Brandon

Facts in R&D:

1. Research is basic to the establishment of a theory (good information is helpful, but not required)

2. Theories provide a basis for testing

3. Development is basic to refining the processes of testing a theory (tinker tinker tinker)

4. Testing is the basis for making final claims (pretesting claims are hypotheses and predictions but carry no warranties or guarantees)

5. Nothing is proven until it is tested (duh).


Rules of Law regarding fraud etc

1. causes of action involving common law fraud, consumer fraud, and breach of warranty require sales or (at least) offers to sell. (DUH!)


Scalliwag has done nothing than follow the rules of R&D. You have already demonstrated your disregard for the patience required for development. Please do not upset, distract or otherwise derail Scalliwag's work.

If Scalliwag ever actually produces these things for sale and makes some final claim or provides some guarantee and does not fulfill those claims or honor those warranties. . . seeing as how "consumer fraud" prosecution is my day job, I will be very interested in your opinion ...but until then....its his money he is screwing around with. Let's try leaving him alone to do his work.

 

I have no problem at all with scrutiny. It's morons that did not check the facts and go on a bitch fest.
People that cannot comprehend that there are some things that are common sense **** me off as well.
If you grind two metals and one is harder to grind (and not due the the fact one is a soft metal an gumming a cutter) you can assume it is the harder one to grind has a higher hardness. Or if you polish two metals out and one is so much slicker to the touch that you can feel the difference that would indicate the one that feels slicker has a lower coefficient of friction.
And it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if one metal is harder to scratch there is a damn good possibility it will be more wear resistant.
Numbers a great and I looked at numbers, you did not.

But hey, thanks for the numbers on the stock side housings. I'm just a dumbass and figured that since the stock **** was easier to grind, it was not as hard.
And you may not think a bunch of yahoos like Scheepers and other racers that built a shitload of motors and looked at even more housings that seen the test housing and want to try them, but hey I got the feeling they would not think much of you either.

AGAIN, put up something, any freak'n thing you have accomplished.

 

Okay, so one claim was backed up - but only after someone else did the appropriate research for you. Now what do you have to say about frictional wear, bonding strength, thermal stress durability, etc? You may have looked at some numbers, but you've only looked at half of the picture - the LM half. That much, I feel, has become abundantly clear.

With that said, however, jeff48 makes some good points. I could argue with him on semantics, but I'll concede to his request that I back off and leave you to do your own R&D. I do hope, however, that maybe you'll refrain from making such great claims from now on.

As I said in the very first post, I'm one for results. Since you can't (yet) offer results, I'm forced to fall back to the data available, and I'm not at all convinced. Show me results, Scalliwag.

Brandon

P.S. BTW, who is Ken Scheeper? I've never heard of the guy. Have you talked to Rick Engman? He's someone whose input I would covet. A quick call to Downing/Atlanta for his number would probably be worth the time and dime.

 

It really doesnt matter what his claims are, it doesnt even matter what he actually does or doesnt know. The fact is if it works it works, regaurdless, end of story. It wont matter. There have been MANY inventions and imporvements to products over the last hundreds of years by people that just came up with an idea and did it.

It really doesnt matter anyway, he must feel like he knows enough to gamble his money on it and I'm glad someone does and is taking the chance!!!! Even if he knows the answers if I were him I wouldnt talk about it cause then someone else could just run out and duplicate it. Who knows maybe thats why you are pushing so hard for these answers.

You remind me of a bench racer that sits around talking about how thier car should be able to do this or that with this part or that part if x = x and y=y but its all in theory. Then some other guy just goes out and does it instead of sitting around speculating.

Fact is Mazda built the entire car on a budget constraint, I'm sure if the cost for that coating is as high as he says then it wouldnt fit into Mazdas budget anyway. They are going to use the best product within the budget not the best overall. They sell housings at retail for $450 and thats the ENTIRE housing not just a inside coating....I'd say they dont have the budget for a $300 coating, they prob dont have that in the entire housing. There is a aftermarket part to replace almost EVERY SINGLE part on a rx7......which tells me mazda didnt get the absolute best thing they could, they got what would work and still fit inside thier economical budget.

The testing will tell if it works or not, if it works it wont really matter what he does or doesnt know. If it doesnt work no one but him has lost out so that doesnt matter either.

As far as I'm concerned thats the end of discussion and I think he should just ignore your posts in regaurds to this conversation.

Skalliwag - I think the $300 per housing isnt that bad if it can be spot treated later for $100 or so afterwards. That makes all the difference in the world!!!

