Interest in JHB Cermet B housings? -New dealer-
 

Hey everyone! Just wondering how much interest there is in JHB's products?

http://www.jhbperformance.com/

I've recently become a dealer for them and I'm placing an order of Cermet B T2 housings.

The pricing for the housings with a useable core is $430/each which includes tax and shipping from Winnipeg.
If you send me your core, you will not get the same housing back. It will be exchanged for another already Cermet coated one. This cuts down on the turn-around time.

For your housing to be considered a useable core, it cant have any gouges or cracking. Flaking chrome and general wear can be fixed.

If you dont have a core and would like to buy a pair of housings out-right, I can only offer this for my first order : $500/each including tax and shipping to your door.

JHB will be raising the prices on Cermet coated housings in the new year, so now's the time to buy!

If you have any questions about pricing ect. please pm me.

Thanks
Joe

So what are the housings going to cost in the new year?

I'd like to do my P porting before it's coated.. whats the ACTUAL turn around for that..??

also , what is considered a gouge or crack.. if a housing is dead .. it's going to have a gouge from a broken apex.. or crack in the crome along the corner seal seat ?

Marc still isn't sure about the cost for the new year.

The turn around time for getting your own housings back really depends on how many orders he is working on, it could range from 1-2 months. A guy on the forum here "Now" just went through that, he wanted his exact housings back and it took some time!

I am sending JHB a few core housings with different levels of damage from my own collection to give me a better idea of what is useable and what isn't.
From what Marc has told me, small imprints of apex seal on the housing surface could be fixed, as well as the corner seal "groove" that tends to wear into the housing.

1-2 months.. automotive that's good, aricraft, that's a lost sale.. sigh.. back to boring new housing for me.

Thread okayed for general exposure and Interest on JHB's products. Any order Info or simular should be taken to the PM's.

Can they garantee unwarped housings and even housing surface?

I might be interested.

I have a few housings that could be resurfaced.

I'm still wondering if this stuff actually works.

The housings are garanteed not to be warped at all. I hear that some people were having some issues with the coating dropping off a bit on the edges, but I believe JHB has corrected all of the early issues with the uneven surfaces. This also may be why the price is going up in the new year.

A good guy to contact if your not sure about the housings working would be wpgrexx, he has built a few motors using JHB housings and from what I know, he hasn't had any problems.

Good job Joe. Any numbers for FD housings?

Hey Mike, I don't have any prices for FD housings yet. If there is enough interest in them, then I might.

T2 housings can be used to build pretty much any 13B with...weather it be N/A or Turbo.
I believe the only difference bettween the FC T2 housings and FD housings is the exhaust sleeve? (Please correct me if I'm wrong). But it doesn't take much to swap the sleeves around.

Good to hear you are a dealer for them now Joe. I jumped on board as soon as I learned about there products last year. I have built a number of motors with cermet housings and some with cermet housings and end plates. Stuff is top quality. I beleive some of the problems that were discussed have been addressed, as alot of it was related to "bad" cores. I think they have raised their standards a bit as to what they will take as a usable core.

I really beleive these coatings are the future for Mazda rotary engines. There is a limited number of new housings available and Mazda doesnt seem to be planning on making more. This is so far the only way I have seen to refresh these parts and make them usable again. Add to that they perform better too. As you may have noticed, I really beleive in these parts. I use them almost exclusively for builds now. Everyone makes full 120psi.

Best of luck Joe, I think you will be happy with the results, and glad you got on board early.

First off I am not trying to discredit this process one bit. Just some question. Maybe you can answer them.


In your opionion do you believe this "last 10 times longer then stock housings" statement holds some truth. Given that usually its not the housings that fail but the apex seals. Either by detonation or plan wear. How do they manage getting an engine housing to last 10 times longer? Their seals?

So if I bring my housings to a machine shop and get them measured for warpage and the surface area for straightness (Is that a word?) and apex seal to housing clearance and it fails they will refund me for the housings, shipping, machine shop fee's etc etc?

Say my rotating asemble has been lightened and balanced for high rpm usage. Will this coating still work for me? (Again my question of apex to rotor housing clearance.)

Also if you blow your motor up apparently the second time around is cheaper? I called them but all they said yes it is cheaper the second time around but did not offer any pricing when prompt.

