Whisper

Wow, this build is going downhill...

Was replacing some vacuum lines and saw that the purge valve is cracked, so I pull it and there's lung mustard in there, and what looks like coolant or at least some kind of yellowish liquid. Nothing inside the oil filler neck, mind you... Anyway, I then notice something odd on the engine itself - all the seams where the rotor housings meet the irons have some kind of wet looking clear stuff around them, like maybe a 1/4 inch wide strip all around, it's dry but sticky to the touch. This wasn't there before when I put the engine in, so I'm like **** did I blow my coolant seals, did I warp my housings? Already? There's maybe like 1 gentle mile on the engine total, and about 40 minutes of idling. I open the radiator cap and I hear it sucking from the overflow. I honestly don't know how much coolant I had in the overflow, that's one thing I forgot to check when putting everything back together. In the radiator the coolant's a bit low, but not too bad, maybe by just over an inch from the neck, and I don't see any oil in it, so I top it off with maybe a cup of coolant. Pull the dipstick out, and it doesn't look like there's any coolant in the oil. I think if coolant was leaking into the combustion chamber, I'd see lots of white smoke out the exhaust last time the car was on, but I don't remember anything like that.

What the heck is happening? Did I somehow overheat? Temp gauge never went up past 1/4, and low coolant light never came on. BTW new fan clutch, new thermostat, all new hoses, new radiator, new water pump, yet did the cooling system fail despite all that, and majorly so? I can't start the car up until later, doing some other work, so I can't check if exhaust smokes now and if there are bubbles in the radiator just yet...but I already have a bad feeling about this.

DivinDriver

iTrader: (15)

Paging Dr. Kentetsu...

Did you use anything on the outside coolant seals when installing them... vaseline, smurf snot (hylomar), anything like that? Could be that, or could be coolant.

Whisper

Hah, Kentetsu will just pimp the coolant leak silver additive fix, won't he?

Actually I don't know what's in there, I didn't build this engine. Pineapple did, and I trust their builds are quite good. I'll check with Rob, but it seems kind of odd that anything that's put in there would seep out only when the engine's been run.

Also I read somewhere that outside seals rarely fail... Is that true?

j9fd3s

iTrader: (3)

its more likely to be vaseline/whatever they use to put the orings in the rotor housings when they built it. to get it to leak EXTERNALLY is hard, ive never actually seen that in like 15 years.

but if its a fresh motor, it might sweat the assembly oil/lube/stuff out once it gets hot

also normal for it to have some air pockets, and need a burp.

also normal for the "lung mustard" when you heat the oil up, and cool it off, it will condense water, steam + oil = yellow crap on the filler cap.

to get water in the oil in a rotary is actually very hard

Whisper

I see. Thanks for the info, should keep me from crapping my pants until weekend when I check it out properly. Here's hoping you're right.

Yeah, I figured lung mustard is no big deal and is likely a product of the crankcase not venting because of the failed purge valve. In fact, I hope the crack (not cocaine) in the valve was the culprit of rough idle by means of vacuum leak or something...

DivinDriver

iTrader: (15)

If it's cracked around the outer edge, yes, that can leak vacuum some. Had that problem once myself.

7aull

iTrader: (2)

Rob is good people so I would expect pineapple racing will have some good insight into this. Let us know how it works out.

Stu Aull
80GS
Alaska

Whisper

Ok, doesn't seem like there's any coolant leakage... No smoke, don't see bubbles, and coolant seems to be staying at a decent level... I've yet to talk to Rob, but I think it'll probably be something like what you guys said.

Whisper

Yeah, Rob said it's the stuff for the o-rings melting out. All is well. Thanks for the help.

AcidAngel7477

iTrader: (16)

scary.

:AA:

irishpilot

iTrader: (4)

glad to hear the good news....I just spent alot of money on swapping a S4 13b in my FB only to have it be a bad motor...coolant spewing out the exhaust. I felt your pain there for a sec....