Could use a little help diagnosing an internal oil leak...
 

Well, I finally got my rebuild started, had to give it a pull start, but it started immediately without any hesitation.


Anyway, it's not driveable as I have a monster internal oil leak. Somehow, oil is being allowed to gain access to the rotors, and it's pouring it out my tailpipe, like not a little bit of oil....ALOT.

My question is, where are all the possibly seals that could be leaking and allow oil to enter the combustion chambers and allow it to be kicked out the exhaust? :Wconfused

I don't get it, I installed an entire master rebuild with all new seals and whatnot, but obviously something isn't right.

I also believe because of all the oil entering the combustion chamber, this is why the starter couldn't get the motor to fire, it was flooded, just not with fuel.

Atleast when it was running, it had great vac and was running smooth. Too bad its going to have to come out again, but like all 7 owners, everytime the motor comes out, more things get upgraded. :)

Most likely cause would be the oil control rings and or thier seals, damage may have occurred when you installed them, did you use new control rings if not did you inspect the old ones for damage be fore you re-installed ? Any damage to them will cause you to have a smoker. Other thing’s to look at is crank case ventilation and turbo damage.

I lost about 1/2 quart of oil in 25 minutes, it was literally dripping out the tailpipe.

Is it even possible for the turbos to leak that much at idle and that be the cause?


Regardless, I spent a couple hours today and pulled it all out, I wanted to redo alot of things anyway. I'm just leary of cracking the block open because I started wondering if the turbos could have been leaking, and it sounded so good and everything was just going great when it started, aside from again a massive oil leak. The turbos didn't even smoke the last time they were ran, but did sit for a couple years in between motors. I did have an ton of oil that got shot up into my LIM, but I have no oil metering pump (premixing). My IC pipes were clean though.



Wow, looking at my first post, I can't believe it's been 2 months since I started this thread.....I never have time to work on my car I swear. :lol:

Yes, turbos could leak that much oil into the exhaust. Did you check to see if oil is in the intake ?


later

My intake pipes were clean.

Sounds like oil control ring issue. Did you do any porting?

My vote is the oil control o rings were improperly installed or the porting was done too far inward. I have a customer right now with the same problem. I pulled the turbos, blocked off the oil and coolant lines, and installed an NA header. I ran the car like that to show him that it was not the turbos. Symptoms were tremendous bluish-white smoke when the car was running and oil dripping out of the tailpipe. It is possible but rare for turbos to dump that much oil right into the exhaust. More often the compressor side leaks and will push oil into the intake.

It was ported, but it was what I would consider a small to medium sized street port, nothing at all what I have seen on here as far as whats considered a "large" streetport.

And I had a thick, heavy white cloud coming out tailpipe while it was running that was the same consistency from the moment I started it to what it was doing 20-25 minutes later, and not a trace of coolant smell.

From what you all have said and other things I have found, I am at the point I would bet money it is the oil control rings, and even if it is the porting, which I highly doubt just because of the smallish port work I had done, it still needs to come apart anyway, so I guess I am betting money by pulling it apart. :lol:

Thanks guys, I'll post it up here what happened when I know for sure. :icon_tup:

size of the port really means nothing, if you port into the oil tract it only takes 2mm before you start to cross into the path of where the oil is being wiped from, so if someone not familiar with rotaries did the port it can quite easily be that simple of a problem.

for possibilities the port being first and explained already. the second being a bad turbo BUT if it wasn't burning oil before the rebuild i seriously doubt it would start just after, the ONLY way to tell if the turbos are faulty is by pulling them off the engine, inspect the manifold side and pull the downpipe off and inspect the exhaust outlet, faulty turbos will have oil on the downpipe side but NOT on the manifold inlet side. after removing the turbos it should be apparent whether you have oil in the manifold indicating an internal oil seal issue or not, if the manifold is soaked in oil then your oil control seals or porting are causing the issue.