Sorry if I sound negative or doubtfull its just nobody has yet to open a motor to see how well these work. Any motor can last a year or two but apparently JHB has a race FC that has been running for 6 years? This from their first test housings.

(Have you pulled one apart yet? There is only two here locally but one has still very low km and the other has not run yet.)

thanks,
Ian

I've talked to rotaryrocket and will probable be purchasing some housings and trying this out for myself :)

I especially like his quoted price of $500 taxes in without me even having to supply housings. Sounds like a deal. Thanks rotoryrocket. "And get me some stickers" :) LOL

for specific questions like how do you know it lasts 10x longer I would have to direct you to talk to JHB themselves.

I will share my experiences with you guys on teardowns with cermet.

1. s5 13bt, was built with cermet plates and new chrome housings. Somehow after having around 5000kms on engine, the timing went 180 degrees out. I dont know how as it is not my car just a customer(I didnt build the motor the first time either). After teardown I found 5 out of 6 apex seals broken. One of the chrome housings was destroyed, the other was good enough to get cleaned up on a CNC and reused. The irons were perfect, didnt even need relapping before reassembly. I rebuilt the motor with all new Mazda apex seals and it is now making full 120psi compression.

2. I have seen a motor that JHB built as a test motor for a s5 vert with a TII swap. ECU wiring apparently was bad(jspec) and the injectors were mixed up, giving both primaries to the rear rotor. Hydro lock occured and blew the dowel pin out of the block, broke the casting right apart. The surface of the plate is good enough to stick in a motor without touching if it still had a dowel hole.


3. Bought a set of JHB Cermet housings that were one of the original prototype sets. They are now running strong in s4 with a aux bridgeport making great power. if I told you guys some of the things JHB did to these housings when they were prototypes you would cringe. Poured aluminum oxide powder down the oil filler. Housings looked great before reusing.

Thats what I have toredown. Obviously we will know more as time goes by. But from what I have seen first hand convinces me of their quality. There are some SAE papers available on the net that go into some good detail about MAzda's research with coatings and a little comparison between some coatings on housings. A very good read.

As for the clearances. I really dont want to comment on other peoples issues they have had as I have nothing to do with it. I am just a dealer for JHB not an employee or affiliate other than dealer of their parts. But what I can say is that they can custom clearance the hosuings for different applications. For example, I recently purchased a set of old skool 13b housings from JHb with cermet B coating. I explained my plans for the engine( J bridge port with lots of oil mods hoping to rev to around 10krpm) JHB set up clearances to better allow revs to that high. Once my REPU is up and running I will have some results for you guys about the extra clearancing performed.

Excellent explanation wpgrexx, your Repu sounds like its going to be quite the beast :D

Ian, stickers are in the works ;)

Id rather buy new housings for the price they want for cerment b coating

Really? My local Mazda dealer quoted me $900 Cdn for each new S5 T2 housing........

~$800 for a TII and $495 for a renesis.. althought using a TII end plate will make the rings and clearences a bit different.. it's hardly a price I'm going to refuse.. esp., if your doing p ports AND the price is going up..

Too many little details need to be worked out with this coating system, in particular the 'coating to Apex seal' wear issue. No one seems to be able to agree on which seal wear's faster, which one wear's the surface faster and which one's won't even seat properly.. My personal issue with the process is they are not using a Det. gun for the application..

Allot of Aircraft builders/engineers are suspect of the actual longevity of the process.. For my own part, most of my question will involve time.. allot of it. To see where and how the process evolves. I just wich these JHB guys would actually answer these questions and others.

For reference..

http://www.advanced-coating.com/en/t...echniques.html

What I'm really looking for is some healthy capitalist competition from someone else, promotes advances in product and competitive pricing.

New housings are $650 at the dealer. Or last I checked. These prices seems to fluctuate daily.

So new r8 housings are that $500. Dam. Why can't they be cheaper.:(

I do think the JHB process is expensive. It would be great if they could offer it significantly cheaper then new. Since its a respray not casting the whole thing.

if I KNEW that the process was going to get me XXXXXX km's with YXY apex seals then I wouldn't have too many gripes, but it's still way too new to be upping an already high price.

