blown coolant seal....*pics*
 

Recently i had my engine rebuilt and upon breakdown we noticed that my coolant seal on my front housing had completrly failed. there was a little drop in compression but not bad

My symptoms:
excessive white smoke upon startup
Sound like a running facuet on my passenger side firewall :rolleyes:
drop in idle when the car was warm
also the engine was ver weak.

here are some pics and they can hopefully help someone daignose there problem.

http://banzairacing.net/ruetsche/bre.../cr_brkdn5.jpg

http://banzairacing.net/ruetsche/bre...olant_seal.jpg

Very cool. For people who rebuild engines this is probably very old hat, but for people who don't know know rotaries it's good to see.

Are all of those black sections of o-ring shot?

Do you have full res pics? If you want I can host them for you. In any case, it would be cool to see in tighter detail.

huh i had all those symptoms with a 3 inch whole in my water seal but my apex seals are fine

The cause of this is periodic overheating due to the inadequate stock cooling system and Mazda setting the overheat function on the stock ECU way too high. Oh Yeah, and a water temp gauge that ruins your engine by the time it shows overheating.

I do not know of anyone here in Houston having this failure after fixing these problems and running a PFC.

when i bought my car i found out later that i had a clogged cat. yes all those black marks is the burnt coolant seal :( If you have a clogged that you know you of replce it immediately


My apex seals were perfectly fine. Thanks god or else my rebuild would have cost ALOT! more.

its a shame the coolant seal isnt somthign mroe durable than a thin ring of rubber i can only imagine if it was maybe 4 times as thick would they ever go out like they do?

Some vendors have the teflon encapsulated coolant seals. From my understanding, they are 100 x better than the stock seals.

those are the seals that i have now! :bigthumb:

does anyone sell Viton coolant seals?

I've heard them mentioned. There are some very very heavy duty seals available. Just alot more costly, but could be worth the effort for a "bullet proof" rotary.

are you running the stock radiator?

charlie,

Where did you purchase your teflon coated seals?

I am running a fluidyne rad right now

Banzai racing in indiana rebuilt my engine. You would have to talk to them www.banzairacing.net

Charlie,
Here's the link to your pages showing pics of the entire breakdown, rebuild and install, just in case you lost it.

http://banzairacing.net/charlieR_rebuild_04-05.htm

Some people have gone as far as to have "Nuclear Grade O-Rings" made. A Stainless steel Helical sring wrapped with a SS Liner and coated in Pure silver. :)

Holy crap!! I have the exact same symptoms!! I'm pissed because if tried like 5 times to get all the air out of the system, but now i know it's no use. hhhmmm now do i rebuild or just go v8?!?! Decisions decisions. Thanks for the great post!!!!

get a rebuild and send your engine to banzai racing...chris builds great engines..mine is getting stronger and stronger im am pulling about 17-18 in of vac at idle now! RX-7 is meant to have a rotary.

if any of you guys whant real coolant seals i got someone overhere in miami he sells some type of coolant seals that they use to race his name is lopez racing tryv those coolant seals his phone is 305-255-1352

I'm resurrecting this mofo' because of a stupid question: are the O Rings in rebuild kits the coolant seals?

I've got smoke at startup, I've had to refill my coolant with no apparent leaks, and I started my engine with the rad cap off, but I cut the engine before the coolant overflowed (maybe I put too much coolant in?). These sound like signs of a blown coolant seal so I'm researching engine rebuild options.

Smoke at start up is normal. When it does happen it's usually the turbos. Don't sweat it.

I'm not so sure that it's water condensation--I've done some searching and even saw a video between the two and I wouldn't doubt that it could be bad coolant seals. What further pushes this suspicion was the fact that I had the "Add Coolant" alarm buzz without any visible leaks. I'm also experiencing an unsteady idle, in that it fluctuates between 1100-1400 RPMs. I really need to get my FD checked out.

Can anybody answer my question above regarding O Rings and Coolant seals? Are they the same thing?

Nice freaking ports on your motor!

um those appear to be stock ports.

ouch

Coolant seals are o-rings, but they aren't the only o-rings in the engine.

Dave

Thanks, Dave. That's what I needed to know. :)

not on the pics he gave on the pics from Banzai!

Well, The odd thing about this is that its the front plate coolant seal and its opposite from the exhaust port. Which is pretty rare seal to blow out.

Most of the time, its the rear housing close the the exhaust port because its the point where its the hottest. My engine also lost a coolant seal and two other engines with blown coolant seals that I bought weren't at this spot. And to me, its hard to tell if its acturally the coolant seal or not... I need a closer pic of it.

Another point I would like to make is make sure you get your plates lapped and make sure get your engine built by someone with a lot of experience and either willing to ship out the plates or have a lapper... Which most rotary shops do not have one. Also, I think OEM coolant seals are the best to use. Don't believe the hype of these other coated seals. But that's my opinion and I'm sure someone else on this forum will say otherwise... Just make sure to acturally see them side to side and inspect them well and see the difference between them.. Just remember that many many OEM seals have lasted 10+ years.... before the PFC to turn on the fans earlier.

BTW, that inner seal looks like the teflon ecapsulated ones like Rotary Aviation sells. Your picture is blurry though.

IMO and what works best for me in regards to purging air from the engine is to fill the coolant with the small coolant line off of the back iron housing. It's the one coming out of the top of the rear housing that feeds the throttle body. The air that is trapped seams to get stuck back there.

yeah post a bigger cleaner picture of that...

:lol: I resurrected charlies post from like 7 months ago to ask my question about coolant seals. I wonder if he's noticed?

I think you can get more pics from the Banzai Racing site.

Charlies engine had internal coolant loss at the front combustion chamber, it also failed the hydrocarbon coolant test. Coolant was evident in the front chamber, very simply test, pull the plugs and rotate the engine backward, coolant pours out.
90% of the coolant seal failures we see are on the front housing, the few that we see on the rear housing are due to the retaining wall eroding to point that there is no longer enough material to hold the seal in place.