommend them for there rebuild kits? I was looking at the mazda Apex seal but saw that RA came with the kit? What do you guys recommend?

 

what kind of application are you talking about here?

 

I built an engine that now has 40k on it( 6 years ago). Single turbo RA classic seals with OEM apex seal springs. It hasn't dropped any compression. It is a turbo engine and is not driven lightly..

 

its for a turbo application that i'm rebuilding; I've tried searching but haven't found anyone runnning these for a long time and haven't had any problems with them.

hmmm thanks tor the info. i plan on doing the same set- up tha you are doing 1 revvin7? but who did your rebuild?

 

It's hard to measure longevity on turbo applications that don't have catastrophic failures. People don't drive their modified turbo cars all that many miles. They overheat them and blow the motor that way. Or they sell the car and the previous owner doesn't know much about the engine.

 

well i knew this was gonna be quite a difficult question to get a answer for. i was trying to see if RA rebuild kits are pretty good for there price. not really trying to go cheap on soimething i plan on driving everyday as well as the track you know. But one thing for sure is tha i know the OEM apex seals are the way to go. but as for the rest, I'm not to sure. Just checkingif you or someone would know a little on this. ( so far i got one) but thanks for reading my post.

 

I've got 3 engines with the RA apex seals. They're a good bit harder and tend to be harsher on the housings. They seem to wear a good bit faster than the OEM's do in comparison after ~50k. I never did like their supplied coolant/oil seals in the RA rebuild kits. Typically I use OEM for everything except apex.

 

I'll be honest, the only thing I like from RA is their apex seals. Their soft seal kit is really disorganized, they just threw a ton of o rings into a bag with no labeling and if you've never built a rotary engine before it's hard to tell what you're looking at. Many o-rings that go to different parts of the engine are similar looking yet different. Their inner coolant seals fail prematurely sometimes (there's a thread on it in the rotary engine performance section or whatever it's called) and their outer coolant seals don't have the white alignment mark on them that the factory seals do. Their oil control rings are harder to install than stock. Plenty of people have had zero problems with RA kits but it's still not the easiest kit to use for the novice builder.

 

i've been told about there apex seals being a bit harsh on the housings. but thanks everyone for there input i'll let you know what i'll do then

 

i was running RA classic seals which lasted about 80k very hard miles, until the coolant seals started leaking. housings were worn but had no compression problems and ran perfectly



im now running RA super seals with about 15k miles on them, no problems so far. i run it hard everytime i drive it

 

how long does ra seals take to break in on used housings

 

Do you have any port job done with to your motor when you where using the RA Classic seals?

 

I don't know the minimum but I used some barely reusable housings on my rebuild with RA classic seals and basic kit and it had 60psi per face on initial startup and 105 psi per face roughly 5000 miles later.

I've put about 7k on the engine so far. I'm with arghx, there are so many variables in turbo applications from turbo selection to boost pressure to EMS setup/tuning, AI, driving style, etc. that its difficult to get accurate reviews from people.

 

hmmmm i thought about this when i was going to sleep last night but didn't post. I did put that into consideration. Also the fact tha when some dude s do rebuilds they do add mods that sometimes doesn't help where its really needed such as cooling since these motors get very hot when boost pressure is increased. Factors like this change the output of the seals life

 

oh but do you guys daily drive them and what are the compression numbers on the engine if you guys remember. (before and after they blew)

 

any flooding issues with ra seals