last step if you have concluded that the engine has an internal issue is finding the cause, 1 other possible issue is you could have simply installed the oil control springs backwards, they lock in the grooves by working against the direction the rotor is turning, if they are backwards then the oil seal can spin in the groove and burn up the o-ring seals. again to porting, look at the oil seal tract wear patterns and you will see a distinct wear line in the irons, the porting should not noticably cross that line. inspect the o-rings for cuts, which they could have been cut by the rotor grooves while you pressed the seals into the rotor.

i have never seen turbos leak oil into the intake tract on such a high level, if the turbos were that bad then they would have MASSIVE end play to them, which can be easily checked by pulling off the inlet pipes and pushing/pulling on the turbo shafts to feel for play, side to side play is normal as long as the blades do not touch the compressor housing, there should be zero play in and out though. besides, how can oil from the turbos even be pulled into the engine from the cold side with the engine idling? there isn't boost or enough suction so i would rule this out and my guess is porting, cracked oil seal housing or springs installed backwards.

the only other possibility i haven't mentioned yet is the iron face wear, it's unlikely there is enough wear to cause oil to pass but damage to the face can allow oil past the seals such as bead blasting the irons or even lapping, i really don't even approve of because it hurts the engine more than it helps.

Wow, thanks man, that helped alot as well.

Turbos are fine, they have no end play. As far as I've been told, they have less than 30k on them and they appear to be in that condition as well. Besides, there is oil everywhere, in the engine, both sides of the manifold....it's a damn mess in there. :lol: And my irons were within spec before the engine was rebuilt....so that leaves us with mostlikely the porting, or the oil control seals....hopefully I'll have time and get to find out this weekend.

When I first got into these cars back in 01-02, I had a "reputable shop" do a rebuild and small street port for me on my 95 rx7. The car would always smoke at idle and high vacuum situations. Not smoke where you couldnt see, but a pretty large amount of smoke. I replaced 3 sets of $600.00 a set turbos at the time:wallbash: only for the problem to continue.

Finally found another reputable shop to take the car to, www.rotaryresurrection.com, and when he pulled apart my engine he showed me where the other shop had ported into my oil control ring path. This was my problem. So basically about a $3500.00 engine build a 3 sets of $600.00 turbos from Jesse Lau later I still had a pile of junk.

Porting can definitely cause issues, even a small port. However, I never had oil dripping out the exhaust or anyting to that extent. I would still bet you have an issue with an oil control ring.

I have a couple pics of my ports below, I wasn't sure but i posted them in case someone can just tell from the pics.

Where can I find the specs on the ports and how to measure them (micrometer?) so if no one can tell from the pics that I can measure them to know.

My oil control rings/seals/springs showed no signs of wear. Now one thing though, is the "white" and "blue" markings on the springs, on the front and back side of both rotors, the colors were mixed one blue and one white. I thought that the white was suppose to all be on the front side of both rotors and blue on the back side. If that is true, then what would be the potential problems of the colored oil control ring springs being mixed around like that?


http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/7848/port1g.jpg

http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/1052/port2.jpg

Or how about this....

I'm not positive, but I dont recall the rear stationary gear having an oring on it, not the big orange one, but the other oring that is about the same diameter, I just don't remembe removing one.

If that's true, could that cause oil to get out the motor and into the exhaust?

Oil gets out of the motor but usually ends up all over the underside of the car and does not get inside the exhaust system.

Are you directing that at my question about the rear stationary gear o-ring?

Why can't I find porting tolerances on here? :scratch: I was able to only find one thread with pics that showed any over-porting, but it still didn't say how to measure to check your ports to make sure they are not going to cause problems.

Oh, I also want to add that I had 2 stuck corners seals on the same rotor. Would having a stuck corner seal, or 2 for that matter, cause a large amount of oil to leak?

Is anyone out there willing to measure their stock ports for me so I have something to go off of? I can't find anything pertaining to measuring to see if it was over ported. :scratch: