I called racing beat and asked about one their manifolds for carbs and I told him that I rebuilt my engine about 200 miles ago using atkins rotary rebuild kit (gaskets,ect) and now I want to change fron 6-port to 4-port. I am getting t2 housings to do this. He told me that I can reuse atkins coolant seal and have heard of many people who have done so- IS this TRUE????

 

Don't reuse water seals! They aren't that expensive.

 

hey, I have reused the same seals about 3 times already...saved about $400 worth of gaskets. That was for test engines though



I even managed to cut and glue a set of bands for a special "one night" race engine. A lot of folks do it, if it's for a short lived engine I see why not. For long term, hell just buy them new.

 

I wouldn't re-use them. At least not on my third gen. If you are going to, then make sure you inspect them well and make sure there is no breakage or swelling. And yea, I've also heard that the teflon encapsulated coolant seals can be reused.

 

I have cut and glue many times, never a problem. The inner ones are hard to remove so if i break it I just put an outter one in to replace it. Keep in mind fresh low milage O ring can be used again, not some 10 year old O-rings. I had used O-rings last at least 4 years in a TII. After that the car was sold to out side of the circle of friends.

 

Walter

It all depends on how they look when you get it apart and if you can get them out with out breaking them.



Hay anyone ever use a little gasket sealer on top of the water seals to help seal them? It may also help to preserve them too.

 

Teflon Encapsulated Silicone o-rings can be re-used provided there are no pits or cavities in the teflon jacketting (only a problem if the o-ring is over-sized) as well as any other normal problems (broken o-ring, etc.).



They're quite fantastic.



B

 

Sounds all a bit dodgy to me, water seals are cheap enough to replace with out having to use them again or using sealant with them. You wouldn't exactely use a head gasket again would you.

 

I would hate myself if i reused them and them the bastard started leaking coolant as soon as it goes iin the car.

Sounds cool but i couldnt make myself reuse them.

 

As afar as I'm aware, the teflon coated seals were designed primarily for drag racing, where you pull the motor down regularly, and with very few miles imbetween (only qtr mile per run... )



The standard mazda seals actually stick to the housings and form a very good seal. You'll notice this when pulling a motor apart- quite often the seals will break and bit be stuck onto housings and plates all over the place.



The stock seals do have teflon or similar on them- but only on the inners, and only on the face that faces towards the combustion chamber- it is used to protect the rubber seal from the heat. In the old days of rotaries (yeah, I've been a rotary **** for a while now ), you actually got little metal bands to put on the combustion side of the inner seals too, adjacent to the combustion stoke of the rotor.



If you use plain rubber seals in the inner area, they will fail much quicker due to heat damage. If you glue them back together, they may last a while but will again fail much quicker than stock.



So back to the teflon coated seals. Great for drag use, where you pull the motor down regularly, but in for example an FD, you wanna put it back together and leave it till the motor goes bang, hopefully a few years! I don't think the teflon seals will last that long as they simply can't form as good a seal as the rubber ones as they will never stick to the metal housing surfaces.



And yeah, AUS$150 for the stock seals ain't bad at all.