I'm interested.
What is their ISO level they are audited to? Do housings come with a certificate of conformance ensuring tolerances are per Mazda spec of new housings for all overal dimensions and for consistentency of surface finish for the entire surface of the rotor's operating surface?

Why would you care about their ISO level? Do Mazda housings come with a "certificate of conformance"?

waaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy tooooooooooooo expensive. questions are many about this process. how thick is the coating? how it it going to effect rotor clearance? what apex seals are best to use? and many more. the price should be $175. i wonder how much of that ceramic will come off and fly into the turbo damaging the blades or jamming an apex seal.

People are complaining about the "high cost" of this process, but some overlook the fact that it's a performance coating that reduces friction by retaining oil particles on the housings surface, which would also help the engine run cooler.
I personally dont have hard evidence that proves the engine will run cooler, but by reducing friction it would make sense...right?
Your not just buying a replacment Mazda housing, your buying something better.

Mazda warranties their housings for 1 year and will not hounour a warranty for performance applications (which excludes pretty much everyone here lol ). JHB will warranty all their housings for 1 year regardless of the application. The warranty covers the coating chipping or flaking off. If you blow an apex seal due to not being tuned properly or running 40psi of boost on stock injectors, then I'm pretty sure that cant be covered under their warranty. (you get the idea right?)

Marc shared some interesting info with me about the rotor to housing clearance for OEM Mazda housings. He told me that Mazda housings are not all the same, they all have different clearances. Mazda's specs range anywhere from 0.015"-0.029" clearance, each housing is different. Like wpgrexx mentioned before about custom clearancing, they can machine your housing out to 0.032" for very high RPM applications to compansate for e-shaft flex. But normally they machine all the housings out to a certain spec, unlike Mazda's housings that can have a difference of 0.010" !!!

all automotive companies are ISO 9001/2 and all tire1-3 suppliers need to be ISO 9001-3 ( depnding on what they do/supply ). In this case it would apply to the Q/A and conformance to the OEM specs.

if thier is that much difference in housing specs.. then which one is JHB using as it's base spec?

Anyway, I would have NO prolbem with the pricing IF some of the questons were answerable.. becuse at the momnet I don't think they have anywhere near enought practicaly feed back on the product to say that thier low end 'B' product is worth what a new housing is worth. It's all good and fine to have claims but with nothing to back it up with .. it's hardly fair to the potential customer to be paying top dollar for an as yet unproven product.

I would like to see a few housings that have have been used for a year, go and get checked for wear and tear tolerances, with supplied data like what apex seals and specs on setup..

Marc hopes to have some of this info available on their new webiste when its finished :)

so you think a big t88 turbo should be 50 bux? Or maybe new 17 inch wheels be 125? Where did you pull that 175 dollar amount from? The cermet B are cheaper than new chrome MAzda housings for a better product. My experience proves it to me.

dont quote me, but I beleive coating is around .005" thick. JHB recommends ceramic apex seals, or Mazda's. I have always used Mazda seals with my motors. It doesnt affect rotor clearance, beacuse the housings have been reclearanced after coating has been applied

Just a little thinkin', but would it even matter? as long as the seal touches the surface, and doesnt bottom out, would that 10 mils do anything else other than maybe decrease the life of the engine by a bit, beacuse the apex seal spring would have to push the seal out further? i dont know if it makes sence to anyone without a picture to explain it.

as for the wear, cermet has been in the tooling industry for a long long time. i dont know if it is the same stuff, but i imaging its just the same swarf that every cermet making company uses to make cermet, and they just alter the ratio of carbide to ceramic.

also, i think alot of the people on here took the itt tech mechanical engineers degree. and i think im one of them!lol

remember, mazda hired really smart people to design rotaries, way smarter than most of us, but not all.

lookin forward to using these one day in the future when i have some money :(

i think things shoud be a reasonable price. $500 is in no way reasonable for this mod. look at all the great wins and performance the rx-7 has had without ceramic coated housings.

i think another possible bad effect would be that it doesn't allow the heat to dissipate into the cooling jacket quickly to be removed, instead it holds heat inside near the apex seal which we all know can be fragile. the last thing an apex seal needs is more heat. i would love to see an exhaust gas temperature comparison of an uncoated engine and a coated engine. sure it may reduce friction but i am sure the loss of friction heat would be negligable compared to the heat retained inside the combustion chamber.

if you dont know what is involved with the process how can you say the price is too high. Shit I would love it if they were cheaper, as would everyone else. But the reality is thats what it costs. If you can do the same or better job for cheaper, by all means do it. I mean, why are Mazda Apex seals 300 bux, they just look like little pieces of metal, but there is more to it than that, and thats where the costs come in to play. Same thing with the cermet.

