drama

iTrader: (37)

Has anyone here used the teflon o-rings from Adam heyman at RX-7 Specialties, In Calgary, Canada. And if so how has your experience gone so far.

sk8world

iTrader: (5)

+1 rotary avation inner seals failed on my motor. BDC replaced them with oem's and motor is fine now.

Indian

iTrader: (1)

add me to the list as of now
Great thread Brian.

CrackHeadMel

iTrader: (2)

ive hurd rumors of this before. how do you mate the ends of the wire to provide a continious seal? or is this just for the engine that only has to last one day

Stanello

iTrader: (1)

1

zayrx7

I've been using ra oring kits for about 4 yrs, never had a motor come back for overheat issues. www.rx7store.net
__________________

2a+RoN

my RA seals failed as well.

BDC

What was the failure mode you noticed upon disassembly?

B

scathcart

I built a few motors using their seals. Some were ok, others acted like a warped housing. Swapping in Mazda seals completely solved the problem.
Stopped using them around the same time I ditched their rotor-housing eating apex seals.

Comitatus

iTrader: (7)

Mine were starting to fail/failed with only about 600 miles on them. Upon disassembly, we noticed that the teflon jacket had started to split.

Mazda OEM for me this time around.

Here are a couple pics:

2a+RoN

Rear seal was completely split near the exhaust port, this was in a motor with less than 2000 miles on it. Other seals were showing the teflon jacket splitting like mentioned above.

Took the motor apart, replaced with mazda seals and have put 5000 miles on it without any problems. While the motor was apart, I even replaced the stock exhaust sleeves with some AL ones which would obviously put even more heat into the water near the port..

2Lucky2tha7

iTrader: (3)

so here I am..........reading this 7 months later and wow!!
I've reused my seals 3 times. Yes, 3 times already!! They have 36,000+ miles on them and I never had a problem. I know exactly what you guys are referring to about fitment and all, but even then, I never had a problem. I think I had to stretch mine a little bit too, but I made sure it was done VERY evenly.
Weird....

680RWHP12A

i used them once, because the customer provided them for his rebuild.. they didnt fit well,but i used them anyway.. 6 months later his motor starrted showing signs of an overheated blown motor, i rebuilt it again with mazda seals.. its been fine ever since.. he was using a ron davis radiator so i know that was not the issue

AnthonyNYC

iTrader: (3)

I've used them on my motors for over 5 years with no issues. I also use them in motors I build for friends with no issues. But after reading all of this I am really hesitant to use them in someone else's motor other than mine!

Anthony

patman

iTrader: (3)

you blew the motor 3 times?

2Lucky2tha7

iTrader: (3)

Correct!
The first one was already blown because that's how I got the car.
The second time around (8,000 miles later), the rear rotor bearing seized onto the e. shaft. A stupid --but valuable-- mistake that I made (please don't ask)
The 3rd time (@29,000 on the RA o-rings and seals--->and the pineapple aux. sleeve inserts) was due to the front aux. sleeve insert popping backwards towards the steel pin on the other end of the sleeve and knocked it out, and then the sleeve got sucked back in place and the steel pin flew right in and caused catastrophic failure (punctured the rotor).
My current build is an s4 TII block w/ s5 N/Arotating assembly.

crispeed

Brian.
Did you check for shrinkage/warpage on the rotor housings?
It might be that the RA seals are less tolerant of that problem than the Mazda ones especially when dealing with used housings. Even the factory o-rings depending on application meaning if it's a NA or boosted application would seal even when they are out of spec to a point. The OEM does allow a little more flexability in that department.

kabooski

anyone besides me cut the black o-rings when there too big/stretched with a razor knife and use silicon? Done this quit a bit on my motors and it always worked fine.

GoodfellaFD3S

iTrader: (213)

Personally, I'll use Mazda OEM or the Pineapple o-ring kit. I havent been impressed by anything Rotary Aviation that I've gotten my hands on.

http://www.pineappleracing.com/index...PROD&ProdID=99

I personally think that RA is negligent with this little piece on their website:

"Main Bearing 1979-1991 and 4 port Renesis $22.90 In Stock
This part is for 1979-1991 Engines AND Renesis 4 port 2003 - 2006. You CAN use it on the 1993-1995 engine IF you CUT OFF THE LOCKING TAB. "

taken from (third pic down):

http://www.rotaryaviation.com/new_page_3.htm

These main bearings certainly will not cut it in an FD application, they do not have nearly enough windows in the bearing to offer sufficient lubrication, locking tab or not.

t-von

iTrader: (8)

Guys I know this thread is about the RA versions but if you use the Mcmaster seals, you wont have any problems at all. No stretching needed. Regardless of the thread title, a thread like this will only miss lead people into thinking that the tephlon seals in general are no good. My engine has 18k on them and have been abused pretty badly.

Check out this amazing story.

Recently I've been just running water through my engine since I've been trying to find a coolant leak (later found at the thermostat housing). One night we had a suprise freeze that I wasn't aware of. I woke up as was like ****, I forgot to add coolant. Thinking the water was froze, I went to start the car and it fired right up with no unusual noises. I was like cool! So I'm on my way to work driving 70 on the interstate. As I near my exit, I start seeing a huge cloud of white smoke exit my tail pipes. I was like **** there went my coolant seals. All of a sudden the smoke stoped. As I exited I started noticing that my temp gauge was rising with no sign of going back to normal. I shut the car down and coasted to a safe location. I popped my hood and removed the radiator cap to find that my radiator was froze with water still in it. I looked down and noticed that the lower radiator hose had popped off. Ahhhhhhh now it all made since. With the radiator froze, there was no circulation so the un-froze water inside the engine started to boil and the pressure blew the hose off. I thought then why the white smoke? I was hoping it was just the excessive pressure inside the engine forcing the water past the coolant seals and into the combustion chamber.