Good work and keep it up!!!
STEPHEN

 

Unfortunately, that's just not true any more. USPTO statistics show that the vast majority of new patents today are filed by companies. In the past, individual innovation was common, but today, to surpass the state of the art requires resources that the average person does not possess. That's not to say it doesn't happen, only that it's far less common than it once was.

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It really doesnt matter anyway, he must feel like he knows enough to gamble his money on it and I'm glad someone does and is taking the chance!!!! Even if he knows the answers if I were him I wouldnt talk about it cause then someone else could just run out and duplicate it. Who knows maybe thats why you are pushing so hard for these answers.

I'm glad you're happy that he's willing to gamble his money, but are you willing to do the same? Because without an established body of knowledge on which to based your decisions, that's exactly what it is.

I also resent the notion that I'm interested in stealing his ideas. If they work, great. But I want to be assured that they're based on sound principles, especially when the failure of one of his parts could cost me over $2,000. I lack both the experience (he's obviously an experienced machinist) and desire to replicate his work (I don't think it will work!).

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You remind me of a bench racer that sits around talking about how thier car should be able to do this or that with this part or that part if x = x and y=y but its all in theory. Then some other guy just goes out and does it instead of sitting around speculating.

And you remind me of the person who goes out and buys an electric supercharger without considering the implications of such a device. "But it says on the box that it adds twenty horsepower and increases my gas mileage!"

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Fact is Mazda built the entire car on a budget constraint, I'm sure if the cost for that coating is as high as he says then it wouldnt fit into Mazdas budget anyway. They are going to use the best product within the budget not the best overall. They sell housings at retail for $450 and thats the ENTIRE housing not just a inside coating....I'd say they dont have the budget for a $300 coating, they prob dont have that in the entire housing. There is a aftermarket part to replace almost EVERY SINGLE part on a rx7......which tells me mazda didnt get the absolute best thing they could, they got what would work and still fit inside thier economical budget.

You feel that it's cheaper for Mazda to invest millions on research into and developing a process of diecasting the rotor housing, applying a bondable surface, bonding a Molybdenum chromate (iirc; I don't have the docs in front of me right now) coating, and then machining that surface, than to build the housing, spray a commercially available coating, and then polish that coating? Scalliwag claims that his coating is better in every way than Mazda's! Do you not think that, even adding 25% to the cost of a housing, it would not make economic sense to use just such a process? Especially if a housing could be spot-treated, thus saving Mazda hundreds per remanufacture? To assert that is nothing short of ridiculous.

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The testing will tell if it works or not, if it works it wont really matter what he does or doesnt know. If it doesnt work no one but him has lost out so that doesnt matter either.

This is true.

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As far as I'm concerned thats the end of discussion and I think he should just ignore your posts in regaurds to this conversation.

Skalliwag - I think the $300 per housing isnt that bad if it can be spot treated later for $100 or so afterwards. That makes all the difference in the world!!!

Good work and keep it up!!!
STEPHEN

Brandon

 

For those of you that actually want to read up on the coating go to http://coatings.liquidmetal.com/
Hit the Products and the Material links.

 

Again with the snide remarks? The website you've referred to is TERRIBLY short on information, reading more like a product brochure than any sort of actual documentation. Perhaps you've got something more substantial?

Brandon

 

The point is it wont matter because everyones decision will be based on actual usage and testing by independant well known shops. I dont care who or how they came up with it if it works. Its irrelevant to me, just like I couldnt care less how Mazda makes a housing. I use it because its the best thing out there. If people find that these are better or just as good then I'll get thiers.

How do we know Mazda doesnt just spot treat them or just recoat them for cheap but still sell them for $450??? Maybe they do? I dont know....do you?

If somone like Ari starts running 9 second passes on a electric supercharger then I'll get it cause it obviously works. However I wouldnt buy it just off of theory. I couldnt care less about the theory, I want to see it work and if it works I'll buy it

STEPHEN

 

I dont care if he smears dog **** around it then freezes it. If it will work good and hold compression with oem seals for 75K miles then thats good enough for me.

STEPHEN

 

These are the claims that Armacor makes. You can request a data sheet for Armacor LM-M from them.
I have talked to Hewy Jackson in Texas. You can contact the people in Florida and they can send you the detailed specs (813) 314-0280

 

DAMN!!!!! who really cares about the specs? i will have a set of his housings in my 10k rpm methanol burnin race motor as soon as he is ready to accept orders!i have a lot of unorthodox ideas of my own inside my motor and even if someone wants the specs , i will not tell! either you want it or you dont. No7yet, why are you soooo concerned with Scalliwags ideas? he does not have to justify anything to you, you have not accomplished anything extraordinary (that i know about) in the rotary industry. Just buy new housings from Mazda and do not worry about it, it is pretty obvious to me that Scalli is not trying to pull one over on us. if he were he would have just lied and said that they work perfect and started accepting orders to cover the obvious money that he has already invested in the project. due to my NASA background i am familiar with the materials he is using and i am 100% sure that it will work. the coating is really not the issue, the issue is the process of putting the coating on and keeping the proper inside dimensions. if he has that covered than all will be good!! Motor on Scalli, i am waiting on you to put my back up engine together.


