It seems like somebody has to be posting up something sooner or later on the i-Rotary seals. Heard they’ve been selling well and on backorder at times.


you should look into HJS cat converters, they can handle that.

had quite a few years racing on mine in an emissions-required class, it was the 100 cpi motorsport version rated for 1000*C, not sure about a sniffer though after warmup it was clean smelling, passed OBD2 without issue or any “tricks”

https://www.hjs-motorsport.de/homepage.html

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Its a turbo - 13BT, streetported, with a GT35. I know a regular track day is brutal, but I'd think COTA in Austin would be particularly brutal. Regardless, I've made up my mind on the I-Rotary seals and will hope they don't chew up my housings.

 

oh yeah i remember that! i'd have to smuggle it into CA, its not legal here...

i brought up EGT just because we were talking about it, and i've logged some stock ECU cars. the limit for those is ~650c at the cat, and the turbo car can run hotter at the engine because the turbo soaks up a lot of heat.

that being said, the old school limit was usually the turbine wheel, all of the old standard turbine wheels melt about 950c, so that is your cap at the engine

 

Green Brothers Racing in NZ posted a review of I-Rotary seals used in their drift car on facebook, Mazdatrix has it copied on their website here

 

Myles who does a lot of the builds for mazmart had a motor with i-Rotary seals die on the dyno. No damage to the housings at all. They're designed to bend and not break, and they're softer on the housings. I've got them for my 20b, but I don't have the motor yet to comment. I would imagine that you cannot go wrong with anything designed by Dr Iannetti...

 

Thank you for sharing!

 

That's all well and good, but if you have to replace your seals after 20 hrs because they warped....

Hoping these are a good compromise between strength and forgiveness. The Green Bros. Racing data looks promising. Curious exactly what conditions the motor experienced. Not sure exactly what "2.5 years the car has completed many meeting and events" means.

 

if i may ask, why do the seals warp? if you just heated them up outside of the engine do they still warp?

 

Pretty sure apex seals warp because the rotor housing near the sparkplugs gets too hot and expands to stick up further than the sides of the rotor housing in that area.

Then when the apex seal passes over that area with the bad angle it has in that position the side load of the sparkplug bump on the apex seal either wears the seal on one side in the middle like with stock apex seals or in softer metal seals it actually bends the seal as it wears that spot into the seal.

The rotor housing sparkplug area deformation is worst with the extreme heat of detonation.
General overheating of the entire engine does not cause this deformation in my experience.

 

so if the seal is soft enough to bend over a bump like that, how come it doesn't straighten out over the other 270 degrees of movement?

the wear you're talking about is real, the stock seals aren't straight, see pic

 

Smarter people than I could pinpoint specifics but in reference to your question about heating up a set of seals and warpage (as well as sort of playing off of what @BLUE TII is saying) there are far more load sets being applied to seals in practice as opposed to in a vacuum (just heating them up). Centrifugal, side load on the cumbustion 'side' of the apex seal, not to mention bumps in the epitrochoid. Hence wanting real world tear down information rather than just whatever data a manufacturer wants to puke out.

 

There is no force present inside the engine to bend soft seals back straight.

They arent bending along their beam (widest part) they are bending along the narrow width 2mm or 3mm and bending just a bit as they are still in the slots in the rotor.

The seals are only perpendicular to the housing surface at the 12, 3, 6, 9 oclock positions. Riding over the Leading spark plug bump they wear or bend on the side of the seal wear surface at an angle.

 

Heres a pic of my stock 3mm seals with the flat spot wear on the side of the wear surface from running over the leading sparkplug bump.

 

-11 sparkplugs ... ✔️

 

Exactly!
The 11 heat range plugs make the stock engine in my FD act like a streetport, but Im hoping it helps.

 

In terms of idle? Or some other means?

 

Yes, the wandering and slightly rough idle like a steeetport.

No driveability issues besides that.

However, when they wear to a big "gap" (surface discharge like stock FD plugs) they do actually foul hard to where it feels like you lost a rotor and it takes moderate load to burn them clean again.

I am using Mazda part number 0000-10-R601-11 they call out for "S&P port, RX-7, RX-7 TT"

 

well those are only a nickel plug, only 19mm length rather than 21.5mm like the other R6725 platinum & R7420 iridium race plugs, and also strapless (you know all that, just clarifying for others) so that may be some of it.

 

Yup, my choice in plugs was financially driven. Id rather have the expensive Iridium race plugs.

 

Entirely possible it still hasn't been long enough but I'm bumping because I'm curious if anyone else has any new feedback to share from there own experience with i-rotary seals.

 

Ditto. Any feedback @ptrhahn on the iRotary seals?

 

Anyone have new experience to share?

Have any mixed-use track and street cars been torn down?

 

A couple reports the I-rotary seals appear to be wearing rapidly over the hot spark plug hump (ie "warping").

 

I put iRotary's in my rebuild. They ran great during break-in. Went to dyno to tune and all 6 warped. Been talking with them about this. Currently no idea as to why. Engine looked fine upon teardown and tuning logs don't show any issues with detonation, etc. literally a fricking mystery to which no one has answers to...

 

😳

I suppose it should be asked what plugs you were running?
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