TweakGames

iTrader: (3)

Lol indeed.

It was a 5 layer flex coupler. :/ lol

TweakGames

iTrader: (3)

Does anybody else have an opinion on my last theory on the last page? (The one with the side seal animation lol) Do I need to call myth busters? Confirmed? Busted? Plausible?

BDC

I'm getting more curious about this now. Even though I've not once had a failure of the trailing edge of a side seal being chaffed or breaking from one of my primary ports, I'm going to take a closer look at this and see if that's what's going on. Send me your center iron if you'd like Tweak and let me look at it more closely.

B

TweakGames

iTrader: (3)

k!

FC3S Murray

iTrader: (7)

******* FOD!! I have to deal with that bullshit all the time on our Pratt & Whitney F-100 220E turbine engines. You should see the DAMAGE a sand grain will do to a titanium fan when spinning at 7K.

Tweak, I am very bummed to hear about this hic-up. It is very VERY discouraging to stick with rotaries after you invest so much time and money. We have to face that rotaries are just like candy glass, they hold up BUT if they are even slightly disturbed, they will shatter.

I am going through a rear iron replacement right now AND I feel your pain. This will be my 6 engine overhaul in 4 years and with the family and work, I find myself losing patience BUT I know that I will be true to the rotary forever.

Just do not get rushed and try to plan anything. Good luck.

PvillKnight7

iTrader: (16)

So...bad porting by BDC lead to your engine failure. Sorry to hear about the lose but I'm glad you figured it out. Nice .gif work. I would be curious about the condition of the side seals on the other rotor. They might show similar signs of wear...like rounding of the side seal contact face on the port closing side. Similar wear should be evident on the 3rd side seal that didn't break...

TweakGames

iTrader: (3)

I am going from memory but the other rotor and side seemed to be ok, I DID NOT look at it closely though as I had no real reason too till now. If you read the thread the last living side seal did shows a lot of the rounded wear.

Thanks for the .gif work comment. I think without them a lot of people would not understand what I was trying to say.

I just graduated from WSU yesterday. Yay me, so soon I will be going home to take a better look at everything, get pictures, and send the plate off to BDC to see what he thinks. Then we should know if there was a porting mistake, but I wouldn't say it was BAD porting. I'm not sure if bdc is even able to port BAD if he was blindfolded and told to port using only a taco and chopsticks. I will keep you guys up to date.

TweakGames

iTrader: (3)

This is the other side of the primary port. I just got back from college and took this picture last night. Any comments? Does this support the last theory or bring up new issues?

dpf22

That little nick on the port looks a little telltale of the leading edge hitting the edge of the port. I radius the top of my ports so I have no problems with this. However, with a sharp corner like that one, if the seal hits it consecutively, you are looking at some possible damage. You might consider radiusing your ports on the top to help keep this from happening. And why not, gain a little on the top with flow gains because nature doesn't like sharp corners.

just a thought

PvillKnight7

iTrader: (16)

Looks like Brian owes you an engine.

TweakGames

iTrader: (3)

Lol, I don't think he owes me an engine, but I do think he will owe me something. I doubt I will be able to get anything though as he is still convinced, even after the above evidence, that it was FOD or something else. I really don't understand how he could possibly think that way, and I feel as though he is handling this VERY poorly. I am not at all happy with him right now, but I guess paying someone for a service to a part that was the sole reason for an engine failure wouldn't really make anybody happy. Once you add all the time, money, stress, and now the fact that after showing him all this evidence he still thinks it is not his fault, still ...... Like talking to a wall. So frustrating.

If I could get some of the professionals to chime in on what they think happened here after looking at the pictures I posted and reading the condition and facts about the motor, that would be great. BDC won't listen to me, or well he does, but could care less what I have to say. For some reason a lot of you (pros) are scared of him because its a small community, but right now I need you to post what a lot of you have been PMing me.

He has not offered to pay for for anything, including shipping of his messed up plate too him... I don't know what to do, I really don't want to spend any more money on his mistakes.

~Tweak

BDC

Yes I am highly skeptical of it and I've got a lot of reasons why especially without seeing the housing. There's reasonable doubt on my part.

How in the world am I handling this "poorly"? I've chatted with you numerous times about it and even this last time I told you that I was willing to look at the housing (actually, I made a post about that on this thread a week or two back), I told you I'm willing to concede to the notion that somehow something I've done caused it, and that I wasn't "sticking my head in the sand" (the words I used).

Just a second here, Mike. That's a great big assumption. There's no proof whatsoever that my "service was the sole reason for an engine failure". Let's look at the facts:

- I ported the outer housing and the centre housing to the same street port I've done on a gazillion housings (that I've been doing the past several years) and have not *once* had the failure you've run into
- The failure that you seem to be convinced of (trailing edge of side seal??) I've never seen nor heard of ever and I've been in this for 15 years
- You built the engine; I didn't
- You told me that it had run at least 4 to 6kmiles, although you could've been mistaken, before this failure suddenly happened
- When I was there in November, it ran just fine and showed no symptom of a compression (static, progressive, or otherwise) problem. I spent hours and hours working on your car that had problem after problem on it yet not once did I ever see any indication that there was something goofed inside the motor. In fact, to the contrary, it ran fine up until and after the point I could tune it no further.
- The turbocharger that was on the car during the time I was tuning it was changed later. I told you explicitly to get a reliable and accurate wideband because I knew the turbo change would mean a re-working of the fuel curves in boost. Even running the same boost, assuming the new turbo was better than the one you had, could make the engine potentially run lean and knock
- As you initially described it, the failure was sudden and appeared on the same day you took it to a drifting event. Prior to this day, aside from tuning questions and smaller, unrelated symptoms, I heard not a word about any compression problem
- That same day you had a coupler split
- Your symptom showed up during a drift session
- Those same symptoms became worse as you drove it back home that same day
- And overall, the cause of failure that you're trying to convince me of does not explain the large chunks of missing side seals nor the broken corner seals

If there were a legitimate problem with one or more of those ports, to the point of breaking side seals, then it would've been immediately evident upon starting and running the engine the first time. Most every single time that's the case when a motor is truly "overported" or when there's another assembly issue of some sort. They don't all the sudden evidence themselves several thousand miles later especially after the car has had boost pushed through it many times.

That's baloney. If I "cared less", I would've blocked you on AIM, not taken any of your calls if you'd called, and ignored this thread altogether yet I just spoke to you a couple of nights back and here I am posting (again). What you seem to be so effortlessly accusing me of goes directly against everything that I think you personally know me to be. If I really had that kind of ethic, I wouldn't have spent so many hours on your car nor would I have shown any interest in doing Rob's.

As I said before, if you wish, send me the housing and we'll go from there. I'm done here.

B

20B10AE

iTrader: (14)

Mike, sorry about the motor. I know the way you feel as far as switching to V8 power. I ended up doing that when my 20B (built by B) ate itself 100 miles after being built.

It was just too much for me. I almost sold the car after that. I DID go LT-1 and ended up selling that car and building the vert I have now. I'm back to rotaries and intend to stay this time.

Good luck with resolving this, but you're getting pretty much the same response I got with my motor... not his fault at all. I guess that makes it the rotary community's fault in a way. A lot of us boosted him up so high on that pedestal that he started to believe his own press. Now he does no wrong. :shrug:

You're welcome to shoot me a PM if you want to swap horror stories. LOL.

AMRX7

I had a side seal problem (caught the secondary port) where it broke off ~1" of the seal. It actually happened twice. First time the car ran fine, dyno tuned, and then ran some autox events before it happened. Car would lose power, had a low rpm "miss", and you could see the vacuum loss at idle. Took it to the builder, he couldn't see anything wrong so he just rebuilt it the same assuming it was a fluke.

Second time, same thing. Redyno'd, ran a couple autox events and then same symptoms. Took it back and even though he still didn't see how it was catching the port he reported that iron (no charge to me). Haven't had a problem since.

-Andy

PvillKnight7

iTrader: (16)

Bullshit.

Gorilla RE

iTrader: (1)

Could this BE any sharper? I would never have put a port with edges that look like that in anything I wanted to stay together.

-J

TweakGames

iTrader: (3)

You are joking right? How could you possibly have reasonable doubt? I have talked to quite a few people (including friends of yours) that say there should be ZERO doubt in your mind of what happened to this engine. The way you are fighting this alone, after the pictures especially, makes me sick.

How have you handled this poorly? You have sat here basically insulting me and other forum members attempting to pass this off as good work. You are trying to say that FOD, or some other magical force that didn't leave a nick on my rotors, on my housing, on my turbo, anywhere, flew into the port, broke two trailing sides of the side seals, and flew out unnoticed.

How’s your engine running btw?
Lies, I know for a fact a close friend of yours told you about this recently.

Sooo, I clearanced the side seals.... too long?? too short?? Why would either of those things cause these issues after 5k miles?

Again, as our "chats" this was NOT a sudden failure. Stop saying that. Over the period of 2 days, 6 hours of highway driving, and some 400 miles, it slowly got worse. Sudden failures are apex seals going out under boost causing you to run on 1 1/3 rotor and such, now slowly getting richer AFRs over 6 hours lol.

Lies again, you said it had the weirdest starting issue you said you have ever seen. We would have to sit and crank with zero throttle 4 or 5 times just to get it started. It never started well, and NEVER even after tons of hours of yours and my tuning could I ever get it to start well on the first try. I chased idle changes daily, changing my tune and zero throttle maps just to get it to idle good for the day.

Yeah, I hear people, all the time, boosting too high at 11 psi or running too lean blowing 2 of their side seals, 2 corner seals, leaving side seal crashing marks on the housings, and beveling the trailing ends of the remaining side seals on the int side of each rotor. lol.
Already stated above it was NOT sudden.
We have already pointed out how a coupler breaking would not have caused any harm in the system. For a split instant the car would have went rich as it thought it gave it enough fuel for boost. I am sure now also that there wasn't a huge jerk in load because the run before we smelled a little fuel (from the leak) and I was most likely not boosting much more than 4-5 psi at the time the coupler finally blew.
Oh noes, not mad drifting skillz! No, no they DID NOT show up during a drift event. When I was at the drift event (and when I left) the car idled fine as I said in my story if you cared enough to actually read what I have typed and repeated to you many MANY MANY times now. The car was even running well on the drive home AFTER the drift, I called you to tell you how well things were going. Little did I know my engine was a ticking time bomb with those ports.
Sudden, but slowly got worse.... Pick one.

Are you blind? Do you need me to make another animation? I honestly do not think you could possibly be that dim, you are obviously acting like this for a reason, I just can't possibly understand why....
You told me yourself you understood the theory of it little by little hitting the ports edge. Look how smooth that last picture is where the side seal was hitting the port. Smooth, reflective, ramp up until it was supported by the scissor effect. You can even see how around the port, there is the jagged edge from the super sharp port work, but the area right before the obvious side seal crash the edge is gone. I wonder what could cause that? Maybe a side seal falling in the port? What?


You are right, I do not know you any more, if I ever did. I feel like you might have a little of the Steve Kan issues you speak so negatively about.

What would be the right thing to do here? We talked about how I got the complete opposite reaction that I thought I was going to get from you after showing you the picture above. The reaction I SHOULD have got was, OH MY GOD!, wow, ok ok, something bad happened there. I am sorry it looks like I might have done something majorly wrong. Please let me pay for you to take the time to send me a plate that I obviously ported incorrectly and fix it for you. I am sorry for anything that might have happened because of my inferior work. Let me make this right.

But instead I got the cold wall of no, FOD, or something else. I don't honestly know what, but there is no way I can make mistakes, I am BDC, I am perfect. If I have never heard of an issue like this it can never happen. Something else beveled your trailing side of all your side seals, something else somehow smashed your side seals into your corner seals cracking them, something else put those marks on your primary ports, something else caused the slow break down of the engine, something else, not me.

Honestly, what are you going to do? You might possibly re-port the ports, although you guarantee right now they are already perfect, do I even want a BDC ported plate in my engine? I'm not sure the possibly performance gain is worth it personally. Sitting here attempting to convince something to you that is beyond obvoius. If you honestly want to see the plate to make yourself a better porter, pay for the shipping of the plate. If you think that it can be saved then you keep it and send me a stock un-botched RE int plate. (Or the money for one) Is that really unreasonable seeing how your work has caused this whole blown engine mess to begin with? How much more should I pay for your mistakes?

