keep up the good work scalliwag. I am very impressed with your tenacity. I hope this venture works out for you.
-Rob

 

ive heard of nikasil being used as a sleeve for f1 blocks.people tell me that nikasil doesnt wear unless a diamond cutter or hone is used.why not coat the rotor housing in this material then if a seal goes it wont take out a housing.r u familiar with this material??cuz i sure as hell am not.

 

I read a couple of articles after you PM'ed me on in because I had not ran across it whil researching this.
That was really odd I thought after I saw these articles because it sounds like it is used almost exclusivly on cylinder walls. Hell I should have seen it on accident with all the web searches I had been doing looking for compatible platings related to cylinder housings.
The only thing I have not found so far is how thick it could be put on. This link here is a aircraft company that uses it and they put it down at .0025- .0030. THey also give some interesting history of other companies that have used it http://www.brisonaircraft.com/cylinders.htm
Here is another link http://mongoosemachine.com/cylinder-plating.htm

Maybe the most promising aspect of this is that if they can do inside piston cylinders then they have a process that do inside diameter work already whereas my experience that stopped me in my tracks was that the people I have dealt with are not setup very well to do that.
Cost and thickness are the biggest of the questions. Thanks for the tip I will make some calls and get some info and maybe get lucky here

 

Nikasil is good stuff, but it definitely wears with enough use. I've never seen any flaking or peeling, but discoloration where the base metal shows through. FWIW, my experience is with Honda 125s on shifter karts.

 

i sure as hell would be willing to pay an extra $200-$350 for a set of housings that wont be junk after one seal gets spit out.

glad i could brainstorm with the best

 

scalliwag, what's the latest?

 

Still on hold. I have spent alot of money/time on this and took some time to restore an AE and a few other projects.
When I do get back on this it will still be the side plates only until I get a thermal arc setup of my own.
Relying on some dufus to spray housings and they are supposed to spray .030 and end up spraying 1/8" is not workable for me. I get pissed everytime I think about it.

I am buying all the equipment to powder coat parts tomorrow so look for another thread that hopefully goes much smoother, rapidly, and less costly than this one. I have not give up on this idea but I have given up on relying on others that have critical processes to be done beyond my control.

 

Today I was talking to someone who is rebuilding rotaries. He had mentioned a coating that a mazda racing team, or car, used on the part where the apex seal runs on... can't think of what thats called right now.... I am not sure of all the correct terminologies.....is it called the rotor housing? well anywho, if anyone knows what I am talking about with this part, apparently they used to use a ceramic coating, cosisting of other things I am not sure of, silicone? Silica? I have no clue.... He said the surface is alot more slippery than the original chrome. The guy I talked to has been dealing with these cars for 20 years, I have been for 2 months. He was talking so fast about things I am just learning, so alot of it went straight out the other ear. ANYWAYS..... I want to know if this coating lasts, if anyone heard of it, or what the deal is.

Also quickly another ??

What is a good price for a ported 13b thats rebuilt? It would have this coating I remember he said something about electolisis (sp) I believe.... Thanks.......... He was saying $2600 for this kinda rebuilt rotary. He is in the process of testing this coating right now.

 

As far as I know the only ceramic (cermet as they refer to it) was only used with their race engines. I am pretty sure the Renesis housings are still hard chrome. The only other coating I have seen is the graphite based coating used for break in and it burns off pretty quickly.

There could be something new that I have not heard of though.

 

Renesis housings have the same coating that is on
all older 86 up rx7 housings, or thats what it looked like
to me when i had the parts in my hand.

matt

 

Scalliwag - I see you as a pioneer. Please don't give up.

How did the housings/endplates that drag racer was using hold up?

Eagerly awaiting.
Cheers

 

They are still like new. I didn't do anything to the end plates though. He pulls his motors apart almost everytime he gets back from a race and meticulously goes through looking at everything. He changes out the bearings and anything with any wear.

If the motors stayed together and were allowed more time for stress the housing may not look new. Hard to tell.

 

Ah yes, that would be a problem. They don't get run for long, but he's stressing them pretty hard in that short time I imagine.

I might have some more housings for donation soon. If you need any that is. I'm getting ready to tear two turbo cores down to get a usable set for a rebuild.

When you get back into doing it again I would love to have a set.