You raised a good point about the heat dissapation into the water jackets. I will ask Marc tommorow and see what the response is. From their brochure....

"reduces rotor housing cooling load by 25%, reduces rotor cooling requirements by over 40%"

I will try to find out how or why exactly it does this and get back to you guys.

If you actually read JHB's website, it says the Cermet A coating is the exact coating used by Mazda in the 24 hours of Le Mans winning 787B racecar.
http://www.jhbperformance.com/pictures/787b.jpg

The Cermet B is used in many Nascar and Formula 1 racecars including the Ferrari F1 team.


dufourmike - your right about the 0.010" difference.....why would it matter? Mazda's engines seem to have been working for years using housings that sometimes have differences as much as that.
I dont know about you, but I'd rather use housings that don't have a 0.010" difference.

does anyone know the actually product being used? as in what grade it would be as a tool steel, and the company it is bought from? or would that be digging too far into industry secrects?

the heat will have to go back into the rotor and out the exhaust port. which is GOOD if your header( and turbo) is up to the challenge.. but putting it back into the rotor, so to keep the oiling system from added stress, the minimum I'd look at is polished faces and my chioce for protection would be SWAIN's specific pistion head coatings.

To support this, if you look at the engineering paper on the Le Mans engine by mazda, it talks about this cermet coating and why they used it.

It would be nice if cermet was slightly less costly.

But since the process is still cheaper than buying new housings, if we can get results that are as good or better than new mazda housings by using our old housings, I don't see the problem.

well if i had the resources mazda has and was going to race my engine for only 24 hours before pulling it apart again i might use it if i was able to see some hard evidence of its claimed benefits. however on a engine that is not going to be rebuilt every 10,000 miles i would not want it. i wonder how easily chatter marks are made in this material versus stock housing.

This is not out to badger JHB, or any of their endorsers, the following is a list of concerns

If JHB’s CerMet A is the same chrome-carbide cermet used on the 787B, then its implied that the material is applied in the same manner and thickness. If cermet A is the same material Mazda applied, what does the cermet B contain? And is this applied in same manner and thickness of the cermet A?

Are both of these coatings developed by JHB, or are out sourced? I know there are many oil retention coatings available that are embedded into the current surface it is being applied which help with heat and friction reduction. Is this embedded into the current surface, or is XX thickness removed, then the XX cermet coating applied over top?

My biggest issue is the lack of material and test data available through them. They claim they will last up to 10x longer than standard chromed housings is this the cermet A or B? Using who’s seals OEM, JHB, Ceramic, Atkins, etc; one, two or three piece seals; 2mm or 3mm? Naturally aspirated or Turbo charged, if turbo what kind of boost? How is the oil retention, and is this using the MOP or premix?

Are there any race teams, if any, currently using JHB’s services to back any of this?

Under what conditions were the housings tested, real-time data, or real-time and computer generated, from taking wear readings after XX amount of miles? There are just too many variables that can and will greatly effect the “last up to 10 times longer than stock rotor housings.” If you take a good average of wear ratings and damage found on oem rotor housings, I would say a fair figure is approx 60K miles, with that said they inturn are claiming they can last up to 600K miles…. I would like to see physical proof of that, especially in a form of a third party.

Why do they only offer the cermet A on the irons, rather than offering both A and B like the rotor housings?

Nothing against the Canadian folk, but I have yet to see anyone south of the border, or world-wide using the coatings and hear feedback. Just from searching and reading this forum, I believe there are only 3 engines running the coatings (not including JHB and the two people that are currently building an engine), but have yet to see any type of test data proving their claims. Wpgrexx has torn down a few engines with their coatings, but it does not prove any of this yet. I read they are going to be increasing service prices this coming year, which I find that a terrible move since there is already a lack of data reviews of the service out there. My only conclusion is with the lack people recieving the service they are forced to increase prices, rather than the stand point of their product being proven.