You would say you’re done. Someone standing up to you because they lost so much, when you can walk away losing nothing but what once was a VERY loyal customer.

TweakGames

iTrader: (3)

Awesome, thank you for sharing that.

Lol, looks like we need to talk! I would love to hear you experiences with BDC, and the V8s. Having played both sides I NEED to know why you went back to rotary.

TweakGames

iTrader: (3)

I have been getting a surprisingly high amount of PMs that tell me I need to sand the ports edges down smoother. Is there any more detail on this? Just take some very fine sand paper and wrap it around your finger? I wouldn't think you would need to take that much off to lose that super sharp edge.

Gorilla RE

iTrader: (1)

I use a very fine diamond dusted file at a 5*ish angle along the closing edge of the port. Then finish all of the edges with 300 grit paper. If you wouldn't want your tongue to pass over the port at 100mph then the edges aren't smooth enough.


-J

13BT_Starlet

iTrader: (2)

I found some info that explains about sideseal failure which is similar to what happen here. wish you the best of luck on resolving this matter Mike.

http://www.nopistons.com/forums/Larg...al-t33859.html

TweakGames

iTrader: (3)

I got Lynn over at nopistons to give me his opinion on the matter. To view two VERY informative posts of his on my engine, check out this link.

http://www.nopistons.com/forums/happ...17#entry921717

For those of you that do not want to read it all (although I really think you should), here is the quick part of it.

"In the unmodified engine both ends of the side seals stay on the cast iron all of the time. The leading end runs closer to the outside of the engine (closer to the rotor housing) than the trailing end.

When you move the open line any at all, the trailing end of the seal will be unsupported when crossing the port. The open line runs alongside the housing wall.

So, when the seal is drooping a bit into the port, it runs into the sharp edge of the port at the closing line, (where those dents are located. The shock of this collision is transferred into the corner seal, snaping the corner seal at its weak spot (thinest)."

This pretty much explains it all. lol

He recommends adding a ramp or smoothing out of the port to somewhat catch the side seals when at lower RPMS. (idle and cranking) That is when the biggest times the side seal have enough time to fall. Literally every time I started, stopped, or idled my engine very slowly my engine was killing itself.

Here is an image that I also took from the post, I hope he doesn't mind, but it explains it so well.



If anybody in thinking about porting their own irons, they really should read the link I posted above.

If I decide to not go back to stock ports, I will send my irons out to Lynn to get them ported the right way. I am not sure if he does porting for street engines though. :/

djseven

iTrader: (56)

For what you are wanting just stick to the stock ports, you will be more than happy with what you get in the end. Dont give up on the rotary though, carry on.

hondahater

iTrader: (2)

So why did you put the motor together in the first place if you had such a problem with the ports? Also is it particularly a smart thing to change turbos in a rotary without changing the tune to adjust for the differences in boost/fuel curves amongst other things? Maybe I'm a bit over paranoid about the rotary breaking but if I went from a master power t70 to a Turbonetics t70 I would have my car retuned without thinking twice because it's just that important. Also if there were a flaw in the porting design wouldn't all the motors he ports have this issue? If not what made your motor do it as apposed to everyone else’s BDC ported motors? No offence, just a few questions.

TweakGames

iTrader: (3)

Lol, did you read anything before posting?

If I knew the ports were bad before I put them in, I would not have put them in. I had trust in the person that ported my plates and did not know that I needed to verify his ports. I was not aware the ports were this bad until the damage it caused obviously. Did you really just say that?

A bad tune does not blow side seals and corner seals slowly. Even so, my AFRs were perfectly fine and I was only boosting 10 to 11 psi. The port job blew this engine, it is obvious. If there is no way you can see this, you are either blind, have some serious problems you should get checked out soon, or did not read any ANY of the last 2 pages of this thread.

I know you are having work done by BDC, I wish the best of luck to you! Make sure you double check your ports or something before you put them in like you suggest. Send them off to a different person to verify or something, I donno. lol