I have just completed my engine build, pretty succesful, a few issues getting the two peice apex seals to stay in, the super glue didnt hold them together and the tips kept pinging out accross my garage :)
Its alll together now, and im a bit paranoid about the end play movement in the shaft, it started out pretty stiff and the only way to move it was to gently tap it with a mallet ;) After working it around a bit and putting some oil in wherever possible it has loosened it up and I can now move it in and out without the mallet (still.. a little bit stiff..)
Is this anything to worry about, or have i just neglected to put enough engine oil on the e-shaft and bearings during assembly, and its made it a little stiff?
Cheers, James
I\'m no expert, but have you been through the procedure in the FSM about end float adjustment? Could be that it\'s a little on the tight side and you\'ll need a different shim.
You need to use a dial test indicator or feeler gauges. You should hear a little clunk when you pull or push the e- shaft, thats normal. It needs to be within the fsm tolerances. If you have used new irons or housings, you may need to use a different thickness shim.
Yea, I need to sort out the end-float yet. I think that its referring too to the tightness is the torque on the thrubolts and end bolt which brings the engine together and shortens the gap, you test the movement in the shaft and adjust with the spacer accordingly. The movement is there, its not too tight its just making the shaft move is too tight ;) it requires a bit too much effort to get the movement to test for the endfloat measurement.
:)
James
Have you fitted the front cover yet?. I made the mistake of tipping the engine upside down on the stand. The needle bearings came loose, i tightened the front hub and squashed the bearnings with the spacer, so a little tip there, once you fit the needle bearings, keep the engine upright untill you fit the front cover and pulley.
I havent done anything on the front of the engine yet, just checking movement of the shaft after I have installed the thrubolts. It has plenty of movement (as expected) its just a PITA to move, i expected to just slide it back and forth... lol
James
Well, if you have only just put the tension bolts through and the shaft is hard to move, it should slide up/down easily. Did you oil the stationary gear bearings and rotor bearings? You could try oiling around the e-shaft hoping oil seeps down into the stationary gear bearings.
Yea, i put oil on the saft bearings etc.. maybe not enough???
I will see if I can get some extra oil into there... what sort of risk do I run if I undo the engine to apply more oil? or is this a no-no once its been torqued up?
James
Did you install any new bearings in the course of doing your rebuild?
Did you install new bearings in the rotors or stationary gears? I would try turning the engine over a few times first to see if things loosen up. I think you should be ok in taking it apart again. Just watch the rubber seals dont expand too much if they have been in contact with petroleum jelly or oil
No new bearings, they loked in ok condition, to be honest not much in the engine was that worn when I stripped it down. I replaced the housings with new ones and a reconditioned rear plate.
Ill take the rear plate of, strip it down and try and get some more oil into it. I cant think of anything else that I could have done wrong, the thing wont go together if anything is in the incorrect place!
hmm... very little to go wrong, but i manage it... wolly! :spank Maybe some new bearings....
James
Hi imebgo,is this the first time you;ve done a rebuild on a rotary as I was wondering if you could give me an honest opinion of how you are finding it....I\'ve been messing around with \'normal\' engines for years but never had a rotary apart but I am tempted as I\'d like to have an FD to mess around with to stop me going too mad on the FB as I\'d like to keep her fairly original!
Cheers
Tim
Tim, i rebuilt mine for the first time in june. I booked a trip to the ring and the water seals let go 3weeks before the trip. The car still drove ok but was using more and more water so i just rebuilt it.The engine was low mileage anyway so I reused everything except the seals/springs. Found some new apex seals with springs going on ebay cheap, so got them, got the rest of the kit from the usa. If you\'ve rebuilt boingers before, a rotary is like twice as easy. Mine is still going strong. I ran it in 1000miles before the ring trip, went round the ring 14 times, got back home, went to isle of man caned it round jurby airfield, got back still going strong.
nice, i hope mine holds out :)
I watched a rebuild DVD from rotary art, and those pineappleracing series on http://www.rebuildingrotaryengines.com/ (http://www.rebuildingrotaryengines.com/) and read up about it. along with printing out the FSM. You kinda dont really have any excuse to get it wrong (:Nono! even though it seems I may have) The engine goes together well, and the processes of setting it all up withing tolerances are pretty easy, the most difficult things are probably getting the flywheel nut on/off cleaning the parts and grinding the side seals down (and remembering to apply enough engine oil around the shaft) the rest is childs play, all the little bits of important info, like placing the seals in the correct way, order of the thrubolts etc.. are well documented.
James
Cheers Rob and James for the positive info....feeling a lot less sceptical about giving it a go! In the meantime I\'ll keep my eyes peeled on the FD pages for all the useful info that crops up and see if any dead FD\'s surface. Incidentally there is a white P plate on ebay at the mo that says in the writeup needs a rebuild.....has anyone on here got any opinions on it I think he\'s after around the £2000 mark by the looks of it.
Cheers again
Tim
Just thought i would show you this simple cheap modification so you can do it before fitting the engine. It can go horribly wrong if you try and do this mod with the engine in the car.
