That would be the medical term for finding the cure for the engine Fixed above, damn autocorrect!

 

As I stated to you over telephone yesterday, you should go with 2mm. But what do I know.
At the end it's whom you want to listen to and purpose of your build. If I wanted to experiment, have time to experiment on tuning and such, I might go 3mm unbreakables. But many Many on the forum have made 500+ on 2mm oem and some now 700+ on ALS 2mm. And that's on 2 rotor.
At the end you need to do your own research and find neg and pos of 3mm and see if positive suit your needs and negatives aren't issues for you... Because everything has pros and cons.

 

2mm seals and 3mm seals simple term.

2mm seals are best to use as the 3mm thickens wont yield any more benefit compared to a 2mm seal capabilities.

The only reason anyone should consider 3 mm seals, only when the 2mm slots on the rotors are out of spec.. buying new rotors are not an option and 3mm machine service is a cost effective option.

There is no reason to cut perfectly good 2mm rotors to go 3mm.

In your situation, having 3mm rotors already, your options are limited in the event were your 3mm apex slots are out of spec. Not sure if Goopy has oversize 3mm seals or not. That might save your day and be cost effective.

Hope that helps

Thanks
Chip U

 

another option would be 3mm ceramics.. but thats if your worried about housing wear.. seems like it would be an option worth considering actually. Cermaics = less heat transfer and won't wear the housings as much as steel. And at the given power levels you'll be more than safe/reliable. I mean you already have 3mm cut rotors.. might as well work with the situation at hand.

 

Problem is how well it was cut in the first place. I trust Chip cutting it for 3mm but others, not sure. I have seen few 3mm cut rotors and some, the spec was way off.

I also agree with chip. Cutting good 2mm to go three is kind of nuts. I have good 3mm rotors ill trade you with.... With unbreakables. Seriously

 

I would never run ceramics in a boosted 20b engine. One mishap, and you're out a LOT of money.....

 

Yup!!! Rich is right. Tons o money. I know David is a baller but when I spoke with Dr. Iannetti several years ago and asked if he recommend on modified street car and he flat out said no. The man who invented ceramic seals telling you not
To run it on street driven car, I listen.

 

Reputable shops are incapable to do that.. not everyone of course

My rotors was cut for 3mm and the rotor wasnt even centered. Dr. Ianetti confirmed it wjen I sent him my seals for inspection.

+1 on the ceramics. Never again.. NEVER AGAIN

 

 

^Costas knows about Bro's legendary FD..... loudest FD, ever. Ever .

 

Different grade ceramics have been used for different branded seals. There are plenty of people running higher hp motors with ceramic seals in them. All in the tube. But I guess people use what they're used to it have experience with.

 

There are many opinions for the thickness of your seals... In the end of the day your car is at Kilo because im guessing that's who you trust to touch your car, therefore his opinion/experience should be what direction you take ... Or else I don't see the point of having your car there in the first place.

I got my 3 rotor rebuilt recently, I did my homework and decided to trust pinneaple racing. I told him what I wanted to do with my car and he told me what direction to take and that's it (BTW Rob is a great guy!). I can only rely on the specialis'st opinion, that's the service I pay for. Hopefully I will have a nice outcome, which it has been so far :-)

I hope when the engine disassembly is done you will not find too much damage... nd if you are ok with it I would like to know why you have low compression after so little miles on your engine because I know you have all the proper supporting mods and you treat your car very well.

Let us know, if you can, what timeline your looking at with everything done and you're on the road.

Good luck!
Andrew

 

Wow, a guy is out for the day and the thread blows up on the 2mm versus 3mm thing. And now ceramics to boot!

I do appreciate the comments. And as Andrew points out, I'm going to Kilo because he's one of the best out there and did do the build a few years ago (Steve Olsley here in Asheville is awesome too and if Kilo hadn't done the build, I'd leave it to him). And as promised, I'll definitely post up what we find as I want to know and if it can help others, I'm all for it. I do feel everything was done right and I have the supporting reliability mods as well (meth injection, Guru stud kit, etc.) so we need to know. Right now though, it's just all speculation. We will pull it apart and lay out the facts soon.

