RETed

I find this very hard to believe.

I've seen 3mm apex seals split short width wise on detonation.
Why would the seal split length wise when it's easier to split the other direction?


-Ted

crispeed

I've seen that type of breakage from a massive nitrous backfire and from a result of hydralocking.

GUITARJUNKIE28

did the builder use rotors that were out of spec? if the apex seal-to-groove clearance was too loose, or the groove v'd, it could do that.

Asleep

The rotors, grooves, clearences, housing measurements are not out of spec when I measured them after tear down. I draw a strong conclusion that they were not out of spec when "the builder" put the engine together last time. The last thing I have to check today is the step wear on the plates.

Tony

fastrotaries

Personally I have lost ALL respect for Pineapple. After receiving and installing 4 FD motors that ALL grenaded within 6k miles; take them apart and find out that the ports were mild, and thde 3mm seals and everything else that included that for payment WASN'T done...I could care less about their "theories" on a flow bench. Their aggresive street port wasn't...it was more like the mild Racing Beat templates. With that said I can't take any engineering comment they make with any value. If in fact that statement holds 100% true, it hard to believe.

On a side note, my school is certifying a Rotary Engine for use in a General Aviation aircraft. They built a flowbench for it....but they refuse to port it. Stock ports. This is all funded by a swiss company called Mistrel.

Mr rx-7 tt

iTrader: (5)

Bingo

GoodfellaFD3S

iTrader: (213)

Wow. So you're saying that not only is Pineapple Racing incompetent, they are also thieves?

Blake

Wow...just wow. I don't know who he's confusing us with, but he's obviously confused. Or it's a hatchet/scapegoat job.

So, you personally bought four FD motors, blew them up through no fault of your own (no engine is idiot-proof), never contacted us about the warrantee, tore them apart yourself and found something we KNOW to be false (if you pay for 3mm, you *get* 3mm!) and further presume that a GOOD streetport must be a LARGE streetport?! Again, after discovering things that were presumably paid for were not done, you didn't see fit to give us a call to complain??? And what, may I ask, was the cause of failure of these engines? Defects in material and workmanship or incompetent tuning/installation? Who did the installation...you? Need someone to blame because the car owners were mad at you? I'm just guessing that, if this happened at all, you were working on other peoples stuff and need a scapegoat for your failures.

Pineapple Racing is not perfect. We have, on rare occasion, warranteed motors...usually because of defective plates that cracked. At one time several years ago, we had an employee who screwed up some stuff, which cost us a lot of money to fix. I am only aware of one customer that got two defective motors in a row, which was a unique incident, but he was taken care of and declined a refund. We also get a lot of people who erroneously presume whatever problem they are having is related to the engine when, in fact, it eventually comes down to something else (bad turbo oil seals, for example). This costs us a lot of troubleshooting time on the phone, but it's the cost of doing business and the customers are very happy when they finally realize the motor is not the culprit. There are also many people who forget to thoroughly clean out their intake tract after popping a motor, no matter how vigorously we warn them, and debris (pieces of broken apex seals tossed up-stream) gets sucked in and breaks seals in a perfectly good motor. No motor is indestructible. Run it lean, advance the timing too far, run too warm of plugs, let the IATs shoot through the roof, put in cheap/bad gas, allow foreign objects in, overheat it...plenty of ways to pop a good motor. All we can do is build the best motor we know how and warrant that we did our part correctly. One thing we can guarantee is that we are HONEST in all our dealings. If we make a mistake, we take care of it. That's what makes these claims so outrageous.

As for the issue of flowbenches, if you don't value our opinion, ask Rick Engman!

Asleep

Hey Blake, any feedback on the topic...the porting? Would be interested in your opinion too.

Thanks.

Blake

You are looking at the wrong apex seal as the culprit. The second one down has classic ping damage and that missing piece is what likely fractured the other seal length-wise when it jammed it. They can also fracture like that when there is a lubrication problem or a lot of heat in the seal and it grows and binds up as a result.

As cosmetically ugly as the exhaust port is, you can tell the apex seal was not hitting...if it were, there would be impact marks and a shiny edge on the closing side. You would see the corresponding marks on the seals as well.

