t-von

iTrader: (8)

Maybe your right. I can take constructive critisism. I just can't stand it when people throw the dictionary in the conversation everytime someone mis-spells a word. Nobody here writes or speaks perfect English.

peejay

But they don't.

Round or square doesn't matter. If the seals are the correct thickness, they will crush to fill the cross-section of the seal groove. This seems to be the main problem with the seals: They are of insufficient cross-section, so they do not form a good seal. They fact that they don't degrade rapidly because of blowby due to this defect *is* testament to the quality of the seal. But if they were the correct size (and I am going from other peoples' testimony, I have never tried them) then they would not leak in the first place.


Wunderseal = Germanism. Like how people say uber-this or uber-that. Wunderseal = superseal or wonderseal.

It's a common error and one that needs to be addressed in public. I find it funny that people always bitch about "SEARCH!!!" but searching is useless if people don't spell things correctly.

t-von

iTrader: (8)

Yes they do! The last Fd engine I rebuilt overheated and the inner stock coolant seal gave out. The engine had less than 5k on it. I re-installed some Mcmaster teflon inners and called it a day. That same engine is running great to this day. The stock seals don't have the same max heat threshold as the teflons. My teflons are rated up to 500 degrees. They don't need to be put in a certain way. You also don't have to worry about them twisting like the stockers. They are a breeze to install. Just use jelly to hold them in.



The testament to the quality of these is how they are able to relieve excessive pressure from an overpressurized cooling system without complelety failing or allowing something else to fail. When there is no pressure relief within the cooling system, you will find a weakness elsewhere within the system. This is when radiators, coolant lines, and heater cores start to fail (after corrosion has done the majority of the damage). This thread here is about the poor fitting RA versions.

Just so you understand, I came in here to clarify that there are teflons out that are a better fit than the thinner RA's. I don't want someone to get the wrong idea the teflons aren't any good. You just have to make use that if you decide to go the aftermarket route that you purchase the right ones. I have the Mcmaster Carr teflons. They fit perfect, are reusable, and are much cheaper than the factory pieces. Also I just recently did a pressure test of my cooling system last week. I pressured the system up to 20 psi. In an hrs time I only lost 1/2psi. That loss is a result of my water pump slightly leaking at the shaft and not the seals.

peejay I suggest you do some actual research yourself with these (since you have no actual experiance with them). You may be suprised how good they really are.

Yukitama

The frost plugs should blow out before the o-rings if you froze the motor. I don't by the "intelligent" O-ring story either, how it can in someway distinguish the difference between differential pressures that are good and bad. For example, frozen coolant to working chamber versus regular coolant pressure to high vacuum, or combustion pressure to low coolant pressures. Besides a for a running motor to deflect that much without other damage is unbelievable as well.
If you saw white smoke, chances are something else was leaking and the motor was ingesting it through the air cleaner.

peejay

Okay, they do on FD engines less than 5k old. I've overheated the snot out of several 12As with no adverse effects.

Did someone overtorque the tension bolts? The main reason why water seals fail after overheating is because the aluminum housings get crushed becayse they try to expand more than the tension bolts do, and then the bolts have lost tension (because what they are torqued against is now smaller) and them wham. Mazda had numerous weak bolts torqued to low torque in order to combat this, allowing the bolts to stretch more without damaging the aluminum.

I have noticed that a lot of people recommend much higher torques for the tension bolts than OE specification, which takes away any tolerance for overheating the engine may have.

t-von

iTrader: (8)

I did not freze the motor never said I did. Only the thin fins of the radiator were froze preventing circulation nothing else. Without any circulation pure water will boil very fast in this kind of environment. When you hit that boiling point the pressure rises up very drastically. In my case the pressure forced the pure water past the sealing point of my round teflon inner cooling seals up untill the point my lower radiator hose blew off.

Intellegent O-ring? I think you are taking what I'm saying to the extreme. The facts are the round teflons don't have as much sealing surface area as the square stock seals. With less less contact surface area to form the overall beast seal, this leaves the round teflons more vunerable to possible leakage in an overpressure situation. That's just your basic scientific priciples. All this means is that they are pressure limited to a certain PSI.




I would love to here your explanation as to how you think that's possible in my sistuation?

Just to let you know this isn't the 1st time the white smoke thing has happened. When I 1st rebuilt the engine I ran only water to test for leakage. When I didn't properly burp the air out of the system, I had an air pocket causing the engine to run really hot when I was driving around. When this happened I got a brief moment of white smoke out my tail pipe. It went away after about 2 seconds. At the same time my heater stoped working. I had zero external leaks. I knew right then my water level was too low and that it was boiling. I flushed the system and added coolant and it has been fine and holding pressure ever since.

t-von

iTrader: (8)

Your forgetting I've owned a couple 12a's back in my day. One time I drove 10 miles at freeway speeds when I lost my radiator. I was a stupid college kid and didn't want to pull over. Anyways the engine pegged the red mark and ran and ran and ran. I got to a service station to put in some water. This allowed me to get back home. I never got white smoke out of this engine and was shocked at how well the engine was able to still run after that much abuse. A week later this engine locked up at start-up. Fd's on the other hand put a ton more pressure on the cooling seals. The engine runs that much hotter. The pressure is that much higher. If you don't use good filtered water in the Fd system, you will loose a cooling seal sooner than later from corrosion. Plus you have a smaller radiator with shitty engine bay air flow. Fd cooling seals fail very very often in a corrosive envirionment. I was fortunate to take care of my system so well that mine lasted 108k till I blew the engine.

