Rebuild seal questions
 

alright, bought another s4 tII motor off the internet, turned out to have a blown rear rotor. so now i have 2 halfs that are good and are going to be put together to make a good one. i am looking for a recommendation on seals. i am going to purchase a new engine gasket set and port my irons and exhaust ports while i am in there. i havent had the chance yet to mic everything up, but first impressions look as though everything i need is there and reusable. now my first question is if all my apex seals and springs are in acceptable tolerances can they be reused? i am going to upgrade to third gen corner springs. now if i reuse stock apex seals i believe that i have to retain 2 piece corner seals, correct? and is it even a good idea to reuse seals and springs even if they are in good condition and within spec? also if i have good oil rings can they be reused also? i guess i am trying to keep this on the cheap if possible because i have almost 2 grand in bad motors. also want apex seals with a decent life. well please bring all your rebuild experience my way.

I wouldn't reuse apex seals.
They are probably the older 3-piece ones, and fail easier than the newer 2-piece design.
If you can afford it, get new apex seals.
RA's are cheap.

I've never seen a good, easy supply for "1-piece" corner seals?
It doesn't matter.
Reuse the metal body of your old ones, and replace the rubber plugs for like $2 / each.
Some people will even tell you the rubber plug are not necessary.


Old, original apex seals I tend to discard.
If the engine wasn't damaged or overheated, a lot of the stuff can be reused.
ALL *soft* seals need to be replaced.


Metal cases, yes.
Soft o-rings...I would not recommend reusing them.


Rebuilds are almost never the cheapest option.
You can recoup some of your expenses by selling the excess parts.
"Big" parts like rotors and rotor housings are always in demand.


-Ted

yeah don't skimp on a rebuild man or you will be out even more money. Do it right, do it once. Just to give you a little heads up here is what I bought through mazda trix and the prices. I did some price comparisons through atkins and almost all prices on mazdatrix is better.

amount/part number/part name/price per/ total price

1) 6 11-C04A-N326 APEX SEAL SPRING $5.70 $34.20
2) 6 11-C06C-N326 APEX SEAL SPRING $6.21 $37.26
3) 12 11-C240-NF01 CORNER SEAL SPRING $2.67 $32.04
4) 12 11-C170-N326 SIDE SEAL SPRING $1.59 $19.08
5) 2 11-3510-N225 SIDE OIL SEAL SPRING $2.89 $5.78
6) 2 11-3610-N225 SIDE OIL SEAL SPRING $6.28 $12.56
7) 2 11-3530-4352 SIDE OIL SEAL SPRING $6.70 $13.40
8) 2 11-3630-4352 SIDE OIL SEAL SPRING $6.70 $13.40
9) 12 11-C110-N3Y1 SIDE SEAL $11.19 $134.28
10) 1 10-4270-N3Y0 GASKET OIL PAN $16.67 $16.67
Total: $318.67

I bought the oring kit from Rotary Aviation for $153

and I will get the apex seals from them as well for $182

Total price comes to $653.67 w/o shipping

Now I also ordered the performance oil control ring springs from mazda trix so you can shave about 10 bucks off of that. I also ordered new rotor bearings and eccentric shaft bearings because I want to do it right but you really don't need to do that unless you want to or unless they are out of spec. Hope that helps.

Oh also if you are just an n/a car then the apex seal springs that come with the RA seals will be fine so you won't have to buy the apex seal springs from mazda trix witch is about another 70 bucks or so.

Also you can reuse the side seals if they are within spec. This will shave another 100 bucks off. now your down to $478.67 for the rebuild. Not bad. NOw of course this is if you don't need any gaskets but I'm sure your going to need the uim gasket and lower intake manifold gasket along with front cover gasket (but ra o-ring kit says it does aways with that gasket?) I dont' know what that is about but I just read their instructions and thats what it says. I would probably say put another 100 or so asside for other things you will need for the rebuild.

thanks for the input, i have been really lazy this weekend so hopefully i will get it all mic'd in the next few days and check spec on the side seals (which i believe are good) and what not. but thanks again. i imagine i will have a bunch a questions as time arises to put it all together.

so is that pretty much all you need for a rebuild? or is there other stuff you left off?

there are other parts like apex seals witch from RA cost 182 a set. Also an 0-ring kit is needed for 150 from RA and then a gasket set if you need all the gaskets but if you don't then you can just buy the gaskets you need. Also I bought things like new rotor bearings and eccentric shaft bearings because I'm just retartedly anal like that when it comes to my rotary but it is reusible in most cases.

well the reason i asked is because a friend of mine has a stuck seal and he's thinking about rebuilding it. i dont think he needs a complete rebuild since the car starts right up with a fully charged battery. and he's got some awesome compression numbers last time we went to marvespeed. the only problem he told us was that the rear rotor wasnt compressing well and that it was probably a stuck seal. i'd appreciate it if you could help us out on this.

If he has awesome compression, how come he says he has bad compression on the rear? Ask him exactly what the compression numbers are.

really you might as well do it right when you tear that thing down, because if you don't and something happens your going to be kicking yourself when you have to do it all over again in a month or so.

well the front rotor had around 9 and/or higher, dont really remember. but the rear one wasnt really gettin one at all, i think it might have been a 3 or soo. im talkin about averagely. the machine thing had 3 different set of numbers, but he told us that it had good compression, that all it needed was driving the hell out of it till it came loose. but he doesnt have the time to wait on it to come unstuck on its own. i was thinking why doesnt he open it up and clothes it, just replace the few gaskets he needs to and be done with it for now. but thats probably not the best idea

you can try to loosen the seal with water, atf, combustion chamber cleaner, whatever you want but if you can't unstick the seal then a rebuild is the only option.

what do you mean by loosening it up with water.. just dump some water in? how bout sprayin some W-40? wouldnt that be better than atf?

no. ATF or MMO

i had some MMO, and why not wd-40? would it mess something up?

yes