Rotary Aviation Rebuild kit vs Atkins Rotary rebuild kit
 

Has anyone ever tried both kits? or one or the other.

I beleive rotary aviation supplies mostly OEM parts.

I am just looking for some success stories of peoples experience with Rotary Aviation rebuild kits and their customer service.

I understand that Atkins is pretty popular and the majority of people that look at this thread are probobly pretty familiar with them.

The cost savings between the master kit, rotary aviation vs atkins is about $200 when purchasing the rotary aviation rebuild kit. The master kit is the kit I am referring to for the price savings.

http://www.rotaryaviation.com/overhaul_kits.htm
http://www.atkinsrotary.com/index.php?pag=5

To me the savings could go towards a new rotor housing =)

I've just been using the Rotary Aviation o-ring kit with RA Super Seals on my build. It's not the exact same thing as their full kits (I bought corner and side seals from Mazda) but it has a lot of the same parts. A couple comments:

-- their teflon inner coolant seals don't fit as well as other brands of coolant seals (stock, Pineapple Racing, McMaster-Carr). This is based on both reputation and my own physical comparison of the RA inner coolant seal versus the McMaster-Carr. There is a thread about that in I think the Rotary Performance forum

-- I doubt any of their parts are actual OEM mazda pieces. For example, their outer coolant seals do not have the white paint marker on the side like the OEM mazda stuff does, nor does anything come in Mazda packaging that I've seen in my limited experience.

-- RA Classic and RA Super Seals are among the most durable (in terms of resisting detonation) non-ceramic apex seals, but they have a reputation for wearing out housings faster, so there's a tradeoff there. I've personally had RA Super Seals survive catastrophic detonation resulting from a blown MAP sensor hose.

-- I'm not show how Atkins does it, but I was irritated that all the seals in my o-ring kit were thrown in basically one bag with no labelling or anything. For someone who has never built an engine before it is hard to tell some types of o-rings apart that have similar dimensions.

anyone else ?

There is a group buy for the Atkin's Rebuild kit on the other forum so it'd be about the same price.

which forum?

I'm looking at doing my first rebuild also. I've gotten advice for and against RA seals vs. Atkins. I need to do more research before I make any decisions...but any advice is always appreciated

I went with the RA classic seals because they are the best proven seals out there. I went for the classic seals instead of the Super seal, beacuse the latter are harder and resist detonation but can damage the housings.

All the rx7s i know are using rotary aviation.

i swear by the aviation apex seals and i dont really care for the coolant o- rings much but i have used them and they do work but think of it this way aircraft quality parts is by far the best you can get and when a plane is miles above the earth you need reliability and to me thats convincing not saying atkins dont work but man i love aviation products

Any success stories over long term with the Atkins rebuild kit?

sorry to resurrect an old thread...but any additional news for this thread. Who did their rebuild and how are things holding up in that aspect. I bout ready for a rebuild myself and have been wondering what is the best mix match of apex, corner seals for a 450-550hp 13B TII engine. Any input? I understand that this has been gone over before but like everything, different opinions and whatnot, not to mention bad information can cause someone to purchase something that really isn't worth the money.