Still having problems... I took the rear plate of and inspected, everything seemed ok, the movement with the rear plate off was very easy, nothing was sticking and the rotors where still. I put more engine oil around the shaft and rear stationary gear bearing and replace the end plate. and same problems, the e-shaft becomes much harder to move!
The rear end plate is a reconditioned one, not the one that was on the engine before, could this have anything to do with it?
James
As you\'re probably aware, it just shouldn\'t be that hard to turn over. Grabbing one of the drive belts i can move my engine by hand. Something is up, and since it gets soooo much easier with the rear plate off, sounds like that could be a culprit. Might be worth measuring the tolerances. Where did you get it from?
Reconditioned rear plate????
by reconditioned, do you mean lapped?, if so, when they lap them, if its not done properly the surface may now be flat but its not square to the rest of the block, basically the rear bearing is then a tiny bit twisted to the shaft which can make it hard to turn. Try putting the back plate on and removing the stationary gear bolts, if its difficult to get the gear out with the back plate on then it sounds like it may be twisted which is making it tight on the shaft. try turning the shaft without the rear gear in, if its easy then thats you problem, you can try shimming the gear when you put it back so it lines up with the shaft bit i would prefer to try another rear plate as they are not expensive for a good second hand one and at the moment its easy to change. Even if you just borrow one to identify the problem.
Also look at the rea bearing, can you see any new wear maarks from where you have been turning it, if twisted they would only be on one side.
Its from a tuner, but im no way implying thats the problem, lol, hes been very helpful, theres always the chance I have ****ed it up.
Im gonna phone him and see what he says.
Thanks.
James
the tuner wouldnt have lapped it himself, he would have sent it out. Get a micrometre and measure the tickness at the top and the bottom and then at each side, also measure the water jacket groove in the same places
Hes told me its not reconditioned, just used and cleaned up, im gonna take the block down for him to have a look at becuase he also told me not to open it up because the seals dont really like that ;) lol
bugger.
James
Thanks for the suggestions guys, I tried removing the rear stationary gear last night, and nothing changed with it out the shaft was just as hard to move in and out.
So I changed the rear plate to the old one, and the same problem, so I took the engine right back to the first rotor and oiled up the shaft plenty and repositioned both rotors and reassembled, and as soon as I torque it up it binds!!!
So, this has removed the rear plate and rear stationionary gear/bearing out of the equation
The shaft moves in and out really smoothly as im tightening the tension bolts up (in sequence, half a turn each!!) until it hits the torque setting on my torque wrench, clutching at straws here, but would this happen if those bolts were torqued up to much? Is my wrench not calibrated correctly?
Cheers, James
your shaft maybe bent
Doh!
I guess ill let Jason look at it on saturday, cheers guys!
I wonder if it would help, to loosen the front stationery gear, just a little, tighten up the through bolts, and lets see what happens.
I mean, if it\'s still stiff with front gear loose, and no rear stationery gear, what on earth could THAT mean?
If it\'s loose, lets now tighten the front stationery gear up , and see at what point the shaft becomes stiff. If still loose, lets now add the rear gear, and tighten up, and lets see.
I am struggling to imagine what the problem could be, though doing all this might give us a better idea.
imebgo, can you tell us exactly what parts you replaced?
did you drop that shaft ! ?
Thanks for some good ideas,
I have replaced the rear plate with a used ported plate, I have replaced all the seals, and the two housings with brand new housings...
The rotors, bearings and stationary gears and intermediate and front plate are the originals...
I will loosen the gears and see what happens...
I havent dropped the shaft, its just been sat on my workbench for the last few weeks!
The engine was rebuilt two years ago, its done approx 15k which were trouble free, and the only reason for pulling it apart this time was for porting, unfortunatly I dont know what was replaced that time around, but everything looked in good condition.
I checked tolerences for flatness of the plates, and seal wear, and all were well within tolerences, i also checked rotor tolerences, and they were ok.
Thanks, James
Good Morning,
Quick update, still having problems.
I removed the rear stationary gear and the front one and torqued up the thru bolts to 30Nm (measured by my torque wrench) and it was still jammed...
So, I then torqued up the thrubolts 28Nm and the shaft was free, so I put in the front gear and it stiffened up the shaft a little, but it still moved in an out pretty easily, then after putting in the rear gear, it stiffened it up again and it wouldnt shift!!!
It seems to be combination of everything thats jamming it up, i.e 30Nm of torque for the thru bolts and it jams without the gears in..... Maybe the shaft is bent... I dont have the means to check that accuratly...
James
What would the symptoms be if a dowel was bent?
James, I think you need to take the whole lot to your Vendor and get an opinion... this sounds really strange to me....
Yea, it is a bit fishy, ill see what jason has to say about it tommorow...
A bit of a shame really considering I spent sooooo long watching the DVD, reading posts and the manuals, and been eager to do this for a year now..
