Tracking location of used seals
 

I'm doing my first every rebuild and because I don't have any local experience to turn to for advice I've found myself getting down right OCD about the condition of my parts. My thinking is that being my first time doing this I'm more apt to make mistakes. I'm overcompensating by being overly picky about the things I can control.

It's a S5 JDM 13B that I'm rebuilding. On teardown I kept track of the FC seals by rotor, but not by position on each rotor. I had to replace the front rotor and did that with an FD rotor. It came to me with all the seals intact. On that rotor I tracked them. Every corner seal went back where it came from. Each side seal went back where it came from.

I specced out each rotor before assembly and found that every one of the FD side seal to corner specs were within spec. .0025-.006. Not a single one of the FC side seal to corner seal were in spec. All the FC specs were at .007-.008.

One factor to keep in mind. I kept all the seals in ziploc bags. One of the FC bags got moisture in it and rusted the side seals and corner seals. So I was working with less options when it came time to measure specs.

The mazda side seal to corner seal specs are way too lenient IMO. I typically clearance all new side seals to the minimum factory spec to help cut down on blowby and maximize compression.

^ that makes perfect sense. As an added sidenote, it seems like alot of leeway for specs when they go from .025 up to .006. The highest is over double what the lowest is. Somewhere in my files I have mazda competition specs. I haven't checked them, but I'm sure they are much tighter specs.

i agree. even I use a tighter spec for side seals, .002" to .0025", or basically you want it as tight as it can be without binding