Trivia Time! What the #&c% happend to this ROTOR?
 

First go here to check out some pictures of my rear rotor and rear rotor housing:

http://homepage.mac.com/mattemmi/PhotoAlbum20.html

Take a look at the gouges in the housing then look at the debris embedded into the rotor itself. 1 apex seal was cracked and the other simply removed. The only peice of the apex seal missing was about 5mm wide.

I did not believe that the apex seal could cause this kind of damage to the rotor as it's not as hard a material as the rotor.

At this point the 2ndary turbo is suspect. When turning the outside fan blades the inside can be felt scraping at one point in the rotation. From the outside the fan blades seem to be intact. I'm going to dissasemble the turbos to see if part of the fan blade broke off and caused all the havoc to the rotor.

I cant see how anything would have been sucked into the engine so I'm guessing it's something from the turbos.

Any other keen guesses?

I believe that is the result of an apex seal failure. Plain and simple, the rotor throws an apex seal, and a piece of it gets caught in the combustion cycle, and grinds into the rotor, then chips the housing on the way out of the exhaust port.

Pretty much what he said.

Depending on what kind of apex seals you had, it would do more damage thatn others. It could be the turbine blades, but that's not very likely. The blades scraping on the housing are probably a result of the shaft bearings thrown out.


or maybe i have no idea what i'm talking about. lol

looks like an apex seal killed it. The broken pieces of the apex seal go out through the exhaust port, into the turbo and whatever is left of it goes out the exhaust. That may explain why the turbo grinds.

Hmm. Ok. I was under the impression that the apex seal (it is a stock seal BTW) would not do that much damage. But that's a lot of damage for a loose 5mm peice of apex!

man you slaughtered that rotor. good pics though.

The damage is typical of a broken apex seal. Imagine the rotor is turning at several thousand rpm and you throw in a few pieces of non-compressible metal...

Now, just wait until you see the turbine blade of your rear turbo. :)

Mine looked similar after losing an Apex seal on a stock engine with 90,000 miles

By the way, your carbon build up on the rotors look pretty mild. What kind of oil do you use? Pre-mix?