well here it is... 13B engines from 1986 through 2002 with coolant seals located in the irons are subject to iron fatigue and possible coolant seal wall failure, the result is a failed coolant seal regardless of it's original condition.

granted this is not an issue that everyone will come across, the irons are milled differently and some have much thicker walls than others. even in some of those cases poorly maintained cooling systems will still result in broken coolant seal walls due to erosion.



this is an idea i put into application over a year ago in testing with irons in similar conditions to the above. the product is a sleeve that is placed inside the inner coolant seal channel to hold the seal even in the event one of the seal walls corrodes/fails.



this kit comes with a complete set of sleeves and inner/outer coolant seals designed to be used with these sleeves. the sleeves and seals are reusable to an extent, much moreso than the OEM coolant seals are. the inner seals are also not o-rings but square cut seals unlike many others who use round seals in the square peg hole, this allows the coolant seals more traction on all surfaces.



the engine must obviously be torn down to install these but as a prevention it is designed to buy time before coolant seals possibly fail again. in testing these sleeves performed still for the whole year of testing. i am not advocating tearing down a well running engine to install these but as an alternative to those who are and will be rebuilding your engines.


pricing for a set of seal savers and coolant seals for 2 rotor engines is $165 shipped to the US and $180 shipped worldwide. pricing for a 3 rotor engine is $240 to the US and $255 worldwide.

you can order by sending payment to me at paypal: ktm0012@sbcglobal.net and send me a PM on this board so i can expect the order to be made and get it taken care of.

contact info is:
Rotary Evolution
4375 West Reno ave #6
Las Vegas, NV, 89118
phone: 702-277-9846
sun-thur 10-6pm
fri-sat 2-11pm

 

questions/comments/concerns/suggestions?

i find it a little strange that one of the most costly design flaws that is mainly aimed at the '86-91 engines is getting such a low interest rate. considering this is one of my simplest/best ideas to date for a common problem that costs hundreds to thousands of dollars to fix.

i know many people want feedback before laying down any cash at all but the problem is this is something i designed to keep cars from coming back. to save you money, headache and heartache.

well i can say i have 6 engines running the production sleeves now and more on the way.

over the years i have gone through dozens of irons with this particular failure, 90% of them second generation 13B/T engines with over 100k miles on them. even a perfect looking iron has no gaurantee it will last days, months or even years.

 

I WILL be ordering some of these and your MOP lines, all in due time.

 

I think it's a great product if you are rebuilding.

 

just wanted to be sure this isn't an invisible thread or something.

also consider it for other builders as well, almost all builders use various products shared from other shops. i personally use products from just about every shop that has engine products to sell because i haven't found a single shop that has a perfect product for every application so to date. and it's time i offer something for them to use instead of them always getting my business.

one of the engines i put together with these sleeves left my shop just a few weeks ago, travelling across the open desert with nothing in between but hundred mile stretches of nothing but baking sun, desert and 2k foot inclines, running the air conditioner with his father behind the wheel. it made the 500 mile trip just fine, of course.

i do have just about everything for the internals in viton, a more durable material than any of the OEM seals. basically aimed to withstand temperatures that the engine itself cannot withstand.

 

I'm bookmarking this thread for the future. All my machines are currently running so I'm not in this boat yet. I think part of the low commentary is due to the forum it's posted in. The FC product development sub forum just doesn't get nor generate much traffic.

 

i suppose, the high traffic areas are off limits to advertising threads though.

 

I vote that this is a great idea. Upon my build, you should be hearing from you. Thank you for the time you took to develop this for the community.

 

*you should be hearing from me*

(sorry for double post)

 

thanks for the interest, trying to gauge how much materials i will need aside from the regular overhauls that i install them regularly on.

right now i have at least a dozen sets aside from stock i use for customer builds.

 

1) can these sleeves be used together with OEM seals?

2) what is height of the sleeves? can they be used with lappped/machined irons which obviously have smaller depth of groove than stock?

3) have you used them with 100% sucesss (no cooling issues and coolant loss) on irons which already had broken walls?

thanks!

 

1) i have not tested them with OEM coolant seals but they should still work with the stock seals since the stock seals rely heavily on elasticity of the seal for the seals to work, there is actually a pretty heavy gap in the seal channel with the stock seals to float around in. i really haven't used OEM seals in a number of years but i will try to get another set for testing purposes for those who want to only run the factory seals.