Best of luck
Cheers

 

The last time I talked to him he was still launching at over 11k so yes they are getting plenty of stress. Just not much fatigue on the seals and springs. There really isn't anything done to the housings to protect them in the event of a broken apex anyway.
But anyone looking to build a pport and get an idea of how much they will take between rebuilds can't go by one of Ken's motors.

 

Then why not have a street car test them??? Get some miles on those babies.

I know all the problems you have been having; I have watched this thread closely.

I know you are completely discussed with that shop, why not at least get another set made by a different shop with the capability to spray that stuff.

Then while you are waiting to get the equipment you will have test specimens to see if it is really a viable solution to the disposable housing problem.

I swear it is such a good idea, if it does work you will have fairly large customer base and a good portion of the forum knocking on your door; especially us turbo guys that push it to far.

Come on just do it!!

You have all the tooling, and I am sure you will have no trouble finding a guinea pig fully willing to try it out whatever the outcome.

I think it will work and hope to see progress on this project

Keep up the good work Scally

 

It is expensive to pay shops to do them and all the shops (as far as I know) has to do them by hand. I am not sure how good even someone that is trying hard to do it can do. I'm sure not throwing down another $350 to find out though. I would rather put any more money into actual equipment at this point.
I may as well had flushed that money down the toilet. It still pisses me off that they screwed those up that bad.

One thing I have noticed is that even in a bad economy it is hard to get people that know what the hell they are doing and/or trying to do their best. I have been burned by a few different businesses the last year or so and it's a touchy subject.

 

Well I just read all 32 pages of your thread and every page i am once again amzed, being 16 I have been able to find/look up all the terms and technologies and ideas you have put on the table and am very happy with the process you have come up with. My eyes are bloodhsot and I now would like to buy shares for your future company lol, maybe even an employee to your company or one ike it. This thread has captured my attention span longer than even the best book i have ever read! Well hope you keep up the awesome work and get these babies pumpin out cause you can be sure whence i need to rebuild you will be the first person i contact!

Keith

 

Thanks for the kind words Keith. I really would like to get back to this project but so many things have changed since I originally started this. Everything was being done out of my garage at that time. Back in March we got a shop so you would think that with all the room and especially all the bigger and better equipment it would not be a problem.
But since with the new shop comes new bills there is a descent amount of overhead that goes along with that. So we make all sorts of stuff and sell on eBay and our website www.scalliwag.com We don't make quite enough yet to hire someone to handle the workload but at the same time there is enough to eat up most of our spare time.
I refuse to put someone to work for shitty wages so until we have the workload to support a descent paycheck for a good worker we are tied to being production workers in our spare time.

The good thing is that the products do support the shop bills..... all 3000 sf of it. We started with 1500sf and got the connecting shop 4 months later. We also have a 3 phase welders more than capable enough to handle the spray process discussed in this thread. A 650 amp MIG and a 300 amp TIG. (I will put links to the shop thread and equipment at the bottom of this post)
We don't have a thermal spray gun though But I do have plans for building one. If you go way back in the thread and read how the twin wire spray works it is like two wire feed welders with one wire positive and the other negative that both feed into the gun. When the wires contact they arc and spray the molten metal onto the part using compressed air from behind the arc point.

In one of the last talks I had with Hewy Jackson at Armacor he was telling me that one of the big auto makers was working on a way to spray the inside of cylinders. Because cylinders are an even tighter area than the inside of a rotor housings it is hard to imagine that being pulled off. But Hewy said that they (the automaker) made a single wire gun that can get into tighter areas.
The way they pulled off using a single wire arc is because the wire arcs against a tungsten electrode (non-consuming... well at least not very consumable )
So it is a helluva lot easier to plumb one wire into a gun instead of two.
I drew up a design from how twin wire guns work and made it smaller with a insulated tungsten electrode holder. Below are diagrams of theory. The practical design I won't post.