Thanks for your comments and help, and hopefully it wont be too costly tommorow! :)
James
Sounds to me like the rear rotor is causing the problem. Just wondering if you\'ve got a seal or something out of place? A side seal for example, might cause the rotor to sit slightly skewed in the chamber, and the bearing will bind because it\'s not running true with the e-shaft. Could also be an oil seal that\'s not quite sat right. Would also explain why it jams when you apply full torque to the bolts.
Just a few ideas, hope it\'s helpful. I\'ve not actually rebuilt a motor yet, but I plan to, and like you I\'ve done a whole load of research.
Anyway, good luck. Hope it\'s something simple to put right.
if its that simple then ill owe you a beer for suggesting it ;)
I\'ve had the rear rotor out a couple of times now to check evrything, but i havent had the front one out....
Could be something else to check.. maybe go back to square one and attempt the build again, its just a pain going through it all to end up the same place as before! :spank
James
lets hope! If you\'re going to pull it apart again, my plan of attack would be to bolt it up without the rotors and see if it still jams and 30nm. Got a couple of other ideas too if you\'re interested. Don\'t want to over-do it and sound patronising though. :flamed
If you going to be pulling it apart, and putting it back together again lots of times, it might be worth doing so without the water seals in as you don;t want them to go through the process of being squished down too many times.
lol, fire those ideas out man, be as patronising as you like, sometimes the only way to learn is from your mistakes ;)
James
Ok, here goes. I hope I\'m not leading you on wild goose chase, but these are things i\'d check:
Take a micrometer and measure the width over the oil seals from one side to the other. Take measurements all the way around the rotor and make sure you haven\'t got any high spots.
Double check the springs for the side seals are sat down properly. Maybe sit the rotor on its side on a flat surface and put the rear housing on top of it. make sure that the side seals all sit down in their grooves nicely and the plate sits flat over the top and not lop-sided. If you\'ve got a set of bore gauges they\'d be ideal for measuring the height that the plate sits at at various points around it.
The only other thing I can think of is that the rear hosing isn\'t sitting flat against the side housing. Pretty tricky to measure though, unless you take the E-shaft out and again use bore gauges to measure the width between the rear and intermediate plate.
Check for witness marks on the bearings. If it\'s a bearing binding you might find there are little spots where the soft metal has been rubbed hard. Clean them up as best you can and have a good look.
You can check the e-shaft isn\'t bent by making up some blocks of wood with a V cut into them. Make them big enough so that you can set them on a bench and rest the e-shaft front and rear journals on them. Give it a bit of oil and turn it. Shouldn\'t be too difficult to determine if it\'s got a bend in it.
You could also try fitting the rotors without all the seals in. Remove side seals/ springs, oil control rings/springs, corner seals and springs, then fit both S-gears and the E-shaft. If it\'s free to move up/down, you know there is a problem with one of the seals on the rotors. just make sure you make a good note of where the various seals came from because each side of a rotor can be very slightly different to another side. Also as nik said, take those water and combustion seals out if your going to be riping apart/rebuilding.
Hope you get it sorted soon mate. I can guess how p i s s e d you are right now.
Cheers guys, its all very well following instructions, but if you dont have *much* expereience in this sort of thing, when something doesnt go to plan it can be quiet difficult to figure out why...
James
just something to check, if you have left an old side seal spring in a rotor your new side seal and spring would stick out too much, they can be little b11ggers to get out.
Now we are entering the realms of general stupidity (on my part) ;) lol
But I will check everything as im going to take it back down to square 1 and rebuild
Im pretty confident all the sprnigs werre out becuase it took me about 4 evenings to clean down my rotors and I kept checking grooves, draging old seals through them to clean them out.
James
Quote from: RobbieRX-7You could also try fitting the rotors without all the seals in. Remove side seals/ springs, oil control rings/springs, corner seals and springs, then fit both S-gears and the E-shaft. If it\'s free to move up/down, you know there is a problem with one of the seals on the rotors. just make sure you make a good note of where the various seals came from because each side of a rotor can be very slightly different to another side. Also as nik said, take those water and combustion seals out if your going to be riping apart/rebuilding.
Hope you get it sorted soon mate. I can guess how p i s s e d you are right now.
Good stuff, Robbie.
I thought of re-assembly WITHOUT the rotors at all! Then lets add one Rotor at a time with no seals, then with seals, etc etc....
How about re-assembly without the e-shaft too? :D (Sorry, another one i couldn\'t resist on!)
LoL ! .............
Cracked it.. cheers guys - ianelvar your spot on lol....
I took the rotors out and reassembled without them and it was all squaring up, so i went through the seals and found a tiny bit of super glue form where i had stuck the tips of the seals in place (to stop them pinging out everywhere), it had gotten under the corner seal and it would\'nt go all the way home..
Its all back together now, also replaced the combustion and water seals just incase they were a bit dodgy after all the tightening and releasing of the thru bolts...
:cheers
James
Excellent! :cheers
GREAT NEWS, bud!
That super glue would have disappeared with the first turn of the key. But we didnt know it was that, so you did the diligent thing and took it all apart again! Well done on finding that.
Yeah, good job.