2) the sleeves are 1.50mm tall, a stock brand new iron channel is 1.67mm deep. nitrite is only about .004(.1mm) deep so it can allow for a single lapping pass on irons easily.

3) initial testing was done on with an engine i assembled with multiple iron breaks and test ran for 1 year. the coolant seals/sleeves held up, the sleeves were showing signs of stress at the breaks but were still doing their job.

 

Thanks for all answers, i will keep it in mind and eventually test it out too

 

What material are you using for the coolant seal and are they vulcanized? Im in the middle of a rebuild due to this type of failure and like this option.

 

the material is Viton, as far as i understand it is not vulcanized nor do i believe it needs to be. i have used viton seals for many internal parts for many years and have have never seen it deteriorate or even fail when being reused within reason.

 

I really like the idea, though I do plan on using OEM coolant seals since that's what I already have. If these will fit with the OEM seals, what will you charge for just the liners?

 

I like these, good idea. I will be ordering a set soon as I think my seals are failing prematurely

 

Looks like a great idea, just rebuilt mine so i won't be ripping it apart any time soon "knock on wood"

 

i tested the early model engine coolant seals but they are too shallow, i will be picking up a set of OEM seals in the near future to check the fitment and compression rate.

 

i wish i would have seen this before i built my engine. can never have too much protection.

i had a old rotorhead friend tell me that mazda did this from the factory on some engines (i think early engines, but not sure). he had like 20-30 of them in a bag that he'd pulled out of cores over the last 30 years.

 

never seen them before but i haven't cracked open many pre-86 engines. most old schools i rebuild are '74-78 13B engines which usually are still somewhat salvageable and i can count those on one hand, as well as a few 84/85 GSL-SEs.

i know mazda did have an issue with electrolysis and chamber leakages cooking the housings, this may have been their fix for the early rotor housing placed seal issues.

i had also heard of another shop where i used to live that had a patent on a copper coolant seal.. he had closed his shop many years before i ever met him and he was in poor health when i met him but his shop still stood. it sucked when i heard he died and all his inventory went wherever, he had shelves lined with new old stock mazda rotary parts from the 70's. he used to build rotaries for everything including and mainly for helicopters. strangely his website is still active, he scratched his head when i brought in some FC engine parts to see if he could repair them as he had never seen anything beyond the 80's.
http://www.rotorcraft.com/barnett/faq.html

anyways, will try to update those waiting on the OEM seals in a week or 2.

 

in regard to the OEM sleeves i do know what you are referring to, some aftermarket built engines had a very thin strip of stainless material that went along the compression side of the engine in the inner coolant seal channel, similar to this design and is where i got my original idea from.

but the material was very thin and did not cover the areas that generally fail(generally in the bottom half of the engine and usually on the front and center irons). i had only seen them installed by a certain shop in california, but it may have been a supplemental part from mazda, i can only assume due to the thickness of the material being minimal to not affect the OEM seals too much it was to decrease the seal valley width to improve compression of the OEM coolant seals in the compression pocket of the engine. late model engines had issues with coolant seals failing without any other reason than the seal exposed to combustion gases when the engine is cold, REW engines generally lose a coolant seal on that side of the engine with no other signs of failure within the engine.

the idea mazda implemented wasn't mainly aimed for this purpose it appears, but to prevent combustion gas from skimming between the coolant seals and into the cooling system when the engine is cold, this compromises the seal itself and caused premature failures of just the coolant seals without really affecting the iron walls.

as the irons gain age they become weak, meaning this issue is compounded as the engines get older and especially if the cooling system is poorly maintained.

 

in a few months when it's rebuild time on my S5 turbo 2 block I will be purchasing a set

 

can you make these for outside water jackets too?

I just tore apart heavily overheated RX8 block and prior dissasembly, i tried to pour water into it and it was leaking past both seals (inside to the rotor area and outside the block), without warming up or pressurising. Housings are seriously warped, but otherwise show basically no wear. I can get sides machined/lapped to the original specs in areas which expanded, but cant add more material where it dropped down.

If your sleeves worked with broken walls, they should probably work in this application too, but i would need 2 sets (inner ones and outer ones.....).
It might require some sort of aftermarket outer water jackets....

 

i would need to have a renesis block torn apart to get the sizing just right. sounds like a rather uncommon situation you have. i'm sure i could do it but the when is the question, all the renesis engines i just pull and swap with mazda remans at the dealer so when i will have parts on hand is a matter of time.