 

So hopefully I can eventually get to back to this. It would be a lot more fun than making parts but I have to pay the bills.
Here are the links to the shop and some of the equipment we have acquirred. If you like to read Keith then you will be good to go for a while. I get half the day off for my father-in-law's birthday so I can slack

The shop
http://vintagerotaries.com/FORUM/vie...5337a28bd72e6c



The additional shop. We cut an area in the wall later.
http://vintagerotaries.com/FORUM/viewtopic.php?t=836

Pic- http://www.vintagerotaries.com/shop/206/HPIM0415.JPG

The rotary 3 phase convertor I built to run the big equipment. I added an extra 25hp motor to the convertor since I built this. So it is 25hp plus an extra 25hp to fire up to handle extra load.
http://vintagerotaries.com/FORUM/viewtopic.php?t=630

Pic- http://vintagerotaries.com/images/phase/DCP_4432.JPG

The 300 AMP TIG I found at a scrap yard
http://vintagerotaries.com/FORUM/viewtopic.php?t=566



The 650 amp MIG
http://vintagerotaries.com/FORUM/viewtopic.php?t=767



The big air compressor I got at the scrapyard for $35
http://vintagerotaries.com/FORUM/viewtopic.php?t=1082



The big drill-
http://vintagerotaries.com/FORUM/viewtopic.php?t=667



The big bandsaw
http://vintagerotaries.com/FORUM/viewtopic.php?t=643

 

I know this guy is amazing every time I see him post it is about something intriguing and defiantly a interesting read if nothing else.

Though I think this is the one project that really does need to have a breath of fresh air put back into it. everything about the idea is perfect except the fact that the process cannot be finitely controlled, if you could get that pinned down I think you seriously could change the whole world of rotary engines overnight.
Rotor housings are not prohibitively expensive, but it sure would be an excellent way to just replace seals, and back on the road you go with a fresh engine that you can run to the edge with little to no fear of popping a seal and destroying housings, just “patch them” if any harm comes to them.

 

scalli you must live in the scrapyards. ;o) How's that powder coating equipment working out for you?

 

yeah thats what im saying...what freaking scrap yard are you going to... all they have at the ones around here is...well...scrap.

I do hope you get this project back underway sometime tho... i'll even donate some housings for practice if you want them.

pat

 

All the metal scrap yards around here get pretty much anything made out of metal. I learned a long time ago that when I would go to a yard looking for some angle iron or flat bar or whatever that If you went through the piles of old washing machines and lawnmowers and general crapola that sometimes there was useful stuff to drag off.
Sometimes there really does not seem to be a good reason as to why something ends up there but that's cool.
There was a CNC machine out there from Nokia last year that had a bunch of linear bearing and rails as well as stepper motors and slides. At the time I had no use for it all so I just stripped all the stuff off to sell on eBay.
I ended up getting $600+ off of a local guy that saw the first item I had posted and wanted to make me an offer on the lot I was tickled shitless.
I found a Zenith Trans Oceanic shortwave radio that pulled a little over $400 around the same time I just picked it up because it looked cool and found out later that they were worth pretty good cash.
You may not think that cool **** comes through your local yards but I can assure you that Dallas/Ft. Worth is not the only area this happens in.

A lot of time 3 phase equipment ends up in the scrapyard and does not move real quick because most people do not have 3 phase electric. I wished I built the rotary phase convertor years ago knowing what I know now. Once you get to where you have 3 phase it opens a whole new world of equipment. The stuff is cheaper to run and almost always commercial quality.

 

I guess it gives you an edge when you can actually partly indentify what it is that you are looking at.

 

That's a definate plus But since the cost of scrap metal is usually low enough to roll the dice when in doubt if you do see something that looks interesting you can get it to the scales see how much it is and take your chances.

Here are some rules of thumb on getting electric motors; turn the shaft and see if it feels free, look for physical damage, and sometimes a tell-tale sign on if it was a running motor when pulled is if they cut the cable to it. If they replace a motor they usually don't replace the cable. They disconnect it from the terminals.

But for scrap in general sometimes it is just gut feelings. You go in with better odds than most gambling deals. Plus it is fun to drag something back and get some info off of it and do an internet search. That radio I got was 7 cents per pound and weighed maybe 5 lbs.
Worst case scenerio I was out 35 cents on a cool looking desk ornament.
If you buy 5 old motors and one is good you still end up ahead and have 4 descent anchors to boot

The crap that you end up with that has no use if it is bad can go back to the scrapyard and while you won't get as much as it cost you hopefully the good stuff will more than make up for it.
My $190 TIG welder and $35 air compressor alone make up for a shitload of boat anchors. So go roll the dice a bit guys. Scalli wouldn't steer you wrong