Jose should be running this weekend too! He fired the engine just for a second or two and then shut it down as it was 10pm and little too loud for the neighbors.

 

 

My car is up and running! Would have hit the dyno today, but the power at the shop was out for 6hrs. Tomorrow it is....

 

what no engine bay pictures of the rx-8!!!

 

Jose Leduc's engine is up and running using the NRS ceramic power seals. engine sounds really strong. summerslam this weekend at englishtown Nj.. i'll post results

 

Sorry all I have for that is in the video on post # 12

 

I will post up pics of the engine bay very soon, and more video footage of it running.

 

jose leduc's rx3 ran 7.8 but had some issues and didn't run anymore..

 

I hope it's nothing serious! The two step sounded good

 

Sven,

any word on those 3mm 2pc apex seals as of yet? i just confirmed with Alec bell that my 4 rotor kit will leave New Zealand on Thursday. would love to try those 3mm in my engine with the corner seals.

RoB

 

Sven,
Update on my car. We got it on the dyno today. Made alot of power at low boost levels. Thats the good news. Bad news is the motor let go at only 30lbs of boost for unknown reasons thus far. A/F ratio's were 11.00 which is rich. EGT's were very safe. Timing was conserative. At 30psi it made over 822rwhp, motor let go at a very odd point, 9000rpms, well beyond peak torque. AIT's were very cool with a.i. so thats not an issue either. Motor will be torn down Monday. I pray to God these seals do what they're supposed to and didn't to any turbo damage. I'll keep you updated.
Ernie

 

Well not exactly the news I was hoping to get. I pray to God too that all is well with the turbo.
That's big power for 30psi though!!

Let us know how it goes on Monday.

 

Sorry to hear the news Ernie.

The seals aren't supposed to save your turbo in the event of a failure and the seals themselves are not failure resistant. They can be broken and may or may not take out everything in their way, it just depends on how big a piece is spit out into the turbine. I've experienced both failure scenarios myself and have documented it on this site with pictures. That said, I believe the seals held their ground in the face of some serious detonation in other cases where stock seals would have let go. Of course there is no way to prove that though, I just believe what I believe...

 

We had a set of 2mm NRS seals let go & they destroyed EVERYTHING... Plates, rotors, housings, turbo... everything...

Ernie, I have my fingers crossed that you salvage a lot more than we did. Good work on that power figure too!!!

 

Judge Ito,what sort of issues?? have been waiting to see how this car goes with the seal change.

 

what does Ernie t consider as conservative timing and what spark plugs are you running .

 

I agree. These seals have saved my *** numerous times. Conservativley, I would have gone through 3 motors by now if I didn't have them due to an intermittant fuel problem. I really don't care what they take out if they break because if I broke an NRS seal, the motor would have let go long befopre with other seals. As with most seals, it's mostly luck if nothing else gets damaged.
J

 

That's simply insane Ernie! However, definitely keep us in the loop asto what let go and how the NRS set held up. 822rwhp @ only 30lbs are absolutely sick numbers for a 13B.... I pray its a simple thing that can be corrected as I'd love to see 13B's being able to sustain those power levels reliably. Its seems CFM wise your set-up easily has over 900RWHP 'potential' being what it achieved at only 30lbs*




~ Kevin

 

jose had some seal damage. in all fareness, jose did not get a chance to dyno with the ceramic seals. something that jose usually does but didn't do this time do to rush. jose has interest to use the NRS seals again, but later on. After the pan american nationals. to be continue....

 

I'm waiting to speak to Ray about the corner seal clearances to the new rotors. The corner seals were made to a new stock diameter spec but they seemed to be a little tight on new rotors. I've had two reports that on new rotors the slots varied up to 0.001" on the small side. Rob from Pineapple pin mic'd a new one and Pete from Rice Racing reported the same deviation. As it turned out for Pete on his new rotor we had to supply 1 different corner seal (closer to the bottom of the 0.0005" spec) as it would not fit the 1 slot. The same corner seal fit nicely in a used rotor. I'm going to ask Pete to take it especially easy for the first 1000 miles (a luxury Ernie doesn't have) due to the tight clearances. We know the stock c.s. opens the slot slightly so hopefully the ceramic c.s. will do the same. We may never know for sure in this case but maybe too tight fit was the cause. Likely I will have to make future pieces with a little extra clearance for safety or put them in used rotors until we can get some completely positive results.

As I know mostly nothing about tuning Pete offered possibly some insight regarding knock monotoring.

"You really need to monitor knock in all these cars at high power.
To give you an example I tuned a stock FD3S yesterday and it was showing knock after 1500rpm past peak torque! It was such a cold day the car was making more power than ever before and that condition combined with winter fuel specifications means the amount of timing at that zone logged knock (38 on PFC) where as same car on exact same tune in summer had zero knock in exact same location. AND yesterday fuel temp was 10 deg cooler, air temp was 20 deg cooler! AFR was same, timing was same! (engine compression within 2psi of last test)"

Obviously this engine made massive power for the boost level, the question is how much did the corner seals add to the equation. We may have not gotten the final result we wanted but I think we showed that there are some real substantial gains to be had. Hopefully there is a lot more we can learn from this. I'm crossing my fingers that Ray recorded all the details on the build sheets I supplied and that we can get datalogging of the run.

Ernie, I'm glad the turbo is ok.

 

Yes, and your reports were completely honest, objective, fair and welcomed. This can be quite rare in this business. Thank you!

 

I just spoke to Cubewano regarding the ceramic apex seals used in their UAV engines. After 250 hours run time they could not measure any wear at all to the apex seals. Measurements were taken in a temperature controlled room using a digital micrometer. Not even 0.0001", a tenth of a thou, was noticed....nothing. The seals are run on Nikasil housings. This is really quite an amazing result and we are very pleased to be working with Cubewano on their rotary engine power plants for UAV's.

 

Any new word on the ceramic corner seals?

 

Pineapple has a set of 2mm ceramic corner seals, any and all testing will now be done at his shop. This way I know for sure I will get full disclosure of all clearances and specs of the build as well as an objective analysis in the case of a failure.

Rob is going to do some static drag comparisons to a factory c.s. in a special fixture he is making. Then we will play with increased spring pressures, the thicker springs should be finished by now and we have some made in 0.020" & even 0.025" thick. Stock is 0.016" thick. Once this part of the testing is complete he will build an engine recording all the clearances on our build sheets, as well Rob will provide all other pertinent details regarding the engine. Likely this will start after the 7 stock show. I'll post details on the static testing as soon as I have them.

 

i might try out these seals