I'm carefully working through my first rebuild. Everything was going smoothly until a few minutes ago.

I had the front rotor assembly all together, minus apex seals and intermediate iron. I removed the corner seals and springs to insert the apex seals. I set the springs and seals on the rotor :/ Sometime after this, I noticed that one of the springs was gone.

I looked all over for it, cleaned and swept the whole damn workshop, crawled around, couldn't find it. I took the rotor out of the housing and finally ended up taking the housing off the iron....still nothing.

It doesn't bother me so much that it's gone, I'm just fearing the worst and wondering if it's wedged into a coolant passage or inside the rotor or something stupid like that. I looked with a flashlight the best I could, going to try some compressed air and see if that knocks anything loose.

Anyone got any advice here? Any thoughts as to what this thing could do if it is indeed stuck in a coolant passage? Any hidden places to look? 90 minutes of searching and I'm frustrated.

 

it is most likely inside the front sideplate in the coolant passage. Just find it and do it all again. It happens. Next time put a dap of grease on each corner of the rotor and set the 3 pieces there(corner seal, seal sping and apex seal corner piece). Or substitute with petroleum jelly.

 

Gah. Got the air compressor downstairs and hit all the coolant passages with 90psi...can't see anything in there.

Is it possible I warped time and space around my engine and it ended up in Utah?

I'm just worried because it seems like the most likely spot, but i'm 80% sure it's not in there. I've done about everything I can short of tearing the engine down to nothing and shaking the iron out myself.

I'm cautiously going to rock it, I think.

Subscribe to this thread for when I can't start it and my turbo eats that spring in 2 months...haha.