Regarding 2mm versus 3mm, Pettit Racing did the rotor machining work. The clearances have been checked once by Gotham and then by Kilo so they were fine at the time. Don't know how they will look now though so that is another variable.

There are too many pages to read through on the thread, but I did have installed at one time the 3mm NRS ceramic seals. The engine blew then at Gotham from too much timing but contrary to most everyone's belief, the seals did not explode and take out everything. They did gouge the center housing pretty well, but no other issues.

As to the Goopy seals, I've had several long discussions with rotary experts that do not frequent the forums, or guys that have been doing this for over 30 years. These are some of the biggest names out there and I now know much more about the advent of 3mm seals and the different types that have been used (Hurleys, Mazda carbon, ceramics, etc.) and why they were used. The result is seals have come a long way and in particular, the Goopy 3mm seals get 2 thumbs up for my application. One of the misconceptions I had is a 3mm seal has 50% more material on the radius of the seal and thus, will cause more wear and tear to the housing. At least with the Goopy seals, this is not the case as the radius is the same on both the 2mm and the 3mms, or the surface that contacts the housing is exactly the same. It is true that in general the 2mms seal better but a lot of this has to do with the springs used and there is a way to use 2 springs on the Goopy 3mm seal versus one. It's also true there is more weight to the 3mms but the impact to the housing versus the 2mm is negligible.

So, that leaves me at exactly were I started when I posted up the issues about a week ago. First things first, the car goes back to Kilo on Monday and we will take out and tear down the engine on Tuesday. Depending on the outcome of this, we'll then formulate a plan to fix and put it back together. My guess is this will take no longer than a few weeks as Kilo is fantastic with getting things done. The other two big items on the list are to fit in a v-mount if possible and to have the car repainted while it is there. My paint is original to the car and I really hate to touch it, but I've got 20 year's worth of rock nicks and scratches so it's time to freshen it up. Will do the engine bay as well so it should turn out well. Am sticking to the black but will probably do multiple clear coats to make it look deep and wet and maybe throw in some Cobalt blue to heighten the black.

Timing on this? I'd say 2 months for it all, mostly because of the paint.

More to come...

 

I've been told that the Goopy seals are simply rebadged seals from a big name out of Australia. Unsure if there is truth to this (anyone want to corraborate?) but that actually makes me feel better about their legitimacy.....

 

Has anyone provided long term results from running these seals? 10K mile plus? 20k mile plus? Drag racers are easy to satisfy with any unbreakable seal, would be great to hear from some road racing guys and street car guys with more than 3-5k miles. I can get the Goopy Seals cheaper than what I pay for the seals I prefer so I would be very quick to switch. Just very little public data on the Goopy seals that I have seen(dont check the 2nd gen section much) from my admittedly small amount of research.

 

Personally I think they need a little help with their P.R. dept..... I can't help but think of Ron Jeremy when their company name comes up

Calling them the best available today with no real large scale empirical data borders on ludicrous IMHO. Best available today by most any standard is OEM Mazda for 95% of the cars on this board, again IMO

 

There must be some junk 3mm builds out their then. The 1 sequential twin turbo I drove a few years back made around 320rwhp and had a little over 180k on the chassis. I asked the owner when it was last rebuilt and he told me back at around 90k mark. I was like are you freaking serious? That's over 90,000 miles on it's rebuild. Hp wise that's the 20b hp equivalent of 480rwhp. The engine was built by Rotary Performance out of Garland Tx and had the stock Mazda 3mm seals. That is a LONG *** time for a rebuilt rotary to run reliably on 3mm making that kind of power. I personally think we may have a slightly unballanced tune due to the flow differences of the 20b's LIM and the extra heat the center housing naturaly gets due to it being sandwitched between the front and rear rotor. I can't remember if I saw 3 egt probs on Davids manifold or not. Heat is what bends the Ra seals and that's probably what happened to Davids engine.