To be honest, those exhaust ports look like the work of our infamous ex-employee, but again it's more a cosmetic issue than a functional one. Rob, I know, champhers the edges quite a bit, but he says it's not absolutely mandatory. Getting the edges straight is a mark of craftsmanship but really not important functionally. Again, there is no sign in the photos of any seal impact on the closing edge, which is where you would see it if there was a problem.

Blake

We do have a flowbench in the shop, but we never use it on rotaries. Rob learned a long time ago that there was little correlation to static flow on the bench and power output. There is just too much going on that you cannot possibly simulate on a bench. That's the opinion of many other top builders too, like Rick Engman of Downing Atlanta.

Asleep

What about the end housings? What worries me is that I have had continued blow-by issues and wonder about the ports drop into the side seal area. Each plate, has an area that is into the side seal path. One is on the upper and the other is on the bottom of the port. Each one is about half a centimeter. These has caused me to have a turbo rebuilt with no change. Think those secondary ports contribute to my blow-by problems? There are no other variables left that I can see.

I thought Rob did all the porting? Tell Rob I said hello.

Not disputing the second apex seal losing the tip. If you read earlier in the thread I lost the water seal on the car. The last hour of that engines life was unlogged since I knew it was coming apart anyways. Over 99.99% of the time before that it was logged. That is when that tip went and I went down to ZERO compression. There were markings on the housing that led even a layman like me to believe that seal was crashing into the port top. There was no bevel.

Anyways, appreciate the insights.

GtoRx7

iTrader: (5)

Sent you a PM Asleep.

Blake

I guess I'm not following you...do you mean the oil control ring path and not the side seals? If so, that makes more sense. Hard to tell by the photos but I don't see anything obviously amiss about the intake port shapes. Email me some close-ups, if you can.

Well, there was that one period a few years back when Rob tried to expand the operation to meet demand. He hired a good friend and taught him to do everything. At first it was all great, but then a few motors started coming back and we tracked it down to some improvised shortcuts and other bad practices being made by the same guy. Nicest guy in the world! He just didn't have the attention to detail that is required for the job. It was still just a matter of half a dozen motors out of 200+ we do a year, but it was still unacceptable. We don't have the kind of margin that makes eating mistakes easy to digest. Anyway, Rob called an end to that expansion experiment and builds everything personally now. He will from time-to-time ask me to port a motor for him when he is running behind, but he still gets a good look at the plates and housings before it gets assembled. The problem before was that our employee was too independent and would dissasemble, clean, port and re-assemble the motor without Rob looking over his shoulder. If there was a problem, it would not get caught, and that is the biggest difference from now.

Like I said, a bevel is mostly cosmetic and it would be REALLY obvious if the seals were crashing into the top of the port. It would be battered and shiny, which I see no indication of. The apex seals themselves would show it as well, but your photos don't show their edges very well so that aspect is inconclusive. The rest of the marks appear to be normal debris damage when seals let go. If you want, send us the housings and we can take a closer look, but the mising tip of the second seal is the smoking gun and points to ping, which is about the only thing that causes that type of breakage. The lengthwise split was almost certainly secondary.

Why don't you give Rob a call tomorrow and discuss it with him? He can probably explain it better than I. The phone number is 503-233-3878.

rotarygod

iTrader: (1)

FWIW I too do know Rick Engman personally and have discussed the flowbench topic with him.

GUITARJUNKIE28

how many times does it have to be repeated: you blowing apex seals is NOT the builders fault!!! if you went through 4 of them, you either didn't tune it at all, or you need a new tuner.

if the motors blew smoke from day 1, ate bearings, had bad cranking compression, etc, that could be the builder, but grenading a motor due to detonation or pre ignition has zero, *ZERO* to do with the builder.

Asleep

And I thought this thread was all about me and my porting...

Zero R

iTrader: (1)

Did somebody say Zero??

-S-

GUITARJUNKIE28

thanks for volunteering yourself. every motor that gets toasted by detonation from this point on is automatically your fault

RETed

Didn't take long to turn into a pissing match, huh...


-Ted

Blake

Did he tell you something other than he told Rob?

Asleep

Would anyone re-use a rotor that had seen pre-detonation? As in dimpled/indented abnormally on a rotor face?

