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I don't understand what's funny. This car has not pushed over 400whp. Stock seals are just fine for that. And has been proven in this thread, aftermarket seals are not the end all be all. Unless you are going over 25lbs of boost, stock seals are reliable, assuming you have a good tuner and the car is setup properly.
We all know that they work man. Thats not the point. The point is that harder seals will tolerate a greater margin of tuning error to a point.
The point is that if Djset is going to look into using Superseal, is not bad choice just because stock stuff works.
Stock seal works, if not they wouldnt be in there in the first place.
Nothing personal against what you said. I just shared my esperience using Superseals.
OEM seals don’t give you much wiggle room in HP and Boost range im at. They will work but I’d be one lean condition away from them likely shattering. My previous build used them
Who sold you that noise? Was it the one who built it? Or, the one who broke it? Or, the FB group?
People have been beating the snot out of stock seals since the dawn of time. They even make them in 2pc and 3mm for high hp applications.
Pretty sure people have run 8's and 9's on stock seals, waaaaay back before some crackpot with a shed, a tool die, and some fancy steel out-engineered Mazda (lol).
You telling me all those stock seals gave up at the first sign of a fight? I've done some ignorant things to stock seals, and they held me off like Hodor.
Who do you get your piston rings from? Doctor Octopus?
Who sold you that noise? Was it the one who built it? Or, the one who broke it? Or, the FB group?
People have been beating the snot out of stock seals since the dawn of time. They even make them in 2pc and 3mm for high hp applications.
Pretty sure people have run 8's and 9's on stock seals, waaaaay back before some crackpot with a shed, a tool die, and some fancy steel out-engineered Mazda (lol).
You telling me all those stock seals gave up at the first sign of a fight? I've done some ignorant things to stock seals, and they held me off like Hodor.
Who do you get your piston rings from? Doctor Octopus?
My engine builder whos been doing this a long time said that stock seals will work but that id be getting towards the upper end of margin of error. I’ve already broken a set of OEMs in my prior motor (~420 WHP on 14psi). This last tune was on a dyno that’s known as a heart breaker. It’s reads “low” on every car that’s been on it so I’m guessing I’m closer to 420-450 range that this car put out on the last motor when I was running a PFC and stock seals. With new seals, modern fuel system, new housings, and a Haltech, I’d like to think I’d be making at least what I was a 1.5 years ago on that PFC.
I'm glad that's what it was as expected, that should be a straight forward rebuild to get it 100%.
My guess is iRotary had a bad early batch of these or something. It makes me nervous about them but at least it didn't chew the whole engine up.
Glad you have a solid answer!
Dale
As always, it’s always something else. Bryan called me today and said the lip around the water seal in my center housing was wearing thing. He said I didnt need to fix it now, but i probably should while the motor is apart vs risking it failing, losing and coolant, and having a much bigger problem.
My guess is iRotary had a bad early batch of these or something.
Dale
I proposed this theory to Iannetti several times and he constantly told me No and would name drop all these semi pro guys who are running seals that were made around the same time with zero issues. It’s been frustrating. I believe they make a good product because of their reputation but I think it’s perfectly plausible that they could have gotten some bad steal. Our data says it wasn’t the tune and it wasnt’t builder and while the number of case are small, I’m not the only one this has happened to.
My seals were made right before I got them from what he told me. They weren’t inventory that was sitting around for months or years. Nelson said he’s tuned well over 50 cars that have these seals and this is the first time he’s seen this.
The dip in the dyno graph and the excessive wear on the sides of the apex seal seem to point toward a failed/stuck shut rotor thermal oil bypass.
Scenario would be-
no oil cooling the rotors, the apex seal groove clearance close up some from rotor thermal expansion and apex seals cannot feeely move in/out of their grooves.
This causes power loss from poor apex seal sealing since apex seals cannot expand out to stay on the rotor housing throughout the compression nor power strokes and accelerated seal wear over the high spots in the rotor housing that would normally push the seals into the groove.
You can test the function of front eccentric shaft thermal oil bypass in a pot of hot water.
If the bypass was eliminated with the machined aluminum piece check to see if something seized the check ***** up in the jets of the eccentric shaft.
Anyways, a theory; since everything else appears good/is vouched for.
Would be interested in more spark plug info from those who had the issue myself, but am not making any claims this may be why. Mostly just curious to see if there's any trend.
Because I'll no longer use hotter than 10.0 NGK race plugs for NA, let alone FI. Though I know many people still do without apparent issue, or at least not like this result. Not everyone is having an issue with these particular apex seals though and would tend to think many of them are likely running colder plugs to avoid the spark plug mountain ski jump issue. I resisted it a long time myself, but have found that a strong ignition system (IGN-1A etc.) helps to minimize/delay fouling issues when running colder plugs and it finally got through my thick skull from a longtime Pro engine builder why they should be used.
Any way, per our side discussion as someone who promoted these apex seals based on name recognition I'm very sorry for you and the other people who encountered this situation, but am glad to hear you reconsidered and look forward to seeing the future result of Round 2.
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My factory oil bypass has been removed and replaced with a bypass (see photo) that Rotorsports has been using in their engines since 1987. They said it allows full oil pressure throughout the engine.
My call today with Ianettit and Nelson went about as expected. The data shows it wasn't the tune but there is no definitive proof as to what caused the seals to bend. Two causes of seals bending are pressure and heat, either together or individually. The data shows neither of those were an issue and nobody can explain why ALL the seals warped. Usually an event like denotation, not enough lubrication, etc would show itself on 1 rotor but 2 just seems odd. In the end we all pretty much agreed there isn't much to be learned. The one observation Ianetti made from looking at the photos of the seals was they they look very worn for what was only ~700 miles or so. I saw my housings though and the looked new and there were no signs of lubrication issues so it's really a giant damn mystery. Ianetti lives in the same city so the next step is to get with them to hand the the seals in person to see if there is anything to glean.
