Soo.. i small water seal leak before.. so i knew i needed a rebuild soon..

but i was at WOT one day and after letting off the gas the motor turned into poop.. felt like one rotor went out.. it was burning up gas like you woudln't believe.. and it was absolutely powerless.. although still "driveable"

I had my hopes up of it being a blown water seal, and not an apex seal since i have a 3mm upgrade..

but after my compression test and the excessive smoke coming from the turbo i fear the absolute worst lol

rear rotor had above 30psi with the tester held open and a total compression of about 88psi

front rotor has.............. well it doesn't have ANY ... yea.. 0

so obviously the motor needs to come out.. my questions is is there a way to tell if its an apex seal which would need a new housing opposed to just a water seal and just a simple rebuild lol

i also found a little piece of metel inside my spark plug which i fear is a piece of apex seal..

i've been looking at shops for a rebuild.. i am in NC.. so i've been looking at Rotory resurection in TN.. and also my freidn knows brian at rotorsports... any comments on where i should take my motor to be built would be great..


i have a large street port as well.. which means i would need a new port if i needed a new housing obviously... so any recommendations on which port i should go with .. and also i am going to be looking for some indestructible apex seals

somebody told me about super seals by rotor avaition i believe? any comments on these?

thanks

 

DAMN, man, I'm very sorry to hear that...I would be extremely upset. I'm assuming this is your second motor by the mention of the 3mm seals.

It sounds like some of that motor is canned...88psi compression on one face isn't that great and NONE on the other...chances are one/both housings are shot. And if damage is bad enough to the rotors, you can't reslot a 3mm groove...as they don't make bigger seals.

What happened to it? Whats your setup? Are you running open exhaust on stock ecu/turbos?

 

its a 13b single turbo 60-1 garret turbo.. straight 3 inch exhaust.. apexi power fc commander.. bunch of other crap but thats the main stuff.. don't really know what caused it to happen since it is also dyno tuned @ 356whp dynodynamics

 

what is AFR under WOT for the tune? who tuned it? People that don't know rotary will tune for power by leaning out the mixture....engine runs great until any climate change and poof.

I made 258rwhp at 10psi w/ 10afr and 280 at 11.5afr....the guy at the dyno was telling me to move it up to 12afr!!!...I ended up settling with a conservative 10.5

 

it was built and tunes at rotorsports.. a/f was very rich thats why i never thought this was happen.. i was at 10.5 or so just like u at WOT

 

[QUOTE]
Unfortunately the Dyno printouts do not have the AFR attached to the sheet.. so i an not quiet sure.. i was refering to the PLX A/F gauge and the FC power commander for my WOT pulls.. the engine is about 20k miles on it with many WOT pulls



I never touched the boost level.. it was tuned for 15psi and thats where i left it at all times


Dyno tuned at Intense MotorSports in Charlotte by Zac(Rotary specialist)

I never touched anything.


Air temps were normal and water temps were always under 90 C as stated on my power commander


hopefully it was done right







HKS twin power ignition


Just refering to the other mods that wouldn't have anything to do with the engines fault..(or so you would think) haha


bosch o44 fuel pump
fuel lab FPR
greddy underdrive pulleys
greddy intake elbow
act pressure plate
Custom V mount intercooler
greddy BOV
Greddy profec b boost controller
1600cc secondaries w/ high flow rail
ect



I know, but i was aware of the water being consumed by the engine.. thats what i thought it was just a bad water seal.. but the piece of metal in the spark plug i found scared me. Still uncertain if its an actual apex seal or water seal failure.

 

Can you take a pic of the spark plugs and the mysterious 'piece o metal?'

 

I can't really say why your engine blew but 10.5 a/fs is extremely rich for 10psi. I run flat 11 a/fs at 20 psi with 315ccs of water. Instead of paying someone to rebuild it, but the 13b rebuild dvd by Bruce and do it yourself. Its not hard at all. You should also look into a/i.

 

Ah ok. OP, you are going to have to just open up your motor and see what happened. We can guess all day and never know.

It's a long shot, but a bad tank of gas or an extreme climate change could cause that, though I doubt it since you were at 10.5 A/Fs at 15psi which is considered pretty safe.

 

10.5 is quite rich. Motors with weak ignition won't even be able to run that. Since he said he had an internal water seal leak, then possibly there was a enough carbon buildup from running so rich and leaking coolant into the chamber and it eventually broke off under a pull and destroyed everything in its path which is the reason for no compression at all in the front. Of course this is only a theory. He needs to open up the motor and that will tell the tale. The front is obviously toast.

thewird

 

Sorry about the motor, pretty conservative tune for 15psi. Have you checked the voltage on the pump and what about your fuel filter? sometimes its the simplest and most obvious things.