Asleep

If you save the pictures to your computer, you can zoom on the areas in question. They are high enough quality that you can see the detail in zoom.

When was this period of time when the said person was building/porting engines?

Sorry, oil control ring. I am just a layman at these things. I'll see if I can post some better pics of it.

There is alot of "insert head-banging frustration comment" about the potentiality of it contributing to my oil blow by issues that have kept me from high boost.

rotarygod

iTrader: (1)

He too will admit that just strapping a housing on a bench and flowing it as is, is a futile thing. There's no refuting that. That's no more different than flowing a cylinder head with no valves in it. That's worthless. He uses it as a tool but not as an absolute be all end all to determine ultimate power production. It's for that last few percent and when you are building a race engine, every little bit counts. I think that's where many people get confused when it comes to using them. Too many out there (not implying you guys!) just assume that you do strap on a housing and flow it and port it until your numbers go up and up as high as they can. Rick will also flow test intake manifolds and other components that are a functional part of the engine to look for improvements there.

Rob is correct in that any added power from flow testing might only be a small amount. Flow testing a port with a rotor in front of it in various stages of rotation will allow a person to see how well their closing edge shape or opening edge shape flows but as you've pointed out doesn't tell everything. These are only showing us what happens at these points as the rotor is at these spots but this is important to know. It does allow a person to see what may or may not work well though. I have no doubt that over time a person can learn what shapes work the best and not need to constantly use a flowbench over and over again. You have lots of experience with porting and have seen firsthand what works and what doesn't and you know how to blend port shapes into runners. Many others don't though. A porting template shows a person a port's total size and timing but it't the work underneath, how well it is blended with the intake runner that matters the most. A flowbench can show you what works best but it's only if you have a rotor in front of it in various stages of rotation. If your intake port closes at 70 degrees and you have a rotor in front of it covering the port up to 55 degrees, you know good and well the shape of the transition from the top of the port from the runner underneath can affect how well air continues to flow into the engine. This makes a difference but of course it will show up as far less flow than a fully opened port. A port is only open all the way for a very short time and this isn't the most crucial aspect anyways. Enlargening a port runner based on flowbench numbers is also worthless. Thes best thing about the flowbench is being able to tell if you've gotten your ports flowing all the same as the rotor passes it. That is also important.

After you've worked on engines for as long as Rob has, I'm sure you can just port by hand well enough to get very close to what you could do with a flowbench. That is a knowledge and skill that he has acquired over the years. Consistency is a skill. Last year when talking about the flowbench with Rob at Sevenstock, he pretty much said he learned what he needed to years ago and no longer needs it as he can pretty much do it over and over again. That's a good thing but it's not to say that the flowbench was worthless. It had it's value at some point in the game. It's just another tool in a sea of useful tools. No one tool can be used to absolutely tell you everything. It's just like relying on a dyno chart telling you everything about your powerband. A full throttle run doesn't really tell you crap but using a dyno propely at different loads can tell you a lot. How many people here put all of their faith on a mod's benefit based solely on a full throttle run dyno chart? You guys know this though and I'm just preaching to the choir.

Blake

I'm viewing them at full resolution. I need somthing much closer and sharper (the focus is kind of soft). If you have a flat bed scanner, you can just put the plate directly on the bed and scan it at high resolution. I've had a lot of success doing that.

You'll have to ask Rob, but it was approximately 3 years ago.

Just email them to me, if you can. Did you ever talk to Rob about the issue? How do you know it was blow-by? Did you test the oil for fuel dilution? And don't take this the wrong way but considering the detonation damage, you seemed to have bigger problems than blow-by.

Earlier in the thread, someone commented that the exhaust ports were huge. Appearances are a bit deceiving. Part of the reason is because they are squared-off for rapid opening and closing (not ideal for all applications, of course). Here is a picture showing before and after. Notice the chamfer on the closing edge. Like I said before, the chamfer is not necessary in ideal circumstances but it is good insurance if your oil temps spike and the apex seals warp as a result. A non-warped seal cannot catch, unless the port is too wide. As you can see in the picture, the scribed lines are the same width as the widest part of the stock port.