The Number One Reliability Mod for the Rotary Engine.

[Barry Bordes]

Originally Posted by RICE RACING

Post away Barry.

I am just saying I have never ever had this problem unless its been a motor fitted with after market apex seals, a poor build from an otherwise self proclaimed expert, or a similar shoddy engine calibration to cover up some other thing they did have no experience in or just a flat out wrong opinion.

SAE papers are just that papers, if any of you have worked in a university say where papers are written and submitted 24/7 for funding and status reasons you will see some of them are only really respected by mutual love from other academics lol.

Best for you yourself to go out and prove one thing or another, DO IT YOURSELF as I have been doing for 20 years and you will see that there are many variables involved and let alone fixed variables used that have nothing much to do with reality in most of these "papers"

I'll give you a real world example, if papers are all they are cut out to be then NSU would have conquered the globe with Wankels just like most of their in house papers stated, most papers are put out to spin a positive light on a subject for various reasons (mostly to do with obtaining funding for extra research or to build an empire within an organization) let alone ones that are "sponsored" by certain commercial entities with affiliations with a said organization be it a company or an academic body.....

Moral: Don't believe everything you read, most things are proven in reality. My own reality is that carbon wings is not an issue, but then again I have a running car that makes 600bhp on petrol and water, and is faster than most pretenders lol .......... and its the same engine for 4 years. Others just post shit on the internet and have no running car

Peter, Check page C-57, item 3 of the Mazda workshop manual. You know the inspection where the two apex seals are put face to face to check for wear. I don't have to tell you where this wear comes from... it comes from the hump. If you look closely at your excellent pictures of the plug openings you can see that both are polished from being raised.

If you don't like this mod please feel free to ignore completely. I am not in competition with you.

But if you want to compete... you can start by divulging your best secret mod which would help the whole Rotary Community too.
Barry

[RICE RACING]

^ Best Secret?

Tune your car right!

You wont ever have these non existent problems

The apex seals wear on a taper and preferentially due to mis matched product, insufficient hardness, lack of lubrication, & poor tuning. Chopping up your rotor housing is 100% not necessary I have proved that. You just need to know what you are doing when you set up and run your engine.

200bhp or 1200bhp, some people can fuck up anything (BDC or HC) others have no issues.

If there is any secret then its water injection, but I already started a thread on that when you have tested as many apex seals as I have and over the amount of km's at the power levels I have then I will listen to threads like this and opinions like yours, till then most of the advice is crap *honestly*

http://www.riceracing.com.au/apex-seals.htm

(no BS threads about why apex seals break lol) I have run them to a couple of mm wear in height on 600bhp motors (not fiction but fact lol) and never broke a seal or had it preferentially wear or have any carbon wings lol....... its in how much knowledge you have personally.... not what you have collected in toilet papers.

[RICE RACING]

I will bet anyone who does these mods will still have preferential wear on an apex seal (any type) depending on the application.

You can see a carbon apex seal I pictured on a Peripheral Port engine (which I personally ran for a cumulative 150,000km over 5 years testing & 3 different sets of apex seals!) will wear the shoulders down, this is due to lubrication deposition and not carbon wings.

There are plenty of examples I can give across all the forms of rotary engines and seal types I have extensive experience with where the biggest root cause is apex seal lubrication and other factors and not this "hump" or the area around the plug. You only need to look at the wear on the rotor housing to see a biggest factor for apex seal wear where the gas pressure is the highest is in the center of the seal in the lower sector of the housing and this is more so when the apex seal temperature is out of control... especially in turbo engines.

This is why we water inject cars My #1 mod for rotaries

[Barry Bordes]

Originally Posted by RICE RACING

^ Best Secret?

Tune your car right!


If there is any secret then its water injection, but I already started a thread on that when you have tested as many apex seals as I have and over the amount of km's at the power levels I have then I will listen to threads like this and opinions like yours, till then most of the advice is crap *honestly*

.... not what you have collected in toilet papers.

Peter,

Tuning sounds like a good one for you to illustrate for us. A nice primmer on how to get the best out of ours engines would be great.


As for water injection. A little history. The first turbo kit that I made was in 1974... followed by making my first wastegate… then my first blow off valve ( I called it a “surge and lag pressure relief” because I didn’t know that they existed). Late 1974 I started using water injection because I had reached the fuel enrichment limit of my Spica 400 psi mechanical injection. This allowed performance exceeding a 911S, the fastest car at the time.


So I like to tune also. But a class would be great!

Right now my 5 yr old engine with about 20k miles (with housing water mods), a (10 lb spring) 12 psi boost. I think it is about normal.... 492 hp at clutch/ 418 rwhp on a 90 deg F day in New Orleans.
How should we tune it for more power at low boost?
Thanks,
Barry

[RETed]

Originally Posted by Barry Bordes

Peter, Check page C-57, item 3 of the Mazda workshop manual. You know the inspection where the two apex seals are put face to face to check for wear. I don't have to tell you where this wear comes from... it comes from the hump. If you look closely at your excellent pictures of the plug openings you can see that both are polished from being raised.

I always thought that the exhaust port dynamics was what cause this kinda wear on the apex seal?


-Ted

[Barry Bordes]

Originally Posted by RETed

I always thought that the exhaust port dynamics was what cause this kinda wear on the apex seal?


-Ted

It could be that too Ted, especially without the proper bevel. But if you examine the wear around the exhaust port and there is none then it is the hump.

I guess we need the RX8 people to verify this.
Barry