 

Gladly.. i don't know if anybody can tell if that is a piece of apex seal or not.. but its definately a piece of metal.









have an o2 sensor mounted right after the turbo.. 10.5 is just the number of what i was running.. i did not happen to notice the AFR gauge one the last pass that blew the motor though.. but the car has always been around 10.5





I am in NC so no extreme climate change.. it was around 80 degrees or so. THere is probably no way to tell if what a bad tank of gas or not.. i always used shell stations though.


That is a logical theory. Thanks for the imput.. Yes the front is definately toast haha


I'll look into the rebuild DVD.. if you're saying its not hard it's probably something i can tackle on my own.. if i need a new housing i will definately need some new porting though.

 

Oh boy. Not apex seal. maybe side seal but i doubt it.

have you pulled off the air filter and inspected your compressor wheel to see if it's still in one piece?

 

no but i can do that right now.. be back in a few

 

Well Goodfella, The intake side of the compressor has no damage.. and spins freely... not to say the exhaust side doesn't have damage because i haven't taken off the exhaust to check.. either way the engine must come out anyway.

May i might add that is is possible the smoke coming from the turbo after it was heated, could just be from all of the debris after i took off the turbo heat shield/cover..

 

Not an apex seal, not a side seal, not any seal if you ask me. It looks like a foreign object that was inducted into your motor.

 

It seems to resemble a piece of aluminum. Check your intercooler pipes to see if anything has broken off.

thewird

 

It is going to be a good idea to check out that exhaust turbine anyways to see if some other mysterious piece of metal did not go through it and damage it as well. That i one odd looking piece of metal. Sorry to hear you are having to rebuild with so few miles on the current motor. I would love to hear the verdict of what happened when you, or your shop, gets the motor apart.

 

Hm.. this is a new theory to me.. thanks for your imput. I will definately keep this in mind.

I will look over the Intake piping as well as the manifold. The intake side of the turbo has no damage, so if a foriegn object was in fact injected into the engine, it would have been from the piping or intercooler. Plus the fact that i have an air filter

Yes when i have time, maybe tomorrow i will take off the turbo to see what is going on in there. The motor has about 20k miles on it. Hopefully i can have it rebuilt to perfection this time around! I will be sure to keep the page updated.

 

unless you were running sh*t gas, theres no way I'm going to believe the engine blew from detonation at only 15psi on a single turbo w/ a 10.5AFR. Thats about as safe as you can get...probably safer than a stock FD with 10psi and tons of heat! I don't see how it could be the tune unless the timing is rediculously advanced or something crazy. Sounds like FOD or build imperfection.

Maybe thats a chunk of the rotor housing? I'm guessing your exhaust wheel is owned if your spark plug has metal on it.

 

i think it had something to do with the leaky water seal and a combination or running rich maybe? i'll have to wait untill i take the engine apart

im going to take the turbo off tomorrow to see whats going on in there

 

If you dont mind I'd like to know the expenses and time to rebuild your own engine once you're all done if you decide to do it yourself.

 

ebay IC? perhaps an internal fin?

 

The compression test is pretty conclusive you have blown apex seals. Take the car to Kevin@rotaryresurrection.com. He is a great guy and will give you a great deal and offer probably some of the best service in the country.

David

 

don't drive with a blown coolant seal unless you plan to junk the iron. if it is an inner seal, which is generally the case, the combustion rushing thru the gap will eventually melt the seal-supporting rail in the iron. at that point the iron is junk unless you spend more than it's value to do some fancy welding/machining.

my guess is the motor overheated before you bought the car. this led to the seal failure. often a combo of coolant seal and carbon end up creating broken apex seals. our motors are tuned too rich in an ineffective attempt to cool the high Combustion Chamber Pressures (CCP).

additionally contributing to failure is the External Oil Pump (EOP) which is busy pumping carbon filled crankcase oil onto the apex seals.

carbon can be extremely hard. i have seen engines w rotors coated with almost a tenth of an inch of carbon. apex seal to groove clearance should be 3 thou. it doesn't take much to muck it up. if you get blockage in the groove the apex seal is unable to rotate and breaks.

you get off the gas with a coolant leak and vacuum draws coolant into the motor. the coolant dislodges a flake of carbon and you have broken apex seals.

there are fixes to all this.. they aren't in the Mazda FSM.

(read my thread... "Making the case for the rotary powered FD... The Fix")

as to finding the "right" apex seal.. you need to fix the cause of the seal failure. fix it and most seals will work fine.

welcome to FD-land. either find someone who knows what they are doing or read up and consider it to be a long term project. properly fixtured FDs are just as reliable as your previous car but only after a bit of re-engineering.

to many of us, the performance of a properly tuned out FD makes the effort worthwhile.

good luck,

howard