Many are trying to compare a price of a new housing from Mazda and JHB’s service, which quite frankly is not fair. If you would like to do that then you would need to compare the cost of re-chroming and the cermet A/B coatings. What kind of cost is there for a refresh/resurfacing of the housings/irons if we currently have them?

What I would like to see is EGT, coolant temperature, oil temperature, fuel economy, and wear ratings of coated and uncoated engines. If there claims are correct, then it will be hard to turn down such a product whether it be for a high performance or engine longevity application.

This seems to be more of a “What apex seals are best” scenario, by far Mazda has put the most R&D into their seals and there rotor housing and iron surfaces; at this point I see this in the same light as their seals, if in doubt go OEM.

Sorry for the long read, I am sure there will be more to come…

For all the kings of speculation in this thread, why don't you call or email JHB and ask them these questions? Seems like an easy thing to do, no?

On that related note, Ian phoned JHB a few months ago with all kinds of questions, maybe he wants to chime in. Although I believe he has posted his stuff in another thread somewhere....

I have been using the cermetA coatings on my irons. After rebuilding my engine you could noticed right away home much smoother the engine would turn over with the new coatings, and only after 2000 kms my compression was reading 100-105 psi on all sides of the rotors.
And with the loss of extra friction I did notice that I could control my temp alot better. I can have my cooling temp stay at a rock solid 84 deg no matter how I'm driving the car.
I give JHB props very good product .

thanks eye candy for some great points concerning the coatings. you all claim that because of one win by one car (the 787B) that the product is ok. what about all the thousands of wins on OEM housings, are these all just negated because of one win? remember the lemans car was a non-turbo 4-rotor.

and jave 93rx7, you have a completely rebuilt engine how can you claim the smoothness and compression of your engine is due to only the coating. are you saying everything else new in the engine didn't contribute to this.

For what it is worth I have 8k plus on my JHB cermet B coated housings. I am doing some add ons this winter but the motor is currently sitting with exhaust ports accessible. If someone wants to lend me a borescope I would be happy to try and film it or report back. But I am very happy with the motor to date and I look forward to pushing it quite hard in the coming season.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I contacted Marc last week with many of the questions above; sadly he could not answer all of them. Here is a summary:

Cermet coatings; what is the difference between the A and B?
-Both are produced in house.
-A is the top of the line, while the B is slightly lower.
-Both will last up to 10 times longer than standard chromed housings.
-Both have about 20% lower coeffient of friction that chromed housings, with the A being slightly lower (better), due to having a smoother surface than chromed. Marc stated that the chromes surface has “channels” which increases friction and lowers sealing ability, the chromed surface also does not like to retain oil in the surface; where as the cermet coatings allows oil to bond to the surface and at higher temperatures the cermet has self-lubricating properties.

He could not give any test data comparing the two coatings, or data between their coatings and Mazda coatings. He said they have been tested using Mazda seals, NRS ceramic seals, and JHBs own seals, but again did not have or could not give out any test data.

The cermet A and B are applied to the rotor housings by completing removing the chromed surface (more on this later) and re-applying the cermet surface. The iron faces are machined down 5 thou and the cermet coating is again re-applied.

I asked why they do not offer the Cermet B on the iron plates, and he said that they currently do not have the ability to apply the coating to the irons, but are planning in the near future.

Now he said pretty much any type of damage can be fixed, but typical is grooving, chattering or chipping of the chromed surface that does not damage the steel liner, extra machining of the steel liner can be done. If re-applying of the coating is needed the service is cheaper, but could not give a price. The prices are suppose to increase 20-30% for the Cermet B with a possible decrease in price of the A coating.

Marc gave me contacts of companies and individual that have used JHB’s products and said they could give me better information on durability and reliability.

Pineapple Racing
RX7 Specialties
Daryl Drummond (Building engines for 30+ years).
Jim Lapointe (sp?)

Pineapple Racing has been using JHBs products for approximately one year, Rob said that he has built many engines using their coatings but only told me about this one 12A race engine producing 290HP (repeated this about 3-4 times during the 20min conversation). They have not tested the coatings, so they could not offer any test data. Although he did say there would not be any difference in temperature with and without coatings, but it would reduce friction (drag on seals and surface) due to the “slicker” surface. Engine longevity would be increased, and even more so using ceramic seals. The only down side to the coatings is that it will increase the break-in period, and if using ceramic seals the break-in time takes considerably longer, be sure to stay away from synthetics for at least 3K miles.

