Originally Posted by trydis7' post='898970' date='Apr 20 2008, 11:48 PM

Thanks for the measurements and confirmation on the outer OEM seals.



Heck if I know what the root cause of the orings failures are? I would just like to try to narrow it down.



I believe Lynn has commented here/elsewhere? on the surgical cleanliness for the grooves to be able to seal properly. Although, I would expect that coolant leaking past a seal into the engine would not show the split orings BDC and others have seen only on the combustion side. If anything, I would expect leaking coolant to protect the seals.

I also find it hard to believe that BDC slapped together dirty housings repeatedly. The inner coolant grooves are dead easy to clean.



IIRC, From the Creavey.com guides, oring seals had a "nominal crush". 0.098 was too big. 0.093 might also have been too big - I'd have to go back and check.

Several people have commented that the pressures these orings are dealing with are at the really low end of capability anyway.



You bring up another possible variable.

If lapping a few thou off a housing might make the difference between failure and not, then a 5-10 thou too big oring would also be important based on the volume of oring groove.

One other comment was that there should be something like a 20-30% expansion (volume) allowance for oring expansion.



BDC, were any of engines with failed orings lapped? how much?



Mazdaspeed7, what (if anything) do you use to help install these orings? hylomar? petro jelly? how much?



Also, what sealant do use between the housings?



Thanks

dis~7

Originally Posted by dac' post='899347' date='Apr 26 2008, 01:10 AM

Well tonight I FINALLY started bolting together my engine.



I decided to TRY the RA O-Ring because they came in my kit.



It you are even THINKING about buying a set of these or like I did one of their rebuild kits... WALK AWAY.



I struggled for about 3 hours trying to keep the round MF O-ring on the 2nd plate in it's place. Everything went together and I went to bolt it up and I see the O-Ring with a flash light in 3 of my tension holes... The damn thing jumped.



MF SOB...



2ndly I paid extra for their SuperSeals and Racing springs. Their instructions state... Because their Superseals are made in lower quanity they are numbed matched and be sure to make the number of the corner seal with each apex seal. Yeah you guessed there is no marketings other than "SUPER SEAL" on them.



Yeah I tried to save a little money... MISTAKE.

Originally Posted by mazdaspeed7' post='899359' date='Apr 26 2008, 06:42 PM

If you go back and read you will see that the RA seals need to be put on a form so they will take the shape of the groove. Once you do that, they drop into place easier than stock seals. I posted a pic of my form earlier in this thread.

Originally Posted by dac' post='899426' date='Apr 27 2008, 05:14 PM

That's BS. The instructions don't state that anywhere. What am I doing stretching them? to make them fit.



I did get an email from RA:



"The relevant fact here is that the TES inner waterjacket O-Rings ARE more difficult to install than the factory O-rings. There is no question about that. Either you think they are worth the extra care and effort to use them or you don't. You are welcome to quote me on this on the forums if you like. Perhaps you can save someone else from the problems you had."



"Thank you for pointing out the out of date wording about the Super Seals. Due to high demand, we had to go to a more automated manufacturing process making those comments obsolete. They will be updated immediately."