MWW

 

Good Point Turbo!!! Keep plugging Scalliwag I am waiting. John

 

Scalliwag, I'm with you on the coatings. Why reinvent the wheel and try to prove that the coatings work when other applications are already using it, successfully. You don't have to prove anything to Brandon, he's just trying to get under your skin. He's just a nerd who doesn't work in the real world. Research at a university, HA!, he must have a lot of time on his hands to be bashing you and has nothing constructive to say. Just go for it and ignore this nerd!

 

Mostly I was pissed about the way he came off than what he said. I'd be the first to admit and as the thread shows from the beginning that this has been a learning curve for me.
I just researched what would be the best material to try. As far as I remember I did not make any extraordinary claims until after I got a test housing sprayed, machined, and polished. I saw the numbers that I had at my disposal at the time and they looked good.
But after I was able to work with the test housing and compare the tangable differences I have enough fabricating background to know when there are distinct differences.

I did not need Brandon's telling me that the Vickers hardness was 900 to know this **** was harder. The only person that had the doubt was him. Of course at the time he thought 55C was the finished hardness at the time and he was so sure he just knocked my house down and proceeded to tell me how much I did not know.

The thing that sold everyone directly involved on the test end of this was the actual test housing. They did not need the numbers to tell the difference either.
The housing is going to be at the RX7 Swapmeet in Fort Worth tomorrow and Sunday for everyone there to check out.
The spray shop won't have Ken's out today. But Mon or Tue they will be ready. I will take a vacation day to get them ready and head to Ken's to put it together.
So be looking for some pics soon guys.
I am video taping the startup and break-in. Hopefully it won't be the startup and break-down!

 

Good Luck and may the Rotor God's look favorably upon you!!!!

 

Felix Wankel was not an engineer and came up with the rotary engine. It took a lot of years to get it to where it is today.
The coating I am using was a lot of years in the making as well. I am only trying to merge two technologies at best.
The only thing I have accomplished is building equipment for the milling and polishing process. With no more resources or engineering background myself I think that was a pretty huge personal achievement in itself.
The rotor Gods have taken me this far, and we will know where we at at pretty soon.

 

Scali: I know where you are coming from, I don't have a degree( but a good solid nuke background thanks to the Navy); and I managed to design the most efficient device( that could be built to ASME Section VIII specs) for Hydrogen isotope isolation yet.

 

I have no idea what that is but it sounds cool!

 

All I see being claimed is that the coating in question is tougher in every way possible than a chrome plating and it can be used to build-up damaged housings in a way that chrome can't. (for example, try rechroming a housing that has suffered a lunched apex seal - I have one sitting on my shelf here and it has gouges easily 1/4" deep) Even Scallawag is wondering how well it will work in an engine, but all research is showing that it will work.

Why doesn't Mazda use it? My guess is that they are very heavily invested in the chroming process. They start out with brand new bare inserts of the proper given dimension, chrome them, and then machine them to the proper dimensions. The machining costs alone would skyrocket for this kind of coating, especially on Mazda's manufacturing level.

That's the bitch with mass production. You tend to stay "functionally fixed" because you have so much invested in the way things are already done. Hell, even Mazda admits that they tried side exhaust ports early on in rotary development, and then they forgot about it because it didn't work back then. Technology changes.

 

I'm going to break my rule here, since this post is directed toward me.

But that's my point entirely. My point was that Scalliwag had claimed that the LMC-M was better in every possible way than Mazda's chroming (an extraordinary claim, if there ever was one), yet demonstrated no knowledge of either the operating parameters required or the properties of the process that he was comparing it to. You can't make a valid comparison when you don't know what you're comparing it to, and you can't make valid suitability judgements based on completely different uses.

I respect Scalliwag's observations, but there's more to it than just hardness. I suspect that the coating will work initially, but will fail long-term tests because apex seals will overheat and break, due to the coating not retaining lubrication, especially between the exhaust port and oil injection point, where the apex seal has already slung most of its oil off (this, btw, is the reason the MSPRE consumes next-to-no oil - they just don't need to inject as much anymore).