Daryl Drummond could not say much about JHBs products mainly due to the fact that he has not built an engine using these. And of the engine pieces he did receive they had to be sent back due to poor finish and improper tolerances. Therefore he was not impressed with the product and hopes when they send the pieces back they are in significantly better condition than before.

This was not the kind of response I was looking, and wish there were more reputable informative users out there. I have not had a chance to call the others yet.


I think that pretty much covers everything from the conversations, although I still would like to get more of my questions answered and more importantly RESULTS!

20-30% just priced it's self well past a new Reni. housing..

no concrete data on ACTUAL wear and what they do have is speculative. Your converstations have only given me personally more reservations about this product. Including the fact that if the material is an inhouse development then it isn't the same product as on the 787B and that they also reccomend you to add another $800 or so on top for ceramic seals.

I'm sure most of my complaints could be made moot if they logevity and performance data was there to justify this added expense... but it's not!

******* Misinterpretation, what i actually said was that mazda chrome is mico-porous channel chrome and that the porosity and channels are induced for oil retention because chrome is very dry and will not retain any lubrication otherwise. Also, the porosity and channels that are induced for lubrication purposes tend to promote corrosion formation that ultimately will lift the chrome and cause it to flake off. This is especially evident on older housings, newer housings are slightly better for corrosion resistance and consequently less wear resistant because of the reduced amount of channels and pores to retain oil. Our cermet is 99.99% dense and does not have any channels induced that will promote corrosion, also the coatings retain and bond to oil at a molecular level and this aids in lowering the friction in the engine. The cermet A coating is self-lubricating at higher temperatures.*********

****** The "RESULTS" of our extensive test data are on the webstie, with slightly more details to come when the site is updated. We do not give out all the raw data and do not know why it would be necessary, if you are that technical of a person then reversing the calculations should be no problem using the results provided for a given application.******


****We have the ability, just not the ability to offer this as "cost effectively" at this time, it will be available in the new year.******

*****Ironically, Drummond tested the motor yesterday and we were under the impression this had already been done. He was very impressed and his results exceeded his expectations. He has well documented same engine before and after data. His results also exceed our advertised performance gains in some areas but don't take my word for it.....*********


Not all of the races brag about using our coatings because they do not want others to know about the advatage they have, look for our log on some of the highest profile rotary race cars in the world in the very near future

We follow SAE standards for automotive tests and the process is also ISO 9002 Certified .

Most of the common questions should be addressed on our new site shortly.

Thank you for information directly from the source.

That's all common knowledge.. you round about claim to use the same coatings as the 787B on your website yet the product is an inhouse manufacture? unless you created the coating for the 787B then that misrepresentation as well. Not overly smart for a group of ' mechanical eng.


care to point out WHERE on your website this 'extensive test' information is, seems you won't provide the actual information so I'll take you up on your suggestion and do the reverse eng. myself.. thanks.




wait you think your coatings now are cost effective??


not sure how you can adequately test an enigne with valid long termresults in one DAY, considering the material takes longer to break in then normal crome I would think that a LONG TERM test would be the only way to make valid and useable impression.




then again most comanies who provide a perfomance coating such as this have data of SOME SORT to back up thier claims.. I've never had an issue with swain handing over tech data to compare with other prodcuts...

thats a joke right? I've dealt with ISO 9001-9002 tier 1-3 automtive suppliers.. in one year the avg rate of rejestc from those companies was in the millions of dollars ISO 'standards' is meaningless. it's more about recordes and book keeping then actual production standards.. all you did was spend the $15K and waste 6 months of your employees time on it.

I look forward to it as your old one is void of anything worth while.


For some reason this whole thing has rubbed me the wrong way. something going on here that does not ring true. Maybe I just find it impossible to believe that these eng. are so unorganzied and misrepresent the product..

fack.. idiot 30min editing time.. I wanted to add.. ( and do some typing error corrections )


" I realize that people are anxious to have an alternative to a new housing and really want to believe in this product.. but frankly I've seen nothing to back up ANY of the claims.. these are mearly predictions of ability nothing more until thier are adequate long term tests. "