I can't say as both engines were Mazda remans. One engine had the inner cooling seal installed incorrecly. It was twisted. It failed after it overheated once when an improperly sized radiator hose started rubbing up against the air pump belt.

ronbros3

I run EVANS coolant, factory seals, never a problem,in 3yrs.


except the cop who stopped me 100 in a 45 zone, yeah! I know better.(I think)

TonyD89

iTrader: (10)

OK. I'm finally ready to resurface the side plates for my new motor. I can totally clean them up but I will have to exceed the .002" material removal limit. I think I may have to go to .004" on some but not all sides. I will be having them re-nitrided.

My questions to you is will the TES coolant o-rings take the extra compression? Is there a better choice? Viton? I would really like to clean them up a 100% but if I have to I will leave .002" of the wear in them.

I searched "Teflon coolant seals" and read all the threads and decided to bring up this one because there is posts about the dia. of the RA seals being slightly small. Could this be the solution that I'm looking for?

Any and all advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Kyrasis6

RA recommends stretching a teflon encapsulated seal to make it fit!!!!

BA HAHAHAHAHAHA

LOL, Well there's your problem!!!

TonyD89

iTrader: (10)

Well, exactly what does that have to do with the idea of running a slightly shallower o-ring groove and which seal other than stock might be best?

Kyrasis6

Sorry, I was responding to the thread as a whole and not the latest part of the conversation

The two different materials have different elasticities and are basically laminated together. Stretching this type of O-ring, especially if focused in one spot will cause it to separate, just like in the photos. Seen it before on other applications and I'm sure I'll see it again.

I'll bet that if you inspect the o-rings before hand to make sure they don't have any defects, make sure they fit without stretching, and has the right amount of squish which every o-ring needs, the amount of failures people are seeing will be reduced dramatically.

As for the depth of the seal groove, anytime you go with an aftermarket part there is the possability the OEMs specs may longer apply. If one where installing a forged piston to replace a cast piece in a piston engine you would no longer use the same clearances the factory manual calls for, same goes with something as basic as an o-ring. A different type of seal will require a different amount of crush. So yes, if you need to shave the irons past spec selecting a thinner o-ring to better match the amount of crush is probably advisable. I'm not that familiar yet with the hardening on the irons to know for sure how the over machining of the irons may affect them in different ways.

Some seal manufacturers give engineering specs that tell you how much cross section and crush space you need for different material seals and stuff in the front of their catalogs. I used to have access to one of Parker Seals books but don't anymore :-( I should have photocopied it when I had the chance.

lastphaseofthis

iTrader: (8)

i personally Thank ReTed for his insight, as i am building an engine this week and using the RA seal kit for the first time. after 4 or 5 post i was getting a little worried. but now i see i will be fine . ALL my ***** clean as hell.

t-von

iTrader: (8)

If the RA seals are infact slightly smaller diameter than the Mcmaster-Carr versions, then I would say yes. They would be the better choice. The only way to tell is to buy one of each to compare.

yodaddy

anybody have a part number for the mcmaster ones? for some reason the number brian posted isn't working.

TonyD89

iTrader: (10)

I would really like some of the professionals opinions on this. I don't think the only reply was conciseness.

How many fudge the .002"? If I did would a smaller (in diameter) o-ring be more desirable?

yodaddy

nevermind, found what i was looking for, thanks.

BDC

My number is broke because of a billing "issue" I'm having with Cingular. I went to T-Mobile friday afternoon and yet I still don't have a working phone because, apparently, there's a problem getting the number ported over from Cingular. Hopefully I can fix it tomorrow morning on Monday.

The part # for those that are looking for the McMaster-Carr version of the inner water jacket TES orings is 9319 K239.

B

arghx

iTrader: (3)

I'm glad I just found this thread. I was about to put my motor together with RA inner coolant seals (and I know people who have had no problems with them), but it seemed wise to just switch to the McMaster Carr. I might try to physically compare the two when I get the McMaster Carr ones in.

arghx

iTrader: (3)

I just got my dial caliper out. The McMaster Carr o-rings are about 2.55mm in diameter, the RA o-rings are 2.4, so the McMaster Carr are about 6% thicker.

Here are some comparison pics. Note that the RA seals have been sitting in my garage for a while and have been moved a couple times. they also come packed somewhat tightly into a small sealed plastic bag with the rest of the RA o-ring kit, while the McMaster Carr just came separately in a box with packing paper. I'm just trying to point out that this may not be a perfect comparison between the two.

RA at top, McMaster-Carr at bottom



McMaster-Carr is on the "outside" in this pic:

BDC

Nice shoes, Argh.

B

peejay

Interesting. The wire I use is nominally .091" in thickness or 2.31mm. The first stuff I used was .096" and it "hydrauliced" in the coolant passages and kept the housings from tightening against each other - it squished out and formed a T shape.

8,000 miles on latest engine and still not leaking, BTW. I was smelling coolant on cold start, so I thought that the recent deep freeze had combined with my low-tension engine torque and I was getting some seal leakage. Was planning on an engine teardown before the 2009 rallycross season started in earnest, maybe open the ports a bit more, etc.

Then I noticed that the intake manifold O-rings were seeping ever so slightly onto the headers, just enough to collect when the car sat and burn off when started.

jkep21

iTrader: (12)

What size mcmaster seal fits the outer groove or are they the same as the inners? I know the outer seals from mazda are relatively cheap but I might as well just order another hand fit seal from mcmaster for the outers.

mono4lamar

iTrader: (32)

^Jared, you could have just called me. I would just stick with Mazda outer seals for simplicity sake (I think I told you this already). Yes you're going to be joining the viton inner seals but once again, you're taking 2 more seals out of the equation that you could possibly mess up.

I'm sure you're not going to listen to me so when you get flustered give me a call and I'll come to the rescue...

mono4lamar

iTrader: (32)

Sorry, I actually forgot to answer your question. You're looking at 2.0mm or outer seals and 2.4 for inner seals. Goodluck...