Okay, so I've done a bunch of searching and haven't decided.

The situation is that I had about 3,000 miles on a fresh rebuild, all new bearings, all new seals/springs, NRS 3mm 2-pc with solid corners/flat springs, Pineapple HD water seal kit, and rest stock seals. I adjusted the duty cycle on my boost controller one hot afternoon and later that evening I was watching an impressive SVT Cobra with a roll cage, heard a couple of pops, looked at what I was doing and noticed I was at like 24 psi on pump gas. Pretty dumb, I had tested it and was okay; live and learn I guess.

Anyway, I cracked two apex seals (they stayed in place), the car actually ran okay but was down on power, and loped at anything less than 1,500 rpms. Both housings are very lightly scored at the exhaust port.

So, with 3,000 miles on a fresh build, what would you reuse? For sure I'm replacing the f&r housings and the two broken ceramic seals, that's agiven.

But for example, Pineapple specifically states that their HD water seals are re-useable: http://www.pineappleracing.com/index...PROD&ProdID=99

What about oil seals? The funny thing is that there was some oil on one face being pushed inside the combustion chambers. After I pulled the exhaust manifold I cranked it by hand and one of the faces in both front and rear were pushing a small amount of oil. The seals themselves look good, the control rings still look new.

I don't have a lot of rotary experience, would it be really dumb to just replace the housings and 2 broken apex seals and put it back together? From searching on here it look like people do that kind of thing sometimes...

 

i just went through a similar boost spike issue and I am reusing my oil control seals on the rotor, motor had around 4k on it. I had a friend who has built 20 motors look at them and he said they were fine to be reused.

I would spec out every single spring before you decide to reuse any of them. Springs aren't expensive and they could have gotten messed up from the overboost.

 

uhm im interested how you hit 24 psi?

 

uhm, with bad duty cycle settings on my boost controller and not paying enough attention, like I wrote, and of course with the help of my BB 62-1. Given those facts are you under the mistaken impression that something should have stopped the car from running at 24 psi?



Houston area is about at sea level so 24psi would be about a 2.6 PR, well within the abilities of the turbo I'm running.

Have anything constructive to post regarding seal re-use?

 

Ouch. Sorry the same thing happend to you too. How did you fare? New housings?

You checked and reused your springs?

I'm concerend about the oil I saw squishing around when I turned it by hand before taking apart. I can't quite figure how a couple of cracked apex seals would cause oil to stay in the combustion chamber... The only possiblity I can think is that those sides weren't firing all the time so the OMP inject just accumulated and got pushed around and around?

 

re oil in the combustion chamber:

if any part of the inner supportive surface that supports your outer oil control ring was ported away you will get oil into the wrong parts of your motor.

Mazda purposely made a supportive shelf in that area. some port it away as it impedes flow. i just take the "step" out of it and turn it into an angle but retain every bit of the face/supportive area.

there are certain porters who remove the material.... PM me as to who did your ports.

hc

 

Replace the apex seal springs, replace the oil control rings(viton are around $40-50.00 I think thru atkins for a typical customer maybe cheaper. I would replace the corner seal springs also. If you only have very very minor damage near the exhaust ports you could actually get away with reusing your housings especially if they are only 3k mile housings.

I dont have experience with the Pineapple reusable seals so I dont know what to tell you there.

 

I replaced every single spring. I didn't build the previous motor and I'm not sure if they had already been reused, but I spec'd every single one out. The corner seal springs were right at the limit of acceptable free height, as were the apex seal springs. Then the side seal clearance was about 5.5 thousandths of an inch. Max allowable is 6 thou, so I bought new side seals and springs and hand clearanced them according to the pineapple racing video on their site.

once you start spec'ing things out you begin to feel like a cheapass for not replacing everything that isn't very close to brand new spec.