Now the one thing we didn't do was do a compression test before the dyno. For all we know, my compression could have been low going into the dyno and the dyno just pushed them to the limit. At this point, I guess there isn't much to report anymore. Now just wait for my rebuild and hope it goes well. I have a charity event track day coming up and the end of June so one way or another, this engine is going to get tested and if it fails again, this car is out.
Hope you are back on the road soon! Missed having you at DGRR this year, I would love to see the "done" version of the car!
Really, IMHO, it's a bad batch of seals. Fault in production or something. The fact that I personally know 2 people who had the exact thing happen with iRotary seals speaks volumes. Also the fact that I have NEVER EVER heard of ANY other apex seal doing this. Not stock, not aftermarket.
If it was a simple overlooked external thing - no oil metering, got too hot, oil plumbing issue, etc. - this would be something I would have seen over the years.
I hope you can get the failed seals to Ianetti and maybe he can do some sort of analysis and see what happened.
With that being on mazdatrix website, if the seals were that good they'd have a testimonial from Kyle Mohan instead. They don't have I-rotary seals in his 1000 hp professional drift car.
With that being on mazdatrix website, if the seals were that good they'd have a testimonial from Kyle Mohan instead. They don't have I-rotary seals in his 1000 hp professional drift car.
to be fair I think they use the ceramics in his cars. Nelson would know since he tunes Kyle’s car.
Even in that Mazdatrix testimonial to i-rotary seals there is visibly high wear on the sides and the rotor housing wear surface where it goes over the sparkplug at an angle.
Would like pics I could zoom in on, but looks like I wouldnt put those back on an engine myself.
Looks like the rotor housing spark plug wear goes to halway up the rotor housing wear surface?
he mentioned the i-R seals in the vid, but my take is he was committed to E&J and hasn’t tried them, so no comment
I believe Mazdatrix just copied and pasted that as a sales tool, wouldn’t read into it too much either way
but I’m not so quick to dismiss Green Brothers, they do a lot of rotary builds and can choose any apex seal they want, so why promote it if your customers will have failures or they won’t live up to your claims?
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I met with Ianetti's son (who works with his dad) last weekend to hand over the seals. He also brought example of seals from other people who has similar issues. Net-Net from our conversation is that they will def analyze my seals to see if they can glean any info. His initial comment when seeing them was that they had way more wear on them than they should for only having ~700 miles. Based on what he told me, a bad batch is pretty close to impossible. He said the seals aren't made "as a set". He basically said if they made say 100 seals at a time (he implied they make more but didn't elaborate), the odds of them picking the 6 seals that were bad were bad and sending them to me is like picking winning lottery numbers. It can happen but the odds are stupid low. He was a nice enough guy and a little less overly passionate than his dad when it came to having an honest conversation. At this point, it is what it is.
On the bright side, I picked up my FD and drove her home (3 hours) from Rotorsports on Friday. So far, so good. I still need to finish the dyno tune with Nelson. He said "the last 15% of session is where I adjust things like throttle response , in gear transient AFR, , double check AFRs during up shifts 2-3-4 gear , and downshifting response.".
This build was with cryo treated Rotary Aviation Super Seals that Bryan recommended. I have a track day in just over a month so we'll be putting this build to test pretty quickly. I really hope she doesn't let me down.
I did drive the FD and the Porsche back to back on my favorite route. To sum it up, the Porsche is like having a video game cheat code in a driving game. The Porsche gives you the confidence to make you want to go faster. The FD dares you to go faster. The FD def has way more roll/body lean in corners. It also made me realize how much I dislike waiting for spool on single turbo. I really wish I had OEM twins....
Yeah twins can really haul you out of a corner fast with the low-end response. If you really wanted to you could probably go back to sequential twins but it would be a LOT of work, cost-wise you'd probably make money. Or go to an 8374, the spool on that is insane but you would be out of pocket some.
Regardless hope to hear some dyno news and tuning results soon!
Yeah twins can really haul you out of a corner fast with the low-end response. If you really wanted to you could probably go back to sequential twins but it would be a LOT of work, cost-wise you'd probably make money. Or go to an 8374, the spool on that is insane but you would be out of pocket some.
Regardless hope to hear some dyno news and tuning results soon!
Dale
I've driven a stock twins car a couple times, I was blown away with the driveability at lower speeds and response, wow. Very different than my experience with my 8374iwg setup. Looking at a particular scenario, like coming out of a corner at 8/10ths and you're a gear high, I can look down at my wristwatch for a second or two waiting on the car to come online vs the stock twins FD, where I believe that's less of an issue. That would be an autocross/deals gap type scenario. On a full sized track, definitely less so, and the top end power of the larger, freer flowing turbo will certainly make up ground. Now is the 8374 that much more responsive than what dj currently has? maybe a bit, but methinks nowhere in the ballpark of stock twins.
I think it's important to separate between boost threshold and transient response here.
Stock twins have a better overall boost threshold and therefore should feel better when you're caught at 3000rpm or less coming out of a corner and you want to jump on the gas.
However when it comes to transient response above the boost threshold (on-off the throttle above where full boost is achieved), IMO the EFR is about unbeatable and is likely a noticeable difference compared to many single setups. Maybe even in some cases compared to OE twins but I don't have personal experience there.