David, get those injectors cleaned and flow tested while your at it.

 

Mazda 3mm seals are the only 3mm seal I will recommend. I would personally run a 3mm motor with all Mazda parts without a second thought on a really nice setup car. However, using 3mm aftermarket seals that are "unbrakeable", no way. I will be blown away if David's issue is anything other than chewed up housings, but ive been wrong before. Hopefully we will see real pics of the housings. I can't understand why 3mm superseals were ever recommended for his goals. If it was a dedicated 8-900rwhp drag strip car then I could see the reasoning.

 

Guys, go look up the difference between 'clinical trial' and 'case study' and you may be enlightened a little bit..... drawing a correlation between real live human beings and the engines we love so much should put things in perspective a bit.

 

And the seal debate begins. Bunch of intellectuals on this forum.

thewird

 

Hey, as long as you're amongst us we'll be ok, right Marco ?

 

The best way to understand and look at the big picture,
whem it comes to apex seal manufacturers..

1. None of the aftermarket seal manafactures base there super seals on actual lab testing
For example. Lets say that the oem seals have been tested in a lab.
Oem seal
Rockwell reading ?
Stress analysis ?
Heat expansion analysis?
Etc..

Now on to aftermarket seal manafactures..

Our seals have been made better because.

Out seals have a higher Rockwell reading than oem.
Stress analysis, our seals brake down at a much higher stress level than oem..
Heat expansion , our seals have minimal expansion compared to oem.. And so on..


That's why our seals are better than oem.. Etc..


I'm sure most of you get my point..

In the near future I will be manufacturing apex seals..

Unlike all of the makers of aftermarket seal shops..

There will be lab analysis data based first on the oem seals .
Thus explaining why how the seals that I made are much better in the required application.
3 seal types will be made
Soft for NA application
Street / race application
Drag racing application..

Also I have been testing and tested up to this point 90% of aftermarket seals out there and conparing them to oem seal test..

Very interesting finds for sure..also the lab test results also made it clear to why this seal or that seal does or does not harm or not harm the housings crack brake etc.. Don't ask me to post the data per manufacture seal.
I will not as of yet, once I make my seals all that information will be posted on the site..

Long story short, from the test I have done OEM is the best for multi purpose applications.
Unless actual data can be posted to why one seal is better than the other, it's just a conspiracy.
Actual data don't mean the rotary god said that's the only seal manufacture they will use..
Thank you Chip U

 

I have not tried Goopy. I have ran most other 3mm seals and they wear housings faster than their 2mm counterparts of the same manufacturer. 3mm corner seals(non Mazda) seem to wear side irons in a lot of cases. That's scary on a 3 rotor. I prefer ALS seals myself, but I was not going to mention their name as I don't want people to think I am biased or have an agenda. I've tried most seals out there over the years. I trained several years under a builder who has built well over 500 engines. My experiences are real life and not 2nd or 3rd hand information. With David shooting for 600rwhpish on a 3rotor he isn't exactly pushing the limits. If I for some reason was forced to stick with 3mm seals it would be Mazda. They are really strong and cause almost zero extra wear to housings. Superseals handle detonation well but eat housings. Goopy may be great seals but I have seen zero long term results from them. They popped up out of nowhere and I don't personally know their rotary past. Had E&J not been linked with Alex Lopez I probably wouldn't have been so willing to try their seals almost 5 years ago. I've put the ALS seals through hell and back and ran them in my personal car for Almost 20k miles and compression was great when I sold my car. Just look at Sk8wrlds threads if you want to see the power he has been making for 5 years on the ALS seals I sold him.

I don't know why I care. I kinda laugh at some of the older members on this forum who jump from shop to shop spouting the latest talking points on different products. I just hate seeing owners and shops giving rotaries a bad rep. Best of luck to Dave.

 

Thanks for all the input guys. Now can we get back to the "build" part of this build thread? There are plenty of 2mm versus 3mm versus one manufacturer or another threads already.

 

Updates!