well I just got done rebuilding my engine and i've got everything together. I went to turn the rotors via the bolt on the pulley and it is extremely hard to turn. I have to use a great deal of leg power just to get it to budge. It is getting compression because i've turned it in a complete circle a few times and it is blowing air out of the exhaust ports. How hard should it be to turn the engine over like this?? Is it simply something that becomes easier over time as the seals break in? Im positive that i didn't forget a bearing in there. I can't see how a starter could turn over an engine this hard to turn. What could be causing this and is this normal?

 

Rotor side seal fell out and is wedged between rotor and housing?

 

This is NOT normal. I would not recommend trying to turn it any more, although the damage may already be done.

Did you use a torque wrench when setting the tension bolt torque? Was it a click type or a bar type? If they are overtightened, they can cause this.

Remove the front cover and check the thrust bearings. It is very easy to have on slip under the spacer and get crushed when assembling.

 

Over tighten to what?

Pettit torques to 50 ft/lbs on all their race engines. Their street engines are torqued to at least 32 ft/lbs (for those who haven't looked them up, 28 ft/lbs is Mazda's setting).

Unless he torqued them to 200 ft/lbs, I doubt that's the problem.

 

I had one engine supplied for installation that was torqued somewhere over 60 ft/lbs and would not turn without great effort. Not thinking that this would be the cause, the engine was disassembled and nothing else was found.

The second part of the question asked if and what type of wrench used to torque. I've seen too many click-type wrenches used a breaker bars and end up incredibly far out of spec and damaged, that they were not re-calibratable. A 24 inch long uncalibrated torque wrench can be a dangerous thing to an novice engine builder.

I was just giving him some easy things to check without sounding the alarm, and stating that he'll have to disassemble without eliminating all other possibilities first.

 

whatever it is, sounds like a PAIN, and no one wants to tear apart what they just fixed....I will be interested to see what went wrong...

 

did you check the end play?




agreed.

 

havn't checked the endplay becuase i dont have those tools. I'm taking the front cover off today and i'll check those needle bearings again. I am begining to think i left a thrust washer out somewhere in that front cover because it showed up on my floor yesterday. hopefully this is what it is and there's no further damage. They are torqued right and i used a clicker breaker bar torque wrench and yes i wouldn't reccomend these to be used. I've broken a couple of random bolts using this because it's very hard to tell how close you are to breaking the bolt and since some of these bolts are old i think they tend to break at a lesser torque than what they should.

 

I don't think a side seal has fallen out but it's always possible. I tried to turn over the engine once while it had this rotating problem. Now I'm worried, what could be the extent of damage if these bearings were installed wrong? It was only ed for a couple of seconds before i decided something was not right and didn't try it again.

 

Looks like a good possibility. If you left it out, you could have done some damage. Check your spacer, needle bearings, shaft, and other parts for scoring or damage.

 

not side seal...but corner apex seal...they like to pop out and fall in little places

you can turn the motor over, without the front cover on at all, so make sure you don't have to pull the engine apart before stacking the front cover again.

here is the stackup (top down)

counter weight (washer is built in...or in there really "nicely")
needle bearing (spacer is around the e-shaft)
trust plate (bolts to front iron)
needle bearing
trust washer (sits on the stationary gear)


ALSO, you should torque everything under the front cover down to spec WITHOUT the cover...check endplay, if in spec disassemble, restack with cover, check endplay again.

 

As you dont have a dial gauge to check the end play (which you really should have if you're building) then hold the flywheel and pull it back and forward, it should move a small ammount and you will be able to hear it as it rocks back and forth.
If this doesn't happen you may have a trapped thrust bearing.

 

update???

 

well i did get all that stuff of the front and sure enough i left that washer out. No damage at all to the bearings or anything else so i was lucky. I put the washer back in, put everything together and now it spins very smoothly. Just a note for anyone doing this, i spent a long time trying to decide which waser goes where because there are two and it doesn't really specify which one in the book.
The larger thicker washer with a chamfered edge is the thrust washer which goes at the very bottom and lies on the stationary gear. The "chamfered" or angled side faces toward the the rest of the engine (rotors, rotor housings, etc). then everything goes in the order as stated above by dubulup
also after reassembly the shaft was still getting tough to turn, but i appplied some force and it started breaking in and moving freely, i think this was just the side seals or something that needed to be loosened and seated before it could move 100% freely