I called a fello co-worker to pick me up. The only way for me to know if the engine was fine was to let the radiator thaw out and come back later. After work I returned, hooked the hose back up and put in some coolant and water. I started the car and drove away with my father following me. So far so good. The tephlon coolant seals did infact held up to all that abuse. That was a month ago and my car is still running perfectly fine with no signs of coolant seal failure. Stock coolant seals would NOT have survived this. Once they let go, they let go. The tephlons allowed the pressure to relieve through the combustion chamber up until the point it was soo great that it blew the new hose off my radiator. Based on my experience, I will NEVER go back to stock seals.

peejay

On the other hand, I did that on numerous occasions (shame shame) with stock seals as installed by Mazda 150-210k prior to my abuse!

Not only freezing the radiator, but also blowing apart the heat hose under the oil filter (and cooler on that engine). It's true, when you're driving down the road you do NOT notice it until it's too late. Fortunately, the only time that happened to me while driving, my plug wires were shoddy and the water sprayed on the wires causing a horrible misfire.

And numerous occasions of just plain running low on coolant and pegging the gauge... or running out of radiator when rallycrossing (speeds below 40mph, minute-plus long runs at near WOT most of the time, five to six runs in the space of an hour...) causing boiling-over... or the time the engine boiled over because the wires worked loose from the e-fan relay and I was standing away from where the car was idling and didn't notice until I saw coolant geysering from the overflow...

Maybe that engine just had 12 or 13 lives? Or maybe the stock seals are also PDG? (And when that engine died, it was an apex seal failure... cooling system still intact)

Then again I also have had good luck with Right Stuff silicone and 18-gauge hookup wire (yes like for radio installs etc.) ! Including overheating because I was dicking with the carb while it was idling and I forgot that I didn't have the fan installed yet...

PS - Every time I froze the radiator, it broke the lower tank. Wasn't always immediately apparent. Just a FYI and a heads up to watch it very closely.

t-von

iTrader: (8)

The main point about my storey was how the seals survived the blowby pressure. In my situation the pressure was so great that the water was forced past the coolant seals and into the combustion chamber (causing me huge amounts of white smoke) up until the hose blew off. If stock seals would have relieved the pressure this way, they would still be leaking today. I have never heard of any situation where a stock seal leaked water like this and miraculously repaired itself. When the water seeps past that tephlon ring barrier, the combustion chamber heat/pressure will then guickly breakdown the rubber causing the seal to fail. That's my point!

peejay

MY point is that the stock seals wouldn't have leaked in the first place.

Think of it this way... pressure in the combustion chamber is on the order of hundreds of PSI. Do you think you had hundreds of PSI in your water jacket? (I'll bet you didn't...) It isn't a one-way seal, allowing pressure to flow one way but not the other. Likewise, if water leaks past, then the fact that there is a poor seal is why chamber pressure quickly breaks down the seal, not merely the presence of water.

Now, if you were to argue that the bottom half of the engine runs hotter, and so develops a tighter metal to metal seal, so maaaybe it was in fact sealed better at the bottom where the heat and combustion pressure is, vs. at the top where it's much cooler and therefore has less crush... then maybe I'll buy that. But it still shouldn't have leaked *at all*. Stock seals certainly do not. Neither do high tech solutions like hookup wire. And besides... did you have any leakage out of the TOP of the engine? The beauty of a liquid cooling system is that the liquid is necessarily everywhere and at the same static pressure. Therefore, the same pressure blowing past the wunderseal should also have blown past the outer seal. Did it?

PS - It is spelled Teflon, with an f, and a capital T because it is a proper noun, Teflon being a trade name for PTFE.

t-von

iTrader: (8)

And my point is if they do they are done.




I forgot to menchion that I had stock outers. MY BAD! Yes they do a great job of sealing but they dont fail nearly as much as the inners as they aren't subjected to nearly as much heat and abuse. I know what your trying to get at about the static pressure possibly causing the water to blow past the outer seal. It didn't happen in my case as the stock seals are square. My tephlon inners (ok ok teflon just for you) are round so even through they are fairly thick, they still wont compress enough to seal with the same amount of sealing surface area as the factory square seals in the square like housing grooves. This lower surface area is the reason my teflon inners leaked the way they did under excessive pressure. Too me that leakage is fine under these severe conditions cause I know for a fact that once the stock inners allow any water to seap past them they are done.



This comming from someone who spelled underseal "wunderseal"? The "W" and "U" are no where near each other on the keyboard so you can't say it was a typing error. I'm not going to break out the dictionary (like people here seem to do all the time on miss spelled words) as I don't play that silly game. Don't tell me your also one of those who like to look for words that are spelled incorrectly to make yourself look smarter for correcting them? You do know there are a bunch of people in the world who have Phd's and don't know how to change their own tire? Please lets not turn this thread into some spelling contest. Everyone reading here knows exactly what I'm saying. It doesn't take proper spelling to prove one understands how something works.


P.S. You could have PM'ed me the spelling correction but you choose not to.

BDC

I think peejay is being sarcastic with the "wunderseal" comment.

B