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Why doesn't Mazda use it? My guess is that they are very heavily invested in the chroming process. They start out with brand new bare inserts of the proper given dimension, chrome them, and then machine them to the proper dimensions. The machining costs alone would skyrocket for this kind of coating, especially on Mazda's manufacturing level.

That's the bitch with mass production. You tend to stay "functionally fixed" because you have so much invested in the way things are already done. Hell, even Mazda admits that they tried side exhaust ports early on in rotary development, and then they forgot about it because it didn't work back then. Technology changes.

Sure, technology changes, but to move from chroming and machining to spraying and machining is not a huge step, especially when a small business of the size that would do single orders can afford the equipment. The financial benefits of Mazda being able to simply repair a housing for a remanufacture (as opposed to junking it and replacing) are too large to ignore. I maintain that if it were a viable procedure, Mazda would be doing it.

With all of that said, if it works, great. Especially if it works as-advertised (well, "advertised"). Hell, I'll probably have a set in a motor of mine, so I can make my own judgements. As I've said twice before, I want to see results - but until then, I base my opinion on available literature. And yes, Scalliwag, if I get some free time in the next few days, I'll call Armacore myself and ask for some (uh-oh, here's the word again) whitepapers.

Brandon

 

Mazda has done it (coatings). They did it with the motor in the '91 LeMans. Did Mazda do it for the hell of it on that motor or did they see weaknesses in hard chrome under extreme conditions? What drove them to try it? Failure maybe?
You seem to think there is some magical physics within a rotary motor outside of high temperature, temperature cycling, friction, etc.

This is a claim not by me but the people that make the product:
They state that they heat coated components to 1200F and quench it in water 100 times and the coating shows no sign of debonding.
They state that the material has a coefficient of friction barely above that of teflon. (You may want to PM some of the people at the meet today that felt it for themselves and see if they believe that statement)
They claim it has an anti-galling threshold in excess of 50,000 psi (I just know trying to gall it with a screwdriver does not phase it)

And note their claim (all of this is in the above literature scan) that the transformed coating compares favorably to carbide.

Mazda used a coating at least once and the coating technology was at least 12 years old.
You may find that it is hard to get the answers as to why Mazda used the coating. You may find it difficult to find many answers at all other than the fact that they had success 12 years ago.

You could also do some of your own testing. Take a housing and heat it to 1200 degrees and throw it in water and see how many times you can do that before the hard chrome that you think is the world's only possible candidate for the job can take it.
If you think the chrome flaking problem that all of us here have seen. (if you have not seen chrome flaking on a rotor housing I would not be able to stop laughing if I found out!) When the chrome debonds and shatters you better be wearing protective gear. 1200F is pretty hot and when it meets water at room temperature rapidly it should be a sight to behold.

 

Just an FYI. Ken Scheepers (the guy testing the first housings for those not keeping up) got first place in qualifying round in Vegas today. Here is the link scroll down to the All-Motor class http://www.nhraimport.com/2003/event...1/results.html

 

scalliwag... for your info...

"The rotor housings on the 13B-REW motors are refined for reliability. Since the motor is designed for higher standard output, the wear surface on these housings has a carbon-graphite coating which is said to exhibit 32% less friction than the 13BT motor's fluorocarbon resin coating. The new coating actually allows less oil to be injected into the combustion chambers, thus the 13B-REW requires only two oil injectors instead of four. In addition to this coating, these rotor housings has the water passage machined around the spark plug areas to increase cooling at the spark plug tips. This modification is similar to the ones done on race motors."

-Paul Ko, founder owner of of k2rd
http://www.mindspring.com/~pko/13BTvs13BREW.html

 

Thanks for that link Cheers. It was a very good write up followed by the SAE number for our more scrutinous readers to refer to
I did note that the article was written in 1997. So we can presume that even it is was done in 1997 (which is highly unlikely) that some other current coatings were not available at that time.
Unless they came up with a bonding agent specifically designed to bond the carbon graphite coating to the rotor housing material I would think that it would not be real high in comparison to other coatins.
Some coatings rely on never getting a chip anywhere so that there is a tendency for a flaking affect such as you see in hard chrome.

So since they had 32% less frinction they lowered the oil metering. That makes all the sense in the world to me and is a reason why I believe Brandon is wrong when he believes I will have failures over time due to the apex seals heating up and causing the material to debond (that was a paraphrased account).
I happen to believe that a lower coefficient of friction in effect amounts to a higher lubrication effect which in turn means less wear and heat. But I'm just a dumbass farmboy from Tejas!

 

Hey is ken using your PP made housings?
or your special coated housings?...or both

Good for Ken 10.7 is real nice
should be very competitive againt the 1700Ibs honda's
if he can be consistant