twan

iTrader: (2)

Are there any particular seals that hurley makes that are worth it? has anyone used their corner seals or their tip seals with success. I unfortunately am about to do my 1st rebuild ak about 65k and I want too get the best seals possible. Any other options?

twan

iTrader: (2)

Are there any particular seals that hurley makes that are worth it? has anyone used their corner seals or their tip seals with success. I unfortunately am about to do my 1st rebuild ak about 65k and I want too get the best seals possible. Any other options?

GoodfellaFD3S

iTrader: (213)

Not from what I've heard. I've also gone through at least 3 rebuilds due to the soft hurley seals (2mm for me).

The advise I give to all of our customers is this: Stock 2mm Mazda seals and *good* tuning, with 3mm seals for some specific applications.

I run stock 2mm seals on my R1. I don't anticipate ever dealing with Hurleys again unless they make some drastic changes to their products.

Rich

es

Abrasive? I've always heard far to the opposite of that. Cam at Pettit says he saw no housing wear after tearing down one of his motors, Carlos Iglesias recently rebuilt his motor due to a clogged oil pickup tube & said the same thing. Even the Mazda comp website says the seals don't wear & are self lubricating so the housings don't get scarred like with other materials. Hence the reason they like to use 1 piece seals with higher spring rate springs.

If you've ever noticed the first part of the rotor housing to go (with multi piece seals) is the edge that the triangle piece of the apex seal rides on. IMO this is partially due to where the spring rides. The spring rides close to the end of the triangle chunk making it want to rotate at the corner of the chamber. Great for chamber sealing but awful for rotor housing wear.

What data & experience do you form your opinion on?

Resource

Well........that suprises the hell out of me.......

RXTHREE

lets hope the new 2mm 2 piece from Mazda are a good thing.
If you buy a non genuine seal make sure the manufacturer supplies an xray of the complete set to prove its quality.

rex u.k

i heard the atkins seals are not radiused properly making poor compression.i heard good stuff about hurleys,was just going to order a set,not now! ithink stick with the tried and tested stock.

rex u.k

the new 2mm 2piece seals? are these replacements for the old three pieces or are you refering to the rx8 seals?

FEARED7

Welcome to the club! I bought 5 sets of 2mm race seals, all 5 went in no time. And the Side seals eat the plates so bad they all 5 had to be resurfaced....

Bryan
www.bnrsupercars.com

twan

iTrader: (2)

Guys, I gotta say, this is killing me. My rx just died 3 days ago and I don't know what to do. I drove her daily because I have a very nice 15 to 20 minute ride each day. Once in a while I take it on a trip to NY or even further to NC or VA but never to a track. Yea I like to blow away a vet or civic or jetta once it a while but not on a regular basis. I do want to upgrade for better performance but I'm not trying to rob a bank either. Give me some advise. I like what I see on the hurley site but you guys, most of you anyway, hate them. I don't want to go ceramic because of the dangers if they fail. just throw some suggestions my way.
thanks.

By the way, how long, on average, does it take kdrotary to rebuild a motor?

rxseven

twan, get the atkins ones if you think the stock ones are expensive. Many builders use them and are very happy with them.

Marcel Burkett

Nothing is better than stock , especially if you don't run your car hard on a regular basis , sacrifice a bit and pay the higher price , you'll save in the long run . I went through three sets of HURLEYS since I started , luckily there is a local racer (who breaks them just the same)who buys the good remaining "barely" used seals from me to do his rebuilds cheaper .

rex u.k

it seems alot of people are going through several sets,why bother using them again after you've already been bitten by them bfore?

RETed

I don't get it either...
When I first heard of the Hurley stuff, I was impressed...due to the price.&nbsp There had to be a catch...
Sure enough, we found out what it was - these are just plain cast steel parts.&nbsp This explains the relative softness and minimal damage when the seal fails.&nbsp I really don't know what the big fuss is about having minimal rotor damage when they let loose - it all still requires a rebuild, which is costly and time consuming.

Paul Ko @ K2RD did some checking on the stock Mazda OEM apex seals, and the tips (contact with the rotor housing) are hardened.&nbsp I think I found some literature about Mazda having them "electron beam hardened", which makes the tips 50% more harder than the rest of the base metal.&nbsp This is significant folks - I bet Hurley does not do this to their apex seals.&nbsp In fact, this is the same conclusion we came up with - no hardening at the tips.&nbsp This makes it a lot cheaper to make and explains why the Mazda parts are so expensive!

I just bought 3 sets of apex seals for 3 engines at a cost over $1,000 for all 18 apex seals!

The modified corner seals scare me also.&nbsp The side seals slightly oscillate in the grooves and contact exactly where it's thinnest on these Hurley corner seals.&nbsp That looks like disaster to me.&nbsp There is nothing wrong with the stock units (albiet we're running FD3S corner seal springs), so what's with the more complex design?

Sorry for dragging this out of the grave - I just found this through a link in the vendor section...


-Ted

mako

iTrader: (5)

maybe I am lucky but I have been running hurley 3mm seals in my motor for about 20k miles of daily driving over the past year. had a few minor mishapes with a wastegate that resulted in over 30psi of boost and the car still runs fine. I don't run ther funky sideseals or anything just the apex seals and springs.


guess i am one of the few that got a good batch? or maybe just a really good motor builder..

i will be interested to see what the inside of my motor looks like when I finally have to freshen her up. Hope that wont be for a good while though.

James

RETed

Oh, I was talking mainly about the 2mm stuff.
Maybe your 3mm stuff is good enough to work!
Congrads...

-Ted

JScott

Well add me to the list of ticking timebombs.... I built my engine w/ the Hurley's. First trip to the dyno, I leaned it out to 11.5-11.9 or so max. It put down 408rwhp at 15psi at 7k before it lost all the front rotor seals. It did hurt the rotor so I added a new rotor and 3 new Hurley's(again....). I tuned back to 10.7-10.9 and dropped boost to 14.5psi now and am staying away from the dyno. I trapped 120.3mph 2wks ago on 225 Kumho 712's, so it's still making power.

Sure wish I stumbled across this thread while I had it apart.....

I read a post by Judge Ito on another thread talking about the 2pc, 2mm seals being not tolerant of extreme heat. The day I dyno'd it was 104 ambient in the shop so I'm sure my combustion temps were pretty high. As I said, my car's been to the track and in few street battle's(kills more exactly hehe) and all is well.

Scott- knocking on wood, saving for Mazda 2pc seals

JScott

Well, I just had to post it...... I guess I jinxed myself. It lost the seals last night at the track on my first pass. Same way as the dyno, 4th gear around 7k it started misfiring as they went. Still drove it home.

SO, any updates on the new 2pc Mazda seals before I order mine? What about the new ones from Bruce Turentine? They sound like the sh%t to me but then again, that's what their saying and who has experience w/ them yet?

Hamza734

I'm really surpised to hear all these bad info about Hurley's.... a lot of racer's use them, as to many well known engine builders (my engine builder Bruce Turrentine, Rick Engman, Jim Downing's engine builder et al...).

I have a feeling its a QC issue with those seals. Also, it should be noted that Atkins seals are an exact copy of Hurley's in their material. Don't ask me how I know this.

GoodfellaFD3S

iTrader: (213)

One thing to note:

It makes sense that racers use Hurleys if you think about it. They rebuild their motor repeatedly themselves (thus no labor charges) and the seals do not damage any motor components when they let go. Voila, cheap rebuild. Average Joe Rotary Owner, on the other hand, is SOL when they go. Ask to see my Mastercard bill to see how I know........

Hamza734

Dude, chill out- I'm not implying that the seals going out were your fault. Skip at KD-Rotary tunes my car car and he HATES Hurley's. I don't think any less of him for it.

However, if some people are using them with good results, but others hate them it leads me to believe there's not something inherently wrong with them...
just that the company may have poor quality control or that their lax about customer service. Keep in mind, with ceramic seals had QC problems when they were first introduced. However, from a purely engineering background their a better seal.

Some have speculated that the 2-piece design has better sealing characteristics. This may very well be the case, which is why I think a lot of racers like them. Besides, all rotary engines break eventually. Get over it. Building these suckers is easy.

Glassman

iTrader: (1)

What would you like to know? nrsrotorsports@shaw.ca

Carl H

Hi All,
I would like to give out some info on things I have found out with seals in the course of my engine building.
Since i live in the UK I have seen a number of torndown engines that were built by Hurley engineering.Often there is damage to the rotor housings and often they have used 3.5mm and 4mm seals particularly in naturally aspirated engines.When they open up the slots in the rotors i have been told that they machine them with their corner seals in the rotor to get a better fit,this means that the corner seal may only fit that rotor in that position.Hurley also make a so called race apex seal that appears to be hardened on its rubbing surface which seems to cause less damage to the rotor housings.I personally have never used Hurley seals.

I have seen other engines built with hurley seals by other builders that have gone wrong due to the apex seal binding in the corner seal and either breaking the end of the apex seal or the side housings gets damaged due to the corner seal not being able to move back into its hole,this has created a deep groove in the side housings.
As to hurley side seals see my thoughts on side housings material in compatibiltiy with them below.

Mazda stock apex seals are very good,the rubbing surface is very hard and is ceramacised by the chill hardening of an electron beam,if you get an old seal try to file it with a metal file and you will see how hard it is.
Mazda corner seals are chrome plated on the rubbing surface so last really well from a wear point of view,I have had them annalysed.The new RX7 2 piece 2mm are very good and i have used many in rebuilds for the 3rd gen RX7.

The side housings are made to be compatible with the sintered iron side seals and to give an example of how critical this is I have heard that the side seals of the RX8 engine wear the earlier side housings quickly so Mazda must have changed both the RX8 side housings make up and the side seals characteristics too(Someone has run RX8 rotors in a 6 hour endurance race in an earlier 13b engine).I have heard that this a blackart and no one has an exact formula for what is compatible and what not,all is found out by experimentation.

One final point on Mazda seals,they have spent millions on developement,so who would you trust?

Iannetti apex seals are also very good,I use them in very high performance engines,they can stand alot of detonation in comparison to Mazda seals but are not unbreakable so careful tuning is still needed.Their value comes in on rebuilds in that as long as you have not had a major blowup they can be reused as they just wear so little. Abel ibarra is using them in his drag cars.
If you use them then Francesco Iannetti recomends to use one piece 2/3mm for turbo applications of high power and two piece design in naturally aspirated engines.I prefer 3mm for high power turbo engines.
A word of warning though,in my experience with the one piece design they take around 2000 miles of running in(Road cars) until they bed in properly and starting when hot improves,so do not think that something has gone wrong if you have poor starting at first. Also Dr Iannetti reccommends that new rotor housings are used with these seals.Dr Iannetti gave me an example of a guy in Puerto Rico who is running no turbo but has NOS on a 13b with 600 hp who has done over 500 runs up the strip and is pulling 13000 revs over the line,this engine has been rebuilt several times over more than 5 years using the same set of Iannetti seals.
I hope that this info sets peoples minds at rest on some issues they may have.
Kind regards
Carl

GoodfellaFD3S

iTrader: (213)

Who needs to chill out? Take a deep breath, go back and read what I posted. Where did I say anything about anything being anybody's fault I was making an informational observation, that's all.

Building these suckers is easy? Really.......I've never built one before

You know what they say about assuming .

No hard feelings, at any rate--
Rich

Hamza734

Should you break another engine, get Bruce Turrentine's rebuild